Officers who fatally shot unarmed Pasco man to return to duty

Three Washington state police officers have been cleared in the shooting death of unarmed Pasco man Antonio Zambrano-Montes following an internal investigation, The New York Times reports.

Officers Adam Wright and Adrian Alaniz, who have been on administrative leave since the February shooting, will reportedly return to work “immediately.” José Baez, a lawyer representing Zambrano-Montes’ family, has called the decision to have the officers return to work “as if nothing ever happened…very disturbing.”

The third officer, Ryan Flanagan, no longer works for the department, according to the Times.

Zambrano-Montes was shot and killed on Feb. 10. Police were called to the scene, a busy Pasco intersection, on reports of a man throwing rocks at traffic. Zambrano-Montes ran after hitting two of the officers with rocks.

Police fired 17 bullets at the 35-year-old man, striking him four times after he turned around. Video of the shooting has been viewed on YouTube over 2 million times.

Zambrano-Montes was a Mexican national from Michoacán. A rep for the department told Fusion back in February that none of the officers were “certified Spanish speakers.”

An autopsy confirmed that Zambrano-Montes, who the Times says had a history of mental illness, was high on methamphetamines at the time of his death.

The shooting prompted local protests, as demonstrators connected Zambrano-Montes’ death with the greater issue of excessive policing in communities of color.

For context, Zambrano-Montes’ was killed about six months after Michael Brown and Eric Garner were killed by police; three months after a grand jury decided not to indict Officer Darren Wilson in Brown’s killing; two months after a separate grand jury declined to indict Officer Daniel Pantaleo in Garner’s death; and about two months before Freddie Gray died after being taken into police custody.

According to The Guardian‘s database, “The Counted,” police in the United States have killed 856 people in 2015. Per The Washington Post, which has been tracking fatal police shootings, 722 people have been shot and killed by law enforcement this year; 112 of them were Hispanic men like Zambrano-Montes.