A 31 year old man is sitting in the Travis County Jail awaiting trial for aggravated robbery in a case with no weapon and a strong motivation on the part of the Austin Police Department to pursue a fabricated charge. For the APD, the alternative would be loss of public confidence in the fairness or competence of police conduct, or both. For the defendant, the consequence could be a daunting 99 year prison term. After police shot Steen at the scene of an alleged robbery, he has already lost a kidney, nine months of his life and more.

On the night of October 11, 1997, Gregory Steen, an African-American, was in a North Austin house well known to police and neighbors as a drug den. Hearing that police were outside, and knowing that his presence constituted a probation violation, Steen broke a back window and jumped out. While running from the scene, a police officer stationed in a neighboring yard shot him in the back. The officer, Keith Sheffield, claims he fired because he thought Steen had a gun, even though it was dark, a heavy rain was falling, and Steen was 60 feet away. No gun was ever found to substantiate this officer's story.

Official APD procedures permit an officer to fire at a fleeing person only if he or she clearly poses "a threat of death or serious injury to either the officer or another." The department, with Chief Stan Knee at the fore, has closed ranks to support Sheffield's highly questionable justification for the shooting. Steen maintains that the robbery charge was invented to protect Sheffield from the consequences of bad judgement, since no one from inside the house ever claimed that Steen stole anything.

For his part, Sheffield's violation of APD policy, resulting as it did in traumatic injury to a young man, cost him nothing. A one-day suspension was waived by Chief Knee almost as quickly as it was ordered despite the chief's admission to the Austin-American Statesman that Sheffield "made a mistake" in the incident. Louie White, a retired APD captain and NAACP activist, calls the suspension a disgrace, saying that Sheffield should have been fired. And truly, if shooting an unarmed man in the back doesn't warrant a reprimand at Chief Knee's APD, its hard to imagine what would.

With evidence for the aggravated robbery charge so sparse, Steen's trial in August may come down to character, with victory going to the side that can sell its take on his personality. In a country still light years from burying racism, the District Attorney could prevail by painting him as a drug abuser and a drifter. Those closer to Steen portray him as a flawed man who, nonetheless, does not have it in him to hurt anyone. "He has such a heart," says Carol King, Steen's mother, adding that he has never associated with "thugs and gangs. That's not who he is."

by Megan Baker, July 1998

Sources: Austin American Statesman, interviews with Carol King, Steen's mother, and Ann del Llano, Steen's attorney.

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