The answer of “we may never know” doesn’t do much to explain why or how Seth Adams was shot to death by a Palm Beach County Deputy Sheriff, Sgt. Michael Custer. Custer was undercover, purportedly engaged in an unknown operation unrelated to Adams and camped out in the parking lot to Adams’ gardening store.
PB County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw insisted that his deputy could do no wrong, and the subsequent investigation by Florida Department of Law Enforcement cleared Custer and answered nothing. How could it? There were only two witnesses, and one was left dying on the asphalt of his parking lot for 47 minutes before the deputy would let anyone near him.
According to the official story, Custer was in fear of his life.
Seth Adams noticed the undercover deputy’s car in the parking lot of his family business on his way home from a local watering hole. Custer says he identified himself “verbally” and “visually” and that he “had a radio out.” He claims Adams grabbed him by the throat and that Adams’ “intentions were dangerous.”Why? Why would Adams grab a deputy sheriff by his throat? Why, if he knew the man in his parking lot to be a sheriff, would he touch him? Put aside the question of what Custer was doing in a private parking lot, with nothing around it in the middle of nowhere, and assume he had a reason to be there. Put aside the question of whether the police ought to go onto private property without notifying or asking permission of the owners. Even if we give Custer acceptable reasons to be there, it doesn’t begin to explain his claims about Adams.
The claim that Adams grabbed Custer by the throat didn’t seem to bother Custer too much, as is commonly the case when cops get grabbed by the throat and just brush it off. No, it was Adams’ subsequent return to his vehicle that really alarmed Custer.
When Adams returned to his vehicle, Custer said he recognized the maneuver from training videos and thought Adams was going for a gun. He shot him four times in under two seconds, saying “I think I basically tried to push away and just went boom, boom, boom, boom.”
There was no weapon in the car. There was no gun rack in the back window. What Custer calls “the maneuver” is what the rest of society calls going to one’s car, the sort of thing most of us do, often when we’re leaving a location. This was more than Custer could risk, and so “boom, boom, boom, boom.”
Yet there was no call of “suspect down” after four bullets struck Seth Adams’ body in the parking lot of his gardening store. From the Palm Beach Post :
His body riddled with bullets fired by an undercover Palm Beach County sheriff’s deputy, Seth Adams was clinging to life as he crawled across a darkened parking lot for help, an attorney representing Adams’ family said Thursday.
West Palm Beach attorney Valentin Rodriguez told The Palm Beach Post that instead of trying to stop the 24-year-old Loxahatchee Groves man from bleeding to death, deputies tackled his brother, David Adams, who ran out of the family trailer on A Road to rescue him [after Seth called to tell his brother he was “shot by a cop”].Records show that 47 minutes elapsed between the time of the shooting and the time Adams reached the hospital. He was alive when he arrived by helicopter at St. Mary’s Medical Center, but not for long. And then there was only one witness to the death of Seth Adams in the parking lot of his gardening store.
As usual, the response to the inexplicable conduct of police is an investigation, and this case was no different. Unlike most, the local media and Adams’ family and attorney didn’t let it fade to black in the interim, and pursued attention so that public attention wouldn’t shift from Adams’ death to the new iPhone or Snookie’s baby. All eyes were focused on the outcome of the investigation, though Sheriff Bradshaw never had any doubt about its outcome. No doubt at all.
Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw, meanwhile, said of the situation: “It was just very bad from the outset with Seth Adams’ demeanor towards the deputy.” Shortly after the shooting, Bradshaw noted “there’s only two witnesses here: the suspect and the deputy. And the suspect was not able to be interviewed. Why he decided to assault the deputy? We may never know that.” When the investigation was well underway, Bradshaw claimed it would “verify exactly what I thought from the beginning.”
And indeed, the investigation verified exactly what Bradshaw said it would. What else could it do, there being a story that made no sense, a dead man and a live cop? There were video cameras around the place, but apparently they weren’t recording that night. And so, there was only one story to be told after Seth Adams died.
So what if the story doesn’t pass the smell test? So what if there was no reason for Adams to choke a cop? So what if there was no gun in the car to strike fear in the heart of Sgt. Custer? So what if he watched at Seth Adams dragged his bullet riddled body across a parking lot and did nothing? So what if Custer tackled David Adams to stop him from trying to save his brother’s life? So what? None of this proves Custer a liar, a killer. It’s just a bunch of inexplicable acts, questions that will find no answers, and a dead man.
As Sheriff Ric Bradshaw correctly notes, we may never know the answers to any of these questions. And that’s the beauty of there being two witness, but one dead. There is nothing left but the Sgt. Michael Custer’s story, bad as it may be, and a dead body.
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As a practicing lawyer and somebody who knows both the family of the deceased and the pbso very well…maybe steroid testing should occur. the thought of seth grabbing an armed cop by the throat is just, well, bullshit. even if drunk and stoned, it wouldn’t happen. and who stakes out a rarely traversed road with no atms for atm thieves to be randomly driving by? the investigation is nonsensical.
There’s nothing about Custer’s story that doesn’t stink. I’ve heard from a few other people about Seth, and have heard nothing to suggest that he would ever grab a cop by the throat under any circumtances.
H’mm. I appointed to a habeas for a kid who a couple of months after his 18th birthday was confronted by a guy insulting and threatening him (witnesses testified to this). When the guy reached into his car, my client thought he was getting a gun and shot him. My client, being a young African American (with a lawyer well past his prime) was convicted of 1st degree murder and is serving life without parole. Couldn’t win the habeas, I am sorry to say, but if we ever get a decent governor, I will do the commutation application for free. Ah, equal justice for cops and kids: what a dream.
The problem is obvious: Only police officers can credibly use the word “maneuver” to justify their fear. The rest of us are stuck with “reason,” which is woefully inadequate.
Thank you for helping the disadvantaged in our society.
This blog has totally changed my view of The Injustice System. It’s dangerous reading, because you come out of it that much more depressed and cynical.
I just don’t know how you guys do it. I could never do what you do.
Just listened to the beginning of interview of Sgt. Custer.
You gotta love all the extra rights and warnings officers get by virtue of their Union contract. He’s already got a free PBA attorney at his side.
“Have you had the opportunity to speak privately with your legal counsel?”
“Do you feel as though you are emotionally prepared to provide an accurate statement?”
“Are you aware that this is a voluntary procedure and you can decline to continue at anytime?”
“Do you have any questions about the statement procedure before we begin?”
“Keeping all this in mind do you wish to proceed?”
It’s also great how the interviewer never uses any of interview techniques police commonly use to extract confessions.
Must be nice to be a member of the Praetorian Class.
At some point, I wrote a post about the miracle of police union contracts, the only thing in the nation that trumps the law.
That the officers made no attempt to help the victim and deliberately prevented the victim’s brother from trying to help him clearly show a complete disregard for human life. Did they unlawfully kill Seth Adams? Innocent until proven guilty, of course, but the facts strongly suggest that the incident and death weren’t cricket and that the officers failed to take basic steps to attempt to save a human life.
The standard for retaining the right to be a police officer is not, however, BARD. If, as in this case, it looks like, swims like and sure-as-hell smells like a fish, these officers should have their badges, guns and authority unceremoniously and dishonorably stripped away from them, any and all potential pension revoked and be left to fend for themselves against whatever criminal and civil charges they might face, much like those targeted by police officers who are more interested in displays of power than in judicial exercise thereof. And if the internal police powers-that-be won’t play ball (and I note that, in this case, the investigation sounds as though it has not been completed or results determined, so I am speaking in the conditional case), the people who set the budget, determine review procedure and police hiring requirements, appoint the powers-that-be (or what-have-you) need to say that if they can’t control their own people, then the whole lot of them can hit the bricks.
Stories like these make it seem as though it might simply be better not to have a police force in some cases, if the alternative is giving badges to people who seem to think that the only reason the People are giving them guns is because the People expect them to use it. Here’s hoping that all the politicians who target unions, Legal Aid and other government budgets with cuts but treat police as sacred cows start asking themselves when people decided that it was ok for their tax dollars to support the unauthorized beating and killing of innocent citizens and to pay and defend the job and the “honor” of the unrepentant officers and incredulous and feeble horse-spit justifications for their sins and start demanding some answers and accountability.
You know… I’ll bet there’s another witness. One in hot pants who skedaddled after the shots were fired.
That would explain a car parked in a lot in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night.
Or, maybe Sgt. Custer was just startled out of his slumber and reflexively fired off four rounds…
This is very cynical of you. Why would the deputy lie? Oh, yeah. Because he killed an innocent man. Never mind.
Great blog. Please keep this tragic story alive. I plan to. Custer should be on trial for murder. Bradshaw should be investigated. PBSO killed another young man this week. This “unarmed” teenager was shot 6x’s in front of his mother b/c the deputy “feared for his life”. My guess the 911 tapes will reveal a lot.
We are Seth Adams’ voice now. Justice for Seth Adams.