Police Brutality / Individual record
Bertrand Davis
The Washington Post's Fatal Force database records Bertrand Davis in a fatal on-duty police shooting on 2015-08-27 in Dallas, TX. Individual circumstances and legal outcome require case-specific review.
- Record ID
- PB-250
- Incident date
- August 27, 2015
- Outcome
- Fatal
- Location
- Dallas, TX
- Agency
- Dallas Police Department
- Category
- Fatal on-duty police shooting
- Age (reported)
- 42
What happened
Bertrand Syjuan Davis was killed by Dallas police in August 2015 after officers responded to a 911 report that he was attempting to burn down a smokehouse. The Dallas City Attorney's Office later summarized the case in its litigation report: officers used Tasers unsuccessfully, and Officer Matthew Terry shot Davis when he reached toward a gun in his vehicle that was later determined to be a pellet gun. Davis's relatives sued, alleging excessive force and failures in department policy, supervision and training. The city's report states that claims against the city were voluntarily dismissed in December 2019. That procedural outcome should not be mistaken for an adjudication that all police actions were proper or that every family allegation was sustained.
Investigation & findings
Individual legal and investigative outcome not yet reviewed.
Washington Post Fatal Force v2; 2015–2024
Source record details
- Source incident ID
- 781
- Race code in source
- B
- Race source method
- not_available
- Gender (source)
- male
- Armed status (source)
- knife
- Flee status (source)
- not
- Agency IDs (source)
- 330
Sources & records
- Primary source
- Additional source
- Methodology and national police killings trackingMapping Police Violence · Dataset/methodology
- Fatal Force v2 — fatal on-duty police shootings, 2015–2024The Washington Post · Dataset