'Our systems are so shattered': Activists vow to push ahead after Tennessee officer's plea deal in Daniel Hambrick killing

Mariah Timms | Nashville Tennessean

NASHVILLE, Tenn.— Vickie Hambrick is still looking for justice.

She thought she might find it in a Nashville courtroom.

The mother of a man shot dead by police was never going to be the one to decide the fate of her son's killer. That's not how the justice system works.

But she hoped a jury would. She hoped placing her trust in prosecutors would mean her son would have his day in court.

Instead, she feels betrayed.

"She was just wanting what everybody else gets," Hambrick family attorney Joy Kimbrough said. "It's undisputed. We've got it on camera. So you think, finally, finally someone will stand trial. And then in the end, you get that punch in the gut."

Andrew Delke, 27, a former Metro Nashville police officer, pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter on July 2 in the 2018 killing of Daniel Hambrick. Delke shot him three times while Hambrick was running away from a North Nashville traffic stop.

Delke agreed to a deal that included three years of incarceration, likely to involve about 18 months actually served at a Nashville jail facility.

Guilty plea: Ex-Tennessee police officer pleads guilty to voluntary manslaughter in 2018 shooting death of Black man

Davidson County District Attorney Glenn Funk accepted the proposed deal from defense attorney David Raybin mere days before Delke was set to go to trial.

Funk has defended the agreement, saying that for the first time ever a "Nashville officer is going to bed in jail for killing a Black man."

Funk has said his team was ready to take the case to trial but winning was never a "slam dunk."

"Daniel Hambrick's life is worth more than three years. But it’s all of the facts in this case that make this the right disposition," Funk told The Tennessean, a part of the Paste BN Network. "In my best judgment, not only is it appropriate, but in this case, it’s what’s best for Nashville."

Funk framed the choice as one between the uncertainty of a trial and the sure thing of a plea deal that still holds an officer accountable. Others don't see it that way.

"People have been saying that Glenn Funk was in a no-win situation, that may or may not be true. But I feel if you’re in a no-win situation, then you just do the right thing. You don’t win anyway," community organizer Theeda Murphy said. "So just go ahead and go for broke on the side of right."

Plea deal stokes debate about role of prosecutors in reform

But the deal has stoked ongoing debates about the role of prosecutors in police reform, while activists say the landmark murder charge was only ever a "centimeter" of what's needed for real change.

Hambrick's shooting is far from the first time the city has reached the precipice of a reckoning on social justice or navigated the aftermath when a white police officer fatally shot a Black Nashvillian.

As the city moved closer to a potential trial, activists and long-time community members heard echoes from May 2020 when thousands took to the streets here to protest police brutality in the wake of George Floyd's death in Minneapolis.

They saw reminders from when a white police officer fatally shot Jocques Clemmons in 2017. The officer did not face charges. And many found similarities with the lunch counter sit-ins in Nashville during the 1960s.

"It was my mother's struggle. My grandmother's struggle,” Murphy said.

"I don't have any children, but I have nieces and nephews. And it's their struggle, too. …

"It's part of being Black in America: red drink on Juneteenth; potato salad at the barbecue with the Electric Slide; struggling against police brutality.”

Prosecutors framed the trial as a chance to hold police accountable to the people and an indictment of policy and training. The voluntary manslaughter conviction is the most severe penalty given to a police officer as a result of an on-duty shooting.

Delke's attorneys argued he was following his training and acting in defense of himself and others when he opened fire. Prosecutors say he had other options and should have taken them.

Delke fired his service weapon four times, striking Hambrick twice in the back and once in the back of the head. Investigators found a gun near Hambrick's body, but surveillance footage preserved from the scene does not show Hambrick turning or aiming.

What's ahead for police accountability?

For many, it's unclear now exactly how efforts for police accountability move forward.

"That's a discussion we need to have," Raybin said Friday, July 2. "(Delke) was following his training. The discussion about training ... it's up to the police department to make those decisions. We make those decisions at the police department, in the mayor's office, in the ballot box — not in the jury box."

But Black community organizers looking for justice never banked on the verdict of one man — guilty or not.

Organizers like Murphy, who led the push for the Community Oversight Board that rewrote the city’s charter to create a civilian oversight panel in the wake of Hambrick’s death, say most of the changes have been cosmetic, not the policy change at every level needed to ensure equity and safety for all Nashvillians.

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Those policy changes need to include civil engagement and community power, Charlane Oliver, co-executive director of voting rights advocacy nonprofit The Equity Alliance, said before the plea.

"We're asking for reparations, we're asking for justice, we're asking for the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, we're asking for a lot of things. Matter of fact, we're demanding them," Oliver said. "But they gave us a Juneteenth holiday and a Black police chief. These aren't the things we're asking for. That's not accountability. That's not something you give yourself a pat on the back for."

Current Metro Police Chief John Drake took over after the sudden resignation of former Chief Steve Anderson after last summer's protests against police brutality.

Anderson stood behind Delke while at the helm of the department, pitting his agency against the DA and the Community Oversight Board in turn.

Drake, a department veteran, has made friendly overtures to the oversight board. But he declined to implement the review unit's recommended discipline or policy changes when the board released its first finished investigation in June.

But Drake has promised reforms. In a statement after Delke's guilty plea, he said his "clear priorities continue to be precision policing, de-escalation and strengthening community partnerships."

Activists argue that if pressure from the DA's office by charging Delke was going to lead to change in the department and fewer Black deaths at the hands of police, it would have already happened.

"Our systems are so shattered ... that doesn't stop the next police officer from killing another person, none of that actually stops it," said Jamel Campbell-Gooch with the anti-violence group Gideon's Army. "None of that change has trickled down to any policy decisions, and the actual functioning of the government. What has happened is that words have changed, but the actions are still the same."

Delke's fate is almost unprecedented. Officers who kill people on duty are rarely charged, rarely found guilty and rarely serve time. Delke has all three.

Only shift in money can make a difference, some say

But only a significant shift in the budget, one that limits the need for traditional policing, can bring systemic justice, said Erica Perry, a leader with Black Nashville Assembly and co-director of Workers' Dignity.

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Investment in community groups, education, housing and employment can shift the needs of the community away from the root causes of crime, Perry said.

"The District Attorney's Office and the police department, and the judges, city council, the mayor all work together to police and control Black communities, as a way to address issues that they have created — especially elected officials — by underinvestment in our communities," she said. "They are attempting to police away problems that they are responsible for creating. They use the police to control and throw Black folks in jail in cases, and then they basically sign off on it by continuing to invest in them."

Murphy said she never really expected anything else from prosecutors.

"Every day, they are dealing out harsh sentences to people of color, to poor people. The only thing historic about the Delke deal is how it stands out in relation to what they do every day and don't think twice about," she said. "Every case that’s before him right now, I wish that every attorney on those cases would call the office and say, 'we want the Delke deal.'"

At the heart of all their pushing for massive structural change, each organizer focused on the heartbreak of Hambrick's family searching for a simpler idea of justice.

Murphy called that the "central contradiction" of fighting for justice for this family while organizing to build alternatives to the criminal justice system.

It makes sense they wanted access to a jury, a verdict and a sentence, Campbell-Gooch said.

"In this system, this is the only thing that we can do. This is all anything that we can hope for," Campbell-Gooch said. "It's all we have. The reason why it's all we have is because of years of racism, decades of white supremacy and anti-Black policies that we're seeing enacted in real time.

"It looks like a contradiction, but if this is the only tool that we have, and this is the only thing people know to reach for to get a semblance of justice, I'll never fault them for that."

By turns, the organizers said they were exhausted by having to fight and by hitting roadblocks with city leadership over and over again. But each remained hopeful and committed, too.

"Is it worth it? Yeah, it's worth it, because we're dying out here," Murphy said. "We really don't got a choice. I mean, what are we gonna do, just let people continue to kill us?"

Follow Mariah Timms on Twitter: @MariahTimms.

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