Mecklenburg’s top prosecutor questions Pineville police shooting, but won’t back charges

Charlotte-Mecklenburg police on Tuesday said a Pineville police sergeant’s fatal shooting of Dennis Bodden in May was “justified” and that they would not bring any charges.

Mecklenburg County District Attorney Spencer Merriweather concurred with the decision, but issued a letter raising concerns about the facts around the shooting.

Dennis Bodden’s mother has said she believes her son was in a mental health crisis on May 14 when someone reported to Pineville police that he was taking items from a Food Lion in Johnston Road Plaza near his apartment.

Pineville Sgt. Adam Roberts first confronted Bodden outside the store, but the shooting happened across the city line in Charlotte.

The name of the sergeant who shot Bodden was not released until Tuesday, when Merriweather’s June 14 letter to CMPD Chief Johnny Jennings identified Roberts.

“On Tuesday, May 14, 2024, a Pineville Police Department sworn employee perceived an imminent deadly threat and fired their service weapon striking a shoplifting suspect, Dennis Bodden, 46,” a brief news release from CMPD said Tuesday.

Roberts also shot and injured a man in Pineville in 2020.

Bodden’s mother, Cleopatra Bodden, told the Observer on Tuesday that she was upset by the decision to not charge Roberts.

“From the beginning I did not think that I would get a fair trial, and I did not,” she said. “They say they were independent. I don’t think they’re independent. They are all from Mecklenburg County.”

She confirmed the family has hired a lawyer, and that she met with the district attorney’s office Tuesday morning to watch the police body camera footage from May 14.

What happened?

Merriweather’s letter to Jennings gives new details about what led up to Bodden’s death.

Bodden, who was bipolar and schizophrenic, had been struggling for years, the letter says.

“Tragically, Mr. Bodden’s mental health reportedly began to deteriorate during the COVID-19 pandemic, and that condition may very well have contributed to the events that ultimately led to his death,” it says.

Roberts was off duty but in uniform working at another shopping center when he heard a call from dispatch about Bodden stealing from the Food Lion. It had happened before, according to court records. Bodden took $12 worth of drinks from that Food Lion in April, an affidavit says.

Bodden, with a hooded rain jacket on and headphones covering his ears, walked toward Johnston Road, with Roberts following him into Charlotte. Along the way Roberts tackled him in the median of a road and Tased him twice, and Bodden bit the sergeant’s arm.

Bodden was unarmed.

At Cedar Point Lane in Charlotte, Officer Randall Down showed up to provide backup.

“You ain’t getting away, bro,” Roberts told Bodden, pushing his shoulder.

The two pushed each other and “momentarily tussled” before Bodden “charged” toward Down, who tried but failed to Tase him. Bodden grabbed and pulled Down’s radio, and Roberts pulled out his gun, according to Merriweather’s letter.

Bodden went back to Roberts and “appeared to reach for the gun,” it says.“Get him! Get him!” Down said.

Roberts fired three shots and hit him, and Down again screamed, “Get him!”

Bodden fell to the ground and they handcuffed him.

“I didn’t want him to hit you, get you. He’s already bit me real bad,” Roberts told Down.

Merriweather concluded that, aside from the full engagement, Bodden was either reaching for the sergeant’s gun or a reasonable police officer could conclude that. Were he to prosecute Roberts, the prosecutor wrote, his office would be unable to disprove that Bodden was attempting to disarm him.

“Accordingly, there is no liklihood that a unanimous jury would find beyond a reasonable doubt that the use of deadly force by Sergeant Adam Roberts constituted a violation of criminal law.”

DA has concerns

“While the appropriateness of Sergeant Roberts’ tactics may be ripe for other authorities to evaluate, such questions exceed the purview of the District Attorney, as a matter of criminal law, and are beyond the scope of this consultation,” Merriweather wrote.

But the district attorney still pointed out some concerns and discrepancies:

He noted that Roberts told dispatch that Bodden “has already tried to push off on me” even though body camera footage up to that point showed no “substantial contact” between them.

In response, Pineville Police Chief Michael Hudgins said in an email to the Observer that Roberts’ body camera “does not capture every scene or experience that is seen or felt by the officer.”

Pineville police also allowed Down to watch not only his body camera footage from the shooting, but also Roberts’ before questioning — despite CMPD and Merriweather both asking Pineville to keep officers away from the footage before they were interviewed by CMPD investigators.

“I relayed my own concerns to PPD and discouraged allowing the officers to view the body-worn camera prior to their interviews,” Merriweather wrote. “PPD maintained that it intended to allow the officers to view their body-worn camera footage, as the agency believed that to be consistent with best practices for law enforcement agencies in officer-involved shooting investigations.”

Hudgins told the Observer that the decision to offer both his officers at the scene a chance to review video before being interviewed was a tough one and that the issue is unsettled in policing. He cited a 2022 article by a lawyer who represents police who said allowing them to view video was appropriate because investigators could benefit from the “memory-enhancing effects of video viewing” by officers who used force.

And Merriweather questioned why Pineville police said in a news release, which they provided to CMPD, that Bodden put his hand into his coat pocket.

“The shooting did not occur for quite some time after this, and Sergeant Roberts did not cite this ‘reach’ as the reason for any of his subsequent actions,” Merriweather said.

It’s unclear if that news release reached any news outlets.

Corine Mack, president of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg NAACP, said she had a “deep concern” over Merriweather’s decision to not investigate further or bring charges against the sergeant.

“The Black community can’t allow for our young men to be killed without someone being held accountable,” Mack said.

She said she also wanted to know about the disciplinary record of Roberts or whether a mental health crisis team could have been called to the scene. Pineville police have declined to release his disciplinary record to the Observer.

“I can’t believe that law enforcement thinks it’s okay to shoot someone who’s unarmed,” Mack said. “You have several officers on the scene, and you’re telling me that you think it’s okay to shoot someone and take their life. Who’s unarmed. Are you that threatened by Black skin? Really?”

Mother is ‘just existing,’ she says

Cleopatra Bodden said the police knew her son struggled with schizophrenia, and that he wasn’t acting rationally on May 14, but didn’t take that into consideration when confronting him, or in the investigation into the responding sergeant’s actions after.

“They knew by his reaction … that he was not reacting like any rational person,” Cleopatra Bodden said. “If you tell someone to stop … and they’re not reacting, you should know that there is something else going on — that that person is not stable. And they didn’t take that into consideration.”

Instead, she said, the sergeant followed her son after he tried to get away, shot him, handcuffed him, and treated him “like he was an animal.” And now, she said, part of her life is gone.

“I’m just existing,” Cleopatra said. “They took my life and it’s just like nothing to them.”

Bodden was a Rutgers University and Cardozo School of Law graduate, the district attorney’s letter says. He had also worked as a senior attorney at New York’s Mental Hygiene Legal Service Agency from 2014 to 2019, representing people who suffered mental illness, WFAE previously reported.

Drew Farrar, a friend of Bodden’s who previously spoke with the Observer, said he volunteered with a suicide prevention hotline.

In a previous interview with the Observer , Dennis Bodden’s aunt, Julia Bodden, and his mother said he would hear voices if he didn’t take his medication.

More than once Bodden had gone into the Food Lion thinking it was his home and the items were free for him to take because the voices would tell him they used to belong to his father, and now belonged to him, Julia Bodden said.

No Pineville police video of the shooting has been released to the public.

The Charlotte Observer has filed a petition in Mecklenburg Superior Court asking a judge to order release. A hearing for that petition is scheduled for later this month. Separately, Cleopatra Bodden also has filed a petition in court.

2020 SHOOTING INVOLVING SAME SERGEANT

The Pineville Police Department was sued in 2021 by Timothy Caraway after he had been shot at 12 times by Roberts and Officer Jamon Griffin.

Police approached Caraway on North Polk Street in February of 2020 after they received a 911 call that a Black man with long dreadlocks and a tan jacket was pointing a gun while walking on the street.

Video from Roberts’ camera shows the officer walking up behind Caraway as other officers flank him. Caraway briefly comes into view either kneeling on the ground or close to it. Caraway then reached into his pocket, and Roberts and Griffin began shooting. Caraway said that he was complying with officers’ orders to put down his gun.

And his attorney, Micheal Littlejohn of Charlotte, said at the time that his client found himself trapped in a “deadly game of ‘Simon Says’” in which the police officers rushed up behind him, gave him multiple and conflicting commands, then opened fire within seconds and kept shooting until one of their colleagues shouted at them to stop.

The lawsuit was later thrown out by U.S. District Court Judge Frank Whitney, who wrote that Caraway had posed a reasonably lethal threat to the officers and the public. Caraway appealed, and oral argument was held in December before the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Following the shooting of Dennis Bodden, Roberts remains on paid administrative leave, the Pineville chief said Tuesday.