CLEVELAND — Two Medina County Sheriff's deputies are on paid administrative leave after fatally shooting 47-year-old Andre Dewayne Lamont Martin.
Cleveland Police Chief Annie Todd said preliminary information indicates that officers assigned to a Homeland Security Investigations (HSI)/Ohio Organized Crime Investigations Commission (OOCIC) task force were conducting a narcotics investigation. At approximately 4:29 p.m., they encountered a suspect who produced a knife, prompting two officers to discharge their service weapons, per Chief Todd.
Cleveland Police, alongside members of the Medina County Sheriff's Office, held a Thursday afternoon press conference where reporter questions were addressed, but little information was provided due the the investigation being in its early stages.
Watch below:
"Each task force is an independent operation. A lot of it is about large scale drug operations, so I don't know specifically what they were working on in this investigation, but a lot of our task forces are related to large scale drug trafficking," Chief Todd stated.
The two task force members at the center of this investigation are Medina County Sheriff's deputies, according to Chief Todd. They were reportedly in plain clothes, but wearing vests that identified them as law enforcement at the time of the shooting.
"This task force has been [around for] at least two years, maybe longer, and it is about bulk narcotics, so it's focused on Cuyahoga County and Medina County. We're a partner in that and that's why we're up here," Medina County Sheriff Terry Grice said.
Chief Todd was asked whether Martin was a suspect or a source in the narcotics investigation. She wasn't able to say.
"No one ever wants to be put in this position. No one wants to do this and it's such a small number, and I think a lot of times people think this is a regular occurrence, and it's not, thankfully. Thankfully our officers and deputies were safe," Sheriff Grice added.
Cleveland Police said it expects the body camera footage of the shooting will be released next week.
Beyond that, every answer provided by law enforcement on Thursday was "this is still early on in the investigation."
We talked to former Akron police officer and narcotics task force member, Tim Dimoff, to get a better understanding of how these investigative teams operate and how frequently federal narcotics-related entities get involved in Northeast Ohio.
"You want representatives from all over, so that somebody on that team is familiar with the physical layouts and also has the personal and professional contacts for different police departments. Those [suspects] move around a much larger area, and you need to have a team of familiarity for that region, not just a city or town," Dimoff explained when asked about the different entities on a narcotics investigative team.
Dimoff added narcotics investigations, as such, are a process.
He said when federal entities get involved, the investigation deals with "top-level criminals."
"How often would federal entities get involved?," I asked Dimoff.
"They're on a constant basis. They're daily, weekly," he responded. "Most of the task force work in plain clothes with a contingent that would be in uniform or able to call the police department in that local area and borrow several people in uniform, but usually it's a mixture."
Many on social media are asking why lethal force was used on Martin, who was said to only have a knife in his possession, so we asked Dimoff for his thoughts.
"My guess is that he was in close proximity to the officers and he all of a sudden pulls a knife out and those officers probably had no choice in their decision to shoot him. If he was standing across the parking lot, they obviously could pull their guns out, point it at him and say, 'Hey, drop the knife,' but I don't think that's this situation," Dimoff said. "There's been studies conducted and there's been testing conducted where someone is standing with a knife 20 to 30 feet away and they blow a whistle and they have an officer 20 to 30 feet away with his gun in his holster, and they see if the police officer can get their gun out of the holster before that person with a knife 20 to 30 feet away can get to that officer. Ironically, these tests have shown that [the] guy with the knife can get to that officer. In many cases they can be still very threatening and have the ability at a distance that surprises most people."
While there were many law enforcement entities on scene during the shooting, Cleveland Police were not there, despite the investigation leading officers to a Cleveland location.
Chief Todd said she's unaware of any notification that these two investigative teams would be in the area on Wednesday.
"Their notification is usually very limited or they don't notify anybody in that jurisdiction until they need to," Dimoff stated.
We reached out to several people who claim to have known Martin, but did not hear back.
Court records indicate he has previously faced more than 40 criminal offenses, varying from minor to felonious.
