The Bellwater Police Department's civilian review board has ruled that an officer's decision to fire his weapon during a Cedar Hollow foot pursuit was within department policy, closing out a monthslong review that had drawn some of the largest public comment turnout the board has seen in years.
The Bellwater Police Department’s civilian review board has cleared Officer Daniel Ostrander of wrongdoing in a shooting that left a Cedar Hollow man wounded during a foot pursuit, finding that the officer’s decision to fire was consistent with department policy, according to a summary released by the board this week.
The incident began when Ostrander and a second officer attempted to stop 29-year-old Marcus Deleon on suspicion of an outstanding warrant near a Cedar Hollow strip mall. According to the review board’s summary, Deleon fled on foot, and Ostrander fired twice after Deleon allegedly turned toward him holding what officers described as a dark object later determined to be a cellphone. Deleon was struck once in the shoulder and survived; he has since been released from Bellwater General Health System’s flagship hospital.
Board says officer’s account was consistent
The seven-member review board, which includes two attorneys, a retired judge and four community appointees, voted 6-1 that Ostrander’s use of force was justified under department policy, which permits officers to fire when they reasonably believe a suspect poses an imminent threat of serious harm. The board’s summary noted that Ostrander’s account of believing Deleon was reaching for a weapon was consistent with statements from the second officer on scene, though it also noted that no weapon was recovered at the scene.
Chief Roberta Simms said she accepted the board’s finding and that Ostrander has returned to regular duty after a standard administrative leave period. “This is exactly the kind of case civilian oversight exists for,” Simms said. “An independent board with no stake in protecting the department looked at the same evidence we did and reached the same conclusion.”
My son didn’t have a gun. He had his phone in his hand because he was trying to call me. This board didn’t clear an officer, it protected one.
Marisol Deleon, mother of Marcus Deleon
Family, advocates question the process
Marcus Deleon’s mother, Marisol Deleon, said the family disputes the board’s account and believes her son was not reaching toward the officers at all when he was struck. She said the family has retained an attorney and is considering a civil suit against the department, and criticized the review board’s makeup, noting that two of its members have previous ties to law enforcement.
Bruce Calloway of the Wentworth County Legal Aid Coalition, which has pushed for changes to civilian oversight boards in both the city and county, said the case illustrates a broader problem with how review board findings are communicated to the public. “A 6-1 vote with almost no public detail about what evidence swayed that one dissenting member doesn’t build trust,” Calloway said. “It just tells people to take it on faith.”
Council Member Gary Petrowski, who represents Cedar Hollow and has previously praised the department’s community policing gains in his district, said he has asked the police department for a fuller accounting of the incident, including body-camera footage, which has not yet been publicly released pending the resolution of any civil litigation. “My constituents deserve to see what happened, not just a summary that tells them the conclusion,” Petrowski said.
Simms said the department’s policy is to release body-camera footage once any related legal proceedings conclude, a standard she said protects both the integrity of potential litigation and the officer’s due process rights. She said the department has separately begun a review of its foot-pursuit tactics in low-visibility situations, a step she described as unrelated to the board’s finding but informed in part by the case.
The review board’s chair, retired Judge Alma Whitfield, said in a statement that the board’s process included interviews with both officers, a review of dispatch audio and available surveillance footage from nearby businesses, and that members were not provided the district attorney’s separate, ongoing review of the shooting before reaching their own conclusion. District Attorney Vivian Ashcroft’s office said it expects to complete its own review of whether any charges are warranted within the next several weeks.
Whitfield said the board’s single dissenting member, a community appointee, believed the distance between Ostrander and Deleon at the time of the shooting made it less likely that Deleon’s turn toward the officer could be reasonably mistaken for a weapon draw, but declined to elaborate further, citing the board’s confidentiality rules around individual deliberations. Calloway said that kind of limited disclosure is exactly what his organization wants changed. “The public gets a vote count and a paragraph,” he said. “For a case this serious, that is not enough.”
Simms said the department has offered to meet with the Deleon family to walk through the board’s findings in more detail, an offer Marisol Deleon said the family has not yet decided whether to accept while its own legal review continues. “Right now, another meeting with the department feels like being asked to trust the same process again,” she said. “We’re not there yet.”