CAMDEN COUNTY, Fla. – The Camden County Sheriff’s Office deputy who shot and killed an exonerated Florida man during a struggle following a traffic stop on Interstate 95 was fired from the Kingsland Police Department in 2017 after violating the agency’s use of force policy during a traffic stop.
On Wednesday, the Sheriff’s Office released video from the shooting involving Deputy Buck Aldridge and Leonard Cure, 53. The dash camera video from Monday’s incident showed a tense interaction between Cure and Aldridge before the deputy fired a Taser and Cure attacked him. The two men wrestled before the deputy pulled out his gun and fired the fatal shot.
News4JAX obtained Aldridge’s personnel files and it showed that he was fired and given warnings in previous years working for law enforcement, and both involved traffic stops.
Aldridge’s career with the Kingsland Police Department began in 2012 as a peace officer. An employee performance review in June of 2013 said he needed improvement in his judgment and decision-making.
The comment underneath said, “Be calm, cool, collected.”
The next year, Aldridge got a warning for unnecessary force during a traffic stop. In his five years in Kingsland, he completed 618 hours of training including de-escalation techniques, use of deadly force, traffic stops and more. Aldridge also had nearly 1,000 hours of training throughout his law enforcement career.
Tom Hackney, a retired director with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, said training is constant for law enforcement officers.
“The more they’re trained, the better they’re going to be. So this could be a training issue. When you watch the video of what happened, this started off hot,” Hackney said. “As the victim suspect exited the car, both of them were at an elevated situation. I think that officer potentially could have toned that down a little bit, de-escalated that from the start.”
Then in August 2017, he was fired for violating the use of force policy during a traffic stop. In an internal investigation, another officer involved in that stop said he thought “it was a bit much.”
“I see a police officer being way too aggressive to start with. He had no business picking her up and throwing her on the ground,” another officer said of Aldridge.
News4JAX looked into how Aldridge was able to get another law enforcement job after having issues with use of force at his previous department. Hackney said he would turn candidates away in Jacksonville if they had issues with use of force in the past but he says the need for law enforcement officers is so great that it’s possible smaller agencies might overlook that.
“There’s quite a bit of difficulty in getting officers, so when you have somebody who’s apparently a qualified candidate and may work from agency to agency, some smaller agencies act as feeder agencies for larger agencies,” Hackney said. “Many times they will hire somebody because they are available, and they have a desperate need to fill vacancies. It’s something that shouldn’t be overlooked.”
Hackney explains how important it is for agencies to pay attention to background checks.
“When you do a thorough background check on an employee that you’re looking at hiring, you want to know where they worked before. You want to know what their history was because again, you don’t want to inherit somebody else’s problem,” Hackney said. “You want to know why they left a certain agency, and there are red flags, and there are things that should stand out to a hiring agency that makes them question what happened with this person’s background.”
The family and an attorney representing Cure’s family said they felt that Aldridge was also too aggressive on Monday after he pulled Cure over and accused him of speeding and reckless driving.
“The thing that you don’t understand completely is the tasing in the beginning and why couldn’t there have been more attempts to de-escalate,” said Cure family attorney Ben Crump.
News4JAX showed the video to Criminologist Alex del Carmen who said the deputy’s history of use of force puts context to what happened.
“The sergeant is thinking probably that the individual suspect is not compliant with his verbal commands and as a result of that he has to use force. I’m not sure that that’s entirely true,” del Carmen said.
Del Carmen questioned why Aldridge deployed his Taser when Cure had his back turned to him and raised his hand.
“From what you can see on the video, it doesn’t seem to me that this will be the type of call or the nature of the event that would require for an officer to tase the suspect,” del Carmen said. “If the officer has in fact, a history, that he has been using force in the past, and he’s been disciplined in the past, to the extent of being fired, then the police department has a very serious problem in their hands right now.”
The Camden County District Attorney’s Office said it won’t decide on the use of force until the entire investigation is complete.
News4JAX reached out to the Kingsland Police Department for an interview and is waiting to hear back.
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