Image courtesy of the Perkins family
The Decatur community and many others beyond the city continue to push for answers in the deadly police shooting of Steve Perkins. The shooting stemmed from a car repossession attempt, where Perkins allegedly confronted the tow truck driver with a gun, who then called police.
WAAY 31 spoke with Carl Cole, an attorney in Decatur who has been closely following the Steve Perkins case and says that the tow truck driver should have never gone back to Perkins’ home with Decatur police. He says that police are not allowed to be involved in a car repossession unless there is a court order.
Carl Cole said, “One, the tow truck driver is supposed to stand down if there’s any sort of breach of the peace. He should have never gone back out there. And second, police are not supposed to be involved in a repossession absent of a court order.”
If there is any breach of peace during a car repossession, under Alabama law that repossession is over. According to Justin Sheperd, a neighbor of the Perkins family; he watched the tow truck driver hook up and drive off with Perkins’ car before the ambulance got to the scene.
Carl Cole shared his thoughts on this point adding, “What I can say is this: they never should have gotten that far, much less towed his car away that night as he’s laying in his yard. You know I can’t imagine a greater insult to injury than that happening at that time especially considering what Alabama law says regarding: we’re not supposed to go further than this if there’s a breach of the peace. Not only did they go further with it, he’s lying in his yard while it’s happening..that’s really problematic.”
WAAY 31 reached out to the Morgan County 911 dispatch about the night of September 29th. They said, “there is not a 911 call associated with the Steve Perkins incident.”
Carl Cole weighed in on this saying, “It wouldn’t necessarily surprise me, we’re talking about officers that work that late shift. We’re talking about the time most repossessions happen. It wouldn’t surprise me as he probably has their cell phone numbers, he probably says this is going on..But at some point we do know that dispatch is contacted..So maybe it wasn’t through the tow truck driver calling 911, it may have been the officers calling dispatch to let them know what was going on.”
The Perkins family spokesperson, Brent Lipscomb said Monday night that he thinks the overwhelming support and protests from the Decatur community is really paying off in terms of the hope for answers and transparency.
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