Before the release of the footage of Leonard Cure’s shooting during a traffic stop Monday, his family and many others said his death was unnecessary — that nothing could have justified taking the life away from a man who spent 16 years of it in prison because of a mistake.
Now that the footage has been released, many experts who watched the videos shared by the Camden County Sheriff’s Office on Wednesday afternoon say the shooting was justified in the moment that it occurred.
Cure, a former Broward resident who was exonerated by the State Attorney’s Office in 2020 after his armed robbery conviction was vacated, resisted the sergeant who pulled him over, eventually fighting with him and gaining the upper hand. He was likely suspicious of law enforcement and afraid of returning to prison, his attorney, Ben Crump, said Wednesday.
Still, it remains an open question whether the shooting could have been avoided altogether.
To try to answer that question, the South Florida Sun Sentinel consulted five use-of-force experts across the U.S. to review the over half hour of dash camera footage:
- Bob Dekle, the now-retired prosecutor who sent serial killer Ted Bundy to death row and is a former director of the Criminal Prosecution Clinic at the University of Florida, where he taught about the use of force.
- Spencer Fomby, a retired police captain and SWAT officer who has worked as a use-of-force instructor for 15 years.
- Dr. Lawrence Hunter, a retired police captain from Connecticut who commanded the Internal Affairs and Training Divisions.
- Dr. Roy Taylor, a police use-of-force expert and the chief of the Capitol Special Police in Raleigh, N.C.
- Sean Visners, retired deputy chief from the Sunrise Police Department and court-recognized expert on the proper use of force.
Overall, they agreed on two things: If the deputy, Staff Sgt. Buck Aldridge, had addressed Cure differently from the start, perhaps the escalation leading to the shooting could have been avoided; and, once Cure had what appeared to be the upper hand in the physical struggle, the shooting became justified.
Though the dash cam footage is longer than 21 minutes and the body cam footage is more than 12 minutes, the interaction between the two men lasts two minutes before Cure is shot.
‘Step out!’
Before the interaction between the two men begins, dash cam footage shows Cure’s pickup truck pass Aldridge’s patrol car on Interstate 95 in northern Georgia. Aldridge pursues him, sirens blaring, as Cure continues to move faster than most of the other cars, his right turn signal blinking. He was going more than 100 mph in a 70 mph zone, deputies say.
Seconds later, Cure, 53, pulls over on the right side of the interstate.
The highway is busy; it’s 7:30 a.m. Monday, rush hour.
“Step out. Step out!” Aldridge yells. Those are the first words he uses to address Cure, as heard on the dash and body camera footage.
He continues to yell until Cure gets out of the truck. Then he tells him to put his hands on the back.
Aldridge’s attitude may have escalated the interaction, according to Dekle, Hunter, Taylor and Visners.
“It appears the officer’s stress level is elevated from the start,” Visners said.
At first, Hunter thought Aldridge had been chasing Cure for a long time. Perhaps if he had, his frustration would have been justified, he said, but he wasn’t.
“To jump to that level of aggression was just unnecessary,” Hunter said.
Taylor theorized that his response had to do with ego and a feeling of being disrespected by Cure’s passing him on the highway.
“Sometimes deputy sheriffs take offense to somebody doing something illegal in front of them, like it’s a personal assault on them,” he said. ” … it’s a phenomenon where they do take it as, you’re not respectful of my authority, you’re passing me blatantly in front of all these other cars, so I’m gonna show you who’s boss.”
Fomby said that Cure seemed noncompliant from the beginning, not getting out of the car. Regardless of Aldridge’s demeanor, he said, it doesn’t justify Cure attacking him later.
Taylor and Hunter also wondered why Aldridge had Cure get out of the car in the first place, and why he didn’t approach him on the passenger’s side, away from the road. Instead, Aldridge walks up to the driver’s side, placing their interaction next to oncoming traffic.
“I would not have had a driver get out of a vehicle next to a highway,” Taylor said. He would have used a passenger’s side approach like in most stops, introduced himself, asked for license and registration and why Cure was going so fast.
Hunter explained that, sometimes, it’s a police strategy to make a potentially combative, or “no” person, “uncomfortable,” giving them less time to come up with a plan of attack or escape. That can mean ordering someone who doesn’t get out of the car to get out, and ordering someone who does get out of the car to get in.
Either way, experts say, the highway itself added to the tense situation and possibly the use of force. Both men likely feared for their lives.
“The higher the fear level, the greater the chances for error,” Visners said.
The exchange
Over the course of the next few minutes, the two have a heated verbal exchange as Aldridge orders Cure to walk around the car and put his hands on the back.
Experts agreed that Cure’s attitude was combative, escalating things further.
Taylor described it as “barely cooperating.”
“He’s antagonizing the deputy,” he said, “he’s adding to this already enraged state where, you pass me on the highway at 100, now you’re not doing what I tell you, you’re just kind of mocking me with what you’re doing.”
Fomby said Cure was noncompliant from the beginning, before he even got out of the car.
“Mr. Cure is immediately noncompliant and refusing to follow directions and commands,” he said. “The staff sergeant orders him to go to the back of the truck. Mr. Cure says he’s not going to do that.”
Cure does eventually follow Aldridge’s demands, the footage shows, walking to the back of the truck, where he puts his hands. Aldridge tells him to turn around, and he turns his head, but not his body.
If he’s handcuffed, that means he’s going back to jail, likely one of his greatest fears after his wrongful conviction. But Aldridge doesn’t know that.
Several experts were surprised that Cure’s traffic offense warranted an arrest in the first place; Cure himself seemed confused by it in the video.
“I’m curious as to Georgia policy as far as writing tickets before placing [people] in custody and putting them in handcuffs for driving 100 miles-per-hour,” Hunter said. “We haven’t even gotten to the place of license, registration, insurance.”
Taylor described it as an “attitude arrest.”
“This guy had the audacity to pass his marked patrol car, and that’s a flagrant disrespect thing,” he said, “so the deputy’s going to retaliate and take him to jail.”
Fomby said that Aldridge had a right to arrest Cure in that situation, and if Cure wanted to contest it, he should have done so differently.
“Mr. Cure objectively committed a traffic violation,” he said. “And he was, based on the laws of the state of Georgia, subject to a custodial arrest. He can dispute the traffic violation and dispute the arrest later … But him becoming physical and attacking the staff sergeant is not a legitimate means of addressing his concerns.”
The use of the Taser
As Aldridge threatens Cure with the Taser, Cure says, “I’m not going to jail.”
“Yes, you’re going to jail,” Aldridge replies.
Cure raises his hand to the sky, and Aldridge stuns him with a Taser.
Experts’ opinions varied over whether the use of the Taser was justified.
Aldridge gave Cure multiple warnings, Fomby pointed out, and needed to get control of the situation as soon as possible because they were on the side of the highway.
“He uses the Taser to try to convince Mr. Cure to comply, that only works for so long until Mr. Cure says he is not going to go to jail,” Fomby said. “And then the staff sergeant decides he needs to use force to secure him.”
Taylor said that, in his area of North Carolina, you only use a Taser when someone is “actively fighting you,” though it varies by jurisdiction.
Another factor to consider is the mental state of the person. Aldridge should have realized that Cure’s may not have been normal by now, Hunter said.
He’s raising his hand to the sky, “pointing up to God or something like that,” he said. “You’ve got to be able to recognize that someone is having some kind of break.”
Then the interaction becomes physical.
Struggle and shooting
Once Cure turned around and began to fight back, all experts agreed, Aldridge had reason to fear for his life. And once Cure appeared to have the upper hand, they said, the shooting became justified.
As Aldridge uses the Taser, the footage shows, Cure turns around and begins to swing his arms, approaching the sergeant.
The motion Cure makes with his arms, Fomby said, looks like a deliberate attempt to render the Taser ineffective.
“They learn in prison to do exactly what he did and that is to break the wires,” he said.
Any attempt to get a hold of the Taser already puts the deputy’s life in danger, according to Visners.
“You’re grasping and grabbing at a weapon that is designed to cause incapacitation,” he said. “That is an imminent threat of death or great bodily harm.”
The two men begin to grapple; at one point, it appears that their arms are around each other’s necks. Then Cure then gets a hold of Aldridge, pushing his head upward. Still, the sergeant doesn’t go for his gun immediately, hitting Cure with the baton first.
Fomby said that Aldridge could have used the gun even earlier.
“It wasn’t until two less lethal options and physical control had failed,” he said, “that he decided to use deadly force.”
At this point, the baton isn’t working and Aldridge is “in danger of being choked to death,” Taylor said. He could get cerebral spinal injuries from hyperextending his head.
Meanwhile, Cure is repeatedly saying “yeah b—-,” which adds to the sense that Aldridge is losing, according to Hunter.
“I don’t want to hear that as a police officer,” he said.
Finally, the dash camera footage shows, Aldridge shoots Cure at close range and he falls to the ground. The sergeant radios in “shots fired” and holds Cure at gunpoint. Backup arrives about three minutes later.
As Aldridge waits for backup, a Brinks security guard pulls over to assist and also points his gun at Cure, who is still moving on the ground.
Wait for backup
About three minutes into the video, when Cure’s hands are on the back of the truck, Aldridge radios for backup, citing a “noncompliant” person. But he shoots Cure a little over a minute later, before that backup ever arrives.
Dekle, Hunter and Visners agreed that backup, and the lack thereof, may have played a crucial role in the situation. If other deputies had been there, the situation could have gone differently.
“There are a multitude of questions that still need to be answered, including whether or not backup was in the area and available prior to his attempt to effectuate the arrest of Mr. Cure,” Visners said. “Subjects are less likely to resist if they are outnumbered. Was that option there for him?”
Aldridge may have tried to handcuff Cure by himself, Hunter theorized, because he wanted to get away from the side of the highway as quickly as possible.
Still, he had already radioed about a noncompliant person, Hunter pointed out, so “why not wait until officers get there to back him up?”
Conclusion
Ultimately, the five experts agreed, Aldridge had a real reason to think his life was in danger when he shot Cure.
However, the interaction leading up to the shooting, which took place over the span of only two minutes, could have gone far differently on both ends. And if it had, Cure might still be alive.
“I’d say the shooting was justifiable but not praiseworthy,” said Dekle, the retired prosecutor, adding that Aldridge could have waited for backup and made a “less aggressive” approach.
But, he wrote, “the bottom line is: If (1) the deceased had complied with the officer’s directives, and (2) he had not attacked the officer, he would still be alive today.”
Visners and Fomby also pointed to Cure’s own reaction as responsible.
“I always say, ‘comply and complain,’” Visners said. “If you don’t like the way an officer is treating you, get to the point where you can file a complaint. The vast majority of fatal interactions happen when the subject is resisting.”
Taylor said that, in the moment, “it was a good use of force.” Hindsight is always 20/20.
“It may have turned out the same way no matter what, but if the officer had used a few better initial approaching techniques and kept the guy inside the vehicle, he may have had better compliance,” he said. “Or [Cure] may have decided I’m out of here, taken off, and turned it into a high-speed chase.”
Hunter called it a “quandary” reminiscent of the Trayvon Martin shooting outside of Orlando. In that case, he said, the shooter, George Zimmerman, was losing the fight with Martin when he shot him, so a jury concluded that he was justified.
But Zimmerman didn’t have to follow the 17-year-old in the first place, Hunter said, and Aldridge didn’t have to approach Cure the way he did.
“That whole aggressive thing, that has to beg the question, right?” he said of Aldridge’s initial approach. “If he’s not that aggressive, does this whole thing happen?”
