The family of the unarmed man shot and killed last year in his Putney apartment by a Vermont state trooper has filed a civil rights lawsuit against the state.
Scott Garvey, 55, was shot three times July 7 after officers forced their way into the apartment where he had barricaded himself during a mental health crisis.
Attorney General Charity Clark found the shooting justified last week because the officer, Peter Romeo, “reasonably believed” that Garvey was pointing something that looked like a rifle at officers as they entered his apartment.
The object turned out to be a drum stand that Garvey, who was disabled, used as a cane, according to his family.
In their suit, filed Monday in Windham County Superior Court, the Garvey family argues that Vermont State Police use excessive force against someone who posed no threat to the public.
In a press release, Garvey’s older brother said police escalated the situation unnecessarily and failed to use non-lethal options available to them. They called the shooting “ avoidable, reckless, and unjustified.”
“This decision was not easy,” Shawn Garvey said in a statement. “We would have preferred to work with the State of Vermont on reforming the system so that this does not happen to another family. But after nearly a year, the message from the State has been clear: no accountability, no meaningful explanation, no reform, and no apparent willingness to examine what went wrong.”
In the statement, Shawn Garvey said Clark’s decision not to prosecute a state trooper is far from the final word on the subject of whether police acted properly.
“The criminal review answered only the narrowest possible question: whether the State was willing to prosecute one of its own officers,” said Shawn. “It did not answer the question that matters most to us, to Vermonters, or to every family with a loved one in crisis: Why did police create this deadly confrontation in the first place?”
Clark outlined in her report that neighbors reported Garvey was banging on windows, talking about voices “telling him to kill everyone,” claiming that he had a gun, and refusing to come out of the apartment.
The report noted that Garvey suffered from “auditory hallucinations and schizophrenia” and that efforts by mental health professionals to convince him to leave the apartment failed.
The family argues when all 49 fatal shootings by police since 1977 are deemed justified, something is wrong with the system.
“Scott needed care,” his younger sister Kara said in the statement. “He got bullets. We are filing this lawsuit because silence has failed. The political process has failed. Internal review has failed. Now the State of Vermont will have to answer in court.”