Arbitrator Awards Miami Cop Job Back, 76k in Back Pay After Getting Fired For Fatal Shooting of Unarmed Man

In February 2010 Miami police officer Reynaldo
Goyos shot and killed the unarmed Travis McNeil during a traffic
stop, and in the summer of 2012 prosecutors decided
not to charge Goyos for manslaughter because they couldn’t
disprove his claim that he feared for his life. Nearly three years
after the shooting, more shootings, a new police chief and a
federal monitor later, Goyos was fired. Internal investigators
found he made inconsistent statements about why he shot
McNeil—because, he alleged, McNeil was reaching for a
cellphone.

The Miami News Times’ Riptide blog obtained the
decision of an arbitrator the union went to that this month awarded
(yes, awarded) Goyos his job back and more than $76,000 in back
pay.
Via Riptide:

In a report dated August 8, he picks apart the department’s case
against the officer.

Goyos had been criticized for saying he shot McNeil when the
driver reached to his waistband, a fact the review board found
inconsistent with a bullet wound that entered McNeil’s left
shoulder blade.

But the arbitrator said that forensic evidence, in fact, showed
the shot hit McNeil’s left side in a position consistent with the
cop’s story.

Goyos was also fired for erroneously believing his life was in
danger and for claiming he’d seen a “black object” in McNeil’s
hands when the evidence didn’t support that claim; but the
arbitrator points to a black cell phone found on the floor of
McNeil’s car as proof that Goyos may well have had reason to fear
for his life.

Finally, on the claim that Goyos shouldn’t have put himself in
such a risky position, the arbitrator found that another officer
who was driving their car actually put Goyos in that position.

And nothing else happened.