Pasco group not satisfied with lack of police shooting information

Some local groups are not satisfied with the announced schedule for releasing information on a February police shooting in Pasco.

Franklin County Prosecutor Shawn Sant said Wednesday that the first installment of public records into the shooting death of Antonio Zambrano-Montes, 35, will be released July 1.

The information comes from 100 gigabytes of data collected by the Tri-City Special Investigations Unit, with the rest expected to be released soon.

Zambrano-Montes, a Mexican orchard worker, died Feb. 10 after being shot at 17 times in a confrontation with three Pasco police officers at an intersection.

Rick Rios, media coordinator for Consejo Latino, does not like to see the information released in “bits and pieces.”

“Our biggest fear is that this is going to be dragged out and dragged out until the community loses interest,” Rios said at a news conference Friday in downtown Pasco.

“It’s a drawn-out process that’s just going to make the community forget about it,” said Eddie Enriquez, a longtime protester of the shooting. “That’s not justice.”

Zambrano-Montes’ supporters have long called for Sant to be removed from the case. Consejo Latino, a group of mostly Hispanic business owners, asked Gov. Jay Inslee to appoint a special prosecutor in March, saying that Sant is too close to local law enforcement.

An attorney for Zambrano-Montes’ family later made a similar request, but Inslee has declined to remove Sant from the case, saying he will continue to monitor the case and can appoint a prosecutor at any time.

Sant could not be reached for comment Friday.

Jeremy Peterson with Tri-Cities Community Solutions is requesting 911 recordings from the shooting, as well as video from businesses near the intersection of 10th Avenue and Lewis Street that could provide more insight into what happened.

To help keep awareness of the case out there, a “Protect Pasco” rally is planned at 4 p.m. today at Volunteer Park in Pasco. Peterson said the rally will focus not just on the Zambrano-Montes shooting, but other problems with the criminal justice system.

“We feel like any time a police officer murders a citizen, it is a failure of the system,” he said. “There have been instances of people dying in custody in Benton County and Franklin County.”

The group is also working on a “robust” set of solutions to problems that it plans to announce in the next couple of weeks, Peterson said.

“We’re not just complaining about the problem,” he said.

This story was originally published June 26, 2015 at 10:35 PM with the headline "Pasco group not satisfied with lack of police shooting information."