Police Brutality / Individual record
Jacai Colson
The Washington Post's Fatal Force database records Jacai Colson in a fatal on-duty police shooting on 2016-03-13 in Landover, MD. Individual circumstances and legal outcome require case-specific review.
- Record ID
- PB-382
- Incident date
- March 13, 2016
- Outcome
- Fatal
- Location
- Landover, MD
- Agency
- Prince George's Police Department
- Category
- Fatal on-duty police shooting
- Age (reported)
- 28
What happened
Jacai David Colson, 28, was a Prince George's County police corporal killed by friendly fire on March 13, 2016, while responding to an armed attack outside his department's District III police station in Landover, Maryland. Investigators said Michael Ford opened fire at the station while his brothers filmed the attack. Colson, a plainclothes officer who arrived to confront the gunman, was mistaken for an attacker by another responding officer and fatally shot. The finding of inadvertent police gunfire is essential: Colson was not a suspect, and his inclusion in a fatal-police-shooting dataset reflects a tragic mistaken-identity killing of an officer by another officer. Ford was later sentenced to a lengthy prison term for the attack.
Investigation & findings
Individual legal and investigative outcome not yet reviewed.
Washington Post Fatal Force v2; 2015–2024
Source record details
- Source incident ID
- 1379
- Race code in source
- B
- Race source method
- not_available
- Gender (source)
- male
- Armed status (source)
- gun
- Flee status (source)
- not
- Agency IDs (source)
- 471
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