The tragic case of a Sheriff’s Deputy assasinating an innocent American in the Air Force has produced a statement that begs how the Sheriff will overhaul the entire system.

SHALIMAR, Fla. (May 31, 2024) – The Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office (OCSO) has terminated Deputy Eddie Duran following the completion of an administrative internal affairs investigation into the death of Roger Fortson on May 3. The administrative investigation determined the deputy’s use of deadly force was not objectively reasonable and therefore violated agency policy.

The OCSO administrative internal affairs investigation, opened immediately after the shooting, is separate from the active criminal investigation that remains ongoing with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

Notably the Sheriff’s office has boiled the assassination down to a simple statement.

“This tragic incident should have never occurred,” said Okaloosa County Sheriff Eric Aden. “The objective facts do not support the use of deadly force as an appropriate response to Mr. Fortson’s actions. Mr. Fortson did not commit any crime. By all accounts, he was an exceptional airman and individual.”

So why then did Aden’s team use such excessive force to assassinate “an exceptional airman”? An airman. A specialist, trained professional, for high risk situations demanding clear thought and purposeful action.

To put this in perspective, look at another recent incident involving OCSO. Have you ever heard the sound of an acorn falling on top of your car? Can you imagine that?

Two OCSO deputies bizarrely claimed that they heard gunfire and started shooting at their own car despite absolutely zero actual threat, and with risk of hitting the suspect they had just searched, handcuffed and put in that car.

Now imagine barrel rolls, yelling “I’m hit” and dumping a magazine into your own police car after… SQUIRREL.

Really. The video of these two is a keystone kops komedy. They even thought the sound of an acorn hitting a car roof meant that they were “hit” and they then fantasized about their vest stopping a bullet. They thought they were about to die. They actually were just scared out of their mind in the middle of the day by a squirrel.

“Though his actions were ultimately not warranted, we do believe he felt his life was in immediate peril and his response was based off the totality of circumstances surrounding this fear,” Aden said.

Sheriff Aden’s justification of outrageously unprofessional staff behavior, attributing it to their absolutely false and unjustified beliefs in an imminent danger, underscores systematic deep-seated anxiety and lack of proper judgment under his watch. OCSO created dangerous conditions for unnecessary violence and threats to society.

Therefore, it should come as no surprise that this new investigation report reveals the Sheriff’s office has a culture of “shoot first to kill innocent people and ask questions later.”

According to the internal affairs report, Duran told investigators that when Fortson opened the door, he saw aggression in the airman’s eyes. He said he fired because, “I’m standing there thinking I’m about to get shot, I’m about to die.

“It is him or me at this point and I need to, I need to act as opposed to react,” he told investigators.

Acorn eyes?

Absurd. Duran was literally reacting to a call. He arrived, banged on the wrong door and then killed an innocent man for no reason.

He was reacting extremely unprofessionally. Why was he even there, reacting in the first place? Apparently it was to unload his gun, perform extra-judicial assassination of someone he fraudulently had been trained to see as a threat.

Fortson, who had no criminal record, lived alone and had no guests that afternoon. He was on a video call with his girlfriend, who told investigators they had not been arguing. She said Fortson was playing a video game.

An apartment complex manager called the sheriff’s office at 4:24 p.m. and Duran arrived three minutes later. He met the manager in the parking lot and she directed him to Fortson’s fourth-floor apartment, telling him there are frequent arguments, body camera video shows.

However, 911 records show deputies had never been called to Fortson’s apartment previously but they had been called to a nearby unit 10 times in the previous eight months, including once for a domestic disturbance.

Duran and Foreman couldn’t have been farther apart in background and training. A trigger-happy and clumsy deputy, who Sheriff Aden deployed despite obviously unprepared and overwhelmed with fear, unloaded his gun without justification into a calm, smart and quiet professional.

Foreman served as a special missions aviator on the AC-130J Ghostrider with the 4th Special Operations Squadron. He had earned the Air Medal with combat device.

Remember the “free fire zones” of Vietnam? That’s life in Florida now, apparently, under the OCSO.

Related area news:

…an investigative report linked two city officers with the secret hate society that once was violently active in the area. […] The Florida Department of Law Enforcement sent the police chief a report linking the officers to the Klan based on information from the FBI.

And also related, clumsy unprofessional American law enforcement in targeted assassination of Black men in the military has been a known long-time problem.

In brief, Williams was a black 21-year old man in May 1960 (serving as a U.S. Army Paratrooper) when two white police officers apparently pulled him into a County jail at night where he was beaten to death by police clubs.

Don’t underestimate Duran’s statement of “him or me at this point and I need to act” or Aden’s own racist-sounding statement of “totality of circumstances surrounding this fear” as anything less than politically motivated.

• Brookings: A crisis within a crisis: Police killings of Black emerging adults
• NIH: Why Police Kill Black Males with Impunity
• Harvard: …police killings of Black men and the history and cognitive forces behind racial bigotry and violence…