Kershawn Geyger was killed by Sacramento sheriff’s gang unit. There’s no video, few answers
Kershawn Geyger’s family and a few dozen supporters gathered Friday outside a Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office substation, demanding more information about the death of the 25-year-old man.
It came a week after Geyger was shot and killed during a confrontation with sheriff’s gang investigators just outside a Carmichael apartment complex. A sheriff’s detective was wounded in a shootout with Geyger, according to the Sheriff’s Office.
Jethro Geiger, Geyger’s father, said the sheriff’s narrative account of the shooting doesn’t make any sense to him. He said he doesn’t believe that deputies would’ve allowed his son to exit the car. He believes his son was shot and killed as he sat inside the car.
“It’s something called due process, and he should’ve been afforded that opportunity,” the father told a group of reporters outside the sheriff’s North Area substation on Garfield Avenue. “That’s all I got to say. I’m angry. I’m angry.”
Geyger, of Carmichael, was struck by gunfire and died during the reported Jan. 15 shootout with sheriff’s detectives near Ranger Way and Rampart Drive. His last name is spelled slightly differently than other members of his family.
The detective, a 47-year-old member of the sheriff’s Gang Suppression Unit, was expected to survive. The detective, who has been with the Sheriff’s Office for 16 years, was released from the hospital Wednesday. A sergeant with the gang unit also was involved in the Jan. 15 Carmichael shooting, sheriff’s officials said, and was uninjured.
Sheriff’s Office to use body cameras soon
The Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office on Thursday released an edited video that does not include video of the shooting in Carmichael. Instead, the video includes a reenactment of the reported shootout.
The reenactment uses illustrated graphics to visually depict the Sheriff’s Office’s account of the shooting based on information gathered so far in their internal investigation. The sheriff’s video also includes crime scene photos of the vehicles involved. The photos were taken after the shooting.
Sgt. Rodney Grassmann, a Sheriff’s Office spokesman, said the detective and the sergeant were conducting surveillance that night in unmarked vehicles. He said those vehicles are used in undercover assignments, and they do not have dashboard cameras. Grassmann said they were wearing tactical uniforms with the sheriff’s insignia and badge.
Berry Accius, founder of Voice of the Youth, called the reenactment video a “cartoon” that reflects the law enforcement agency’s lack of transparency and accountability, and an attempt to manipulate the public into believing Geyger shot at the detective.
Accius asked at Friday’s news conference why didn’t investigators have body cameras or dashboard cameras? The sheriff’s spokesman on Friday confirmed that the Sheriff’s Office’s specialty units, including the gang unit, the Problem Oriented Police team and homeless outreach team, will be fitted with body cameras by mid-February. Sheriff Scott Jones told ABC10 on Friday that all sworn officers would have them by June.
When told about the Sheriff’s Office’s plans for body cameras, Accius said, “That doesn’t help us right now ... too little, too late.”
The community advocate said the Sheriff’s Office has not presented any real evidence that shows who fired first, and Accius believes “there’s more to the story.”
“This is a police/sheriff’s narrative. And the narrative that we usually get with the sheriff is absolutely wrong, false and it’s dangerous,” Accius said. “What they did is they criminalized this young man.”
Yaphette Geiger, Geyger’s mother, said the reenactment video is the agency’s attempt to “get away with murder.” She said the sheriff’s video indicates her son’s hands were up. So, she asked how did her son shoot at the detective his hands were up?
“Not only the fact that my son is dead by the hands of the police who’s supposed to protect and serve, now his life is on trial by you people, all of you,” the mother told news reporters. “From what I know from my own experience with law enforcement, when your hands are up, you’ve surrendered.”
South Sacramento shooting earlier that night
The edited video, posted on the Sheriff’s Office YouTube account, included security camera video footage of a gunfight in south Sacramento connected to the incident. Shortly before 6:30 p.m. Jan. 15, shots were fired at the Sun Valley Apartments in the 4700 block of 50th Avenue, deputies said. Grassmann said deputies arrived within a few minutes but did not find any suspects, but recovered shell casings.
The security camera video shows more than a dozen people, including small children, gathered near parked vehicles. A fight broke out, one man stumbled as a few others kicked and punched him. One of them, a man wearing a red hat, was seen kicking the man before he grabbed what appeared to be a handgun from a parked silver vehicle. The suspect then fires the weapon into the air.
Grassmann said that the suspect with the red hat was first to fire a gun, which instigated “a major gunfight” at the south Sacramento location.
The security camera video shows the crowd scatter as a few more gunshots are heard. Another suspect then opens fire at someone on the other side of the parking lot. Four other gunmen join him, firing shots in the same direction to the other side of the parking lot.
The video then shows the suspect with the red hat grabbing a small child, who had been held by another man ducked next to a car as the gunfight ensued. The two men then get into a silver vehicle.
Grassmann said those two men were seen leaving the south Sacramento scene in a silver Kia Soul. He said the vehicle was a rental car, and sheriff’s officials had tracked it to the Crestview North Apartments near Ranger Way and Rampart Drive in Carmichael.
Accius said they don’t care about what happened two hours earlier in south Sacramento, they want to see evidence with witness statements about what happened in the moments before and during the shooting in Carmichael.
“Why is it that we are still here with a lack of evidence, nobody that was on the scene has been interviewed and all the information that we’re getting is from the (Sheriff’s Office’s) standpoint,” Accius told reporters Friday.
Suspect car spotted at Carmichael apartment complex
The detectives and the sergeant from the sheriff’s gang unit arrived at the Carmichael apartment complex in separate vehicles.
The sheriff’s investigators immediately spotted the silver Kia Soul parked, and they later saw two men matching the description of the subjects from south Sacramento, Grassmann said. The men were seen putting items in the vehicle, he said. Moments later, the two got into a blue car.
“Fearing that they still may be armed, and an imminent danger to the public if a pursuit were to occur, the sergeant initiated a vehicle stop,” Grassmann said in the sheriff’s video.
The sergeant, driving a pickup, stopped his vehicle directly in front of the blue car along Rampart Drive, according to the sheriff’s spokesman. He said the sergeant activated his blue-and-red overhead and grill lights.
The sergeant got out of the pickup with his gun drawn and told the two men in the blue car “Sheriff’s Office! Show me your hands!” according to the video’s narration. Grassmann said the sergeant said that twice, and both subjects in the blue car complied with the sergeant’s commands, placing their hands in the air.
Moments later, the detective drove up in a minivan and parked his vehicle behind the blue car on the driver’s side. Grassmann said the detective then began talking to the driver in the blue car. Authorities would later identify Geyger as the man in the blue car’s driver’s seat.
As the sergeant moved over to the blue car’s passenger side to speak to the passenger in the front seat, the detective across from him yelled “Gun! Gun! Gun!” according to Grassmann. The detective was indicating that Geyger had a gun, according to the sheriff’s spokesman.
Grassmann said Geyger shot the detective, before Geyger “immediately” got out of the blue car with the gun in his hand while the detective returned fire. The sheriff’s video describes Geyger’s gun falling to the ground. It’s unclear from the video reenactment whether Geyger dropped the gun voluntarily.
The sergeant “also engaged the suspect in gunfire,” Grassmann said. The detective then stumbled backward and fell to the ground near the rear driver side of the blue car “while continuing the gunfight,” according to the sheriff’s video.
“While on the ground, the suspect attempted to retrieve his gun and the detective shot additional rounds at the suspect to stop the threat,” Grassmann said in the video.
Passenger: No one fired from inside the car
In an audio recording, the sergeant is heard radioing dispatchers, reporting that a detective and a suspect had been shot, and that he is holding another suspect at gunpoint. The sergeant then asked dispatchers to send ambulances for the detective and the suspect hit by gunfire.
The shooting was first reported around 8:15 p.m. just south of Winding Way. Medics arrived and pronounced Geyger dead at the scene.
A patrol deputy arrived at the scene, grabbed the injured detective and dragged him to a patrol car and drove him to a hospital.
The passenger in the blue car, JW Geiger, had a gun in his waistband; he stayed in the car and complied with authorities, Grassmann said. Geiger — who was not wounded or injured — was arrested on suspicion of being a felon in possession of a gun, having a concealed gun and carrying a loaded gun, according to the Sheriff’s Office.
Geiger, who has since been released from the Sacramento County Jail, told CBS13 that he was the passenger in the car with his brother when the Carmichael shooting occurred. He said he heard “hands, hands, hands” a split-second before shots were fired, and that no shots were fired from anyone in the car.
At the time, investigators believed there might have been others in the blue car. Authorities searched for other suspects until midnight. By the following afternoon, the Sheriff’s Office had not found any other suspects.
Sheriff’s detail man’s previous conviction
In the sheriff’s video, Grassmann said Geyger was on parole after he was convicted of being a felon in possession of a gun, carrying a loaded gun, grand theft and burglary. Grassmann also said Geyger was an associate of the 24th Street Crips gang.
Accius said the Sheriff’s Office released information about Geyger, along with a claim about Geyger’s association with a gang, to vilify him and manipulate the public into believing its investigators had a good reason to kill him.
Accius asked why the Sheriff’s Office has not publicly released the names of the gang investigators involved.
“Because of what you did, you put out the information to make people feel we had to shoot this young man,” Accius said. “And our community, his family, deserves answers. ... We want to hear the truth.”
The shooting in Carmichael was the first of three reported shootouts with Sacramento sheriff’s officials over four days. The second occurred Monday night, after deputies chased a vehicle in the Arden Arcade area and the subsequent shootout killed a sheriff’s deputy, the suspect and a K9 officer at Cal Expo.
The following night, an adult son opened fire inside a senior living apartment in the Foothill Farms section of northeast Sacramento County. Sheriff’s officials said the son shot his mother, who died, and fired a gun at deputies responding to a reported family dispute at the home. The son suffered a superficial wound. The deputies were not injured.
Tyler McClure, a south Sacramento resident who helped Voice of the Youth organize Friday’s news conference, said the public should recognize that Geyger was the father of two little girls who leaves behind a grieving family who want to know why he was shot to death.
“It’s hard to reconcile the relationship between the African American community, many communities, minority communities and law enforcement, when the transparency that we seek is not even honest transparency,” McClure told reporters. “We can be open all day, but we need honest transparency, not cartoons.”
This story was originally published January 23, 2021 at 10:14 AM.
