Atlanta Cop Who Tasered Two College Students Was Previously Involved In 3 Fatal Police-Involved Shootings
Willie T. Sauls, one of the six Atlanta Police officers disciplined and facing charges tasering two college students who were in their car in downtown ATL, is revealed to have a record of involvement with police-involved shootings.
The episode, which occurred on Saturday night (May 30), was caught on video and put Atlanta’s response to the protests sparked by George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police into the national spotlight. This, however, was not the first or even the second time Sauls — who is Black — was involved in a violent incident during his 27-year tenure as a police officer.
On three different occasions Sauls used lethal force against the public. The first on a shop customer who was shot and killed by he and other plainclothes police officers in a bungled raid at an Atlanta motorcycle store. The second time he shot a mentally ill man numerous times inside his girlfriend’s apartment; and the third, when he and other cops shot a wanted, but unarmed, fugitive lying on a bed 40 times. The incidents all happened over a 21-year period.
Sauls has also been involved in previous incidents in which questions of excessive force have been raised, including one case that rocked the police department in 1995.
“My husband loves his job - really, really loves his job,” Sauls’ wife told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 1996. “After all this has gone on, he still wants to be a police officer. You have to have a love to continue at this point.”
In December 1995, a shootout at the Moto Cycles Shop in Northwest Atlanta involving Sauls and two other officers, prompted then-Mayor Bill Campbell to declare a “crisis of confidence” in APD and reconstitute the city’s civilian review board over police conduct.
The officers were in plain clothes and in an unmarked car as they followed a vehicle they suspected was stolen to the Marietta Street motorcycle shop. Believing the men in the first car intended to rob the store, the officers said they identified themselves and told the men to put their hands up.
The men they followed, as well as employees at the store dispute the men identified themselves as officers. A motorcycle mechanic with a concealed-carry permit then pulled out a .9mm pistol and started firing. Officers fired back. Some 20 rounds were exchanged in total.
23-year-old Jerry Jackson, the driver of the car followed to the store, was an unarmed customer whom employees recognized. Court records say bullets fired by Sauls’ colleague Waine Pinckney ricocheted and fatally struck Jackson as he lay on the store’s driveway. A round fired by Sauls struck a civilian in the leg.
The city eventually settled with Jackson’s family and two of the other men in the shop for $1.4 million, according to court records.
