Claremont
Cody Lafont’s death has been ruled a homicide, the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office said in a news release on Tuesday.
Lafont was shot during an encounter with Claremont police at his Congress Street home just before 5 a.m. on Sunday.
The state Attorney General’s Office has said Lafont summoned police to his home that morning, but has released few other details about the shooting.
Jill Jarvis, a resident of Congress Street who has known Lafont since he was a young child, said she was awoken early Sunday morning by a succession of loud noises, but didn’t think much of it.
When she got up for the day, she saw a heavy police presence near Lafont’s home, so she sent him a message.
“I asked him what was going on,” said Jarvis, whose younger brother Joey has been longtime friends with Lafont. “He never responded.”
She said she talked to him the day before his death and saw on Facebook that he had plans to go to Loudon’s New Hampshire Motor Speedway for the weekend’s NASCAR race. As far as she knows, some of his close friends picked him up for Saturday’s race and dropped him off at his home early Sunday morning.
Shortly after, Lafont would be dead.
Both Jill and Joey Jarvis are seeking answers in the aftermath of Lafont’s death, as are his mother and several close friends, some of whom declined to be interviewed for this story.
“It is all the same if you ask (any of us),” 24-year-old Joey Jarvis said. “We don’t understand how this could have happened. We don’t understand how he could have been such a threat for this kind of force to be used. We want some answers and we want some right answers — honest ones.”
Never “in 100 years” could Jarvis have predicted his friend’s life would have ended this way, he said. The two have known each other since they met in day care.
“He was honestly a great kid,” said Jarvis, noting that Lafont got in little trouble in the past. “I’m still honestly kind of in shock.”
Jarvis said he knew of Lafont’s depression, but never saw much of that side of him.
“When he got that way, you wouldn’t see him for a while and that was pretty much how it was,” Jarvis said.
Attempts on Tuesday to reach Lafont’s mother, Tracy McEachern, on Tuesday were unsuccessful.
The homicide determination by the state Office of the Chief Medical Examiner simply means the autopsy determined Lafont was killed through the actions of another person. The finding has no bearing on whether the officer’s or officers’ use of force was justifiable or whether criminal charges could be filed.
In a telephone interview on Tuesday, Senior Assistant Attorney General Peter Hinckley once more declined to release the identity of the officer or officers who killed Lafont.
In order to uphold the integrity of a homicide investigation, Hinckley said, it is standard policy to withhold a shooter’s name, whether the person is a police officer or a civilian.
Gilles Bissonnette, the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire, said a “blanket rule” for withholding information isn’t best practice.
In an interview on Tuesday, he said government agencies instead should examine each case independently and determine whether the facts warrant the release of information.
“Absent any specific threat to safety, we think that any undue delay to release a police officer’s name … harms transparency and accountability,” Bissonnette said.
Withholding an officer’s name could potentially have negative impacts on an investigation, too, he said.
“This may actually prevent other people who may know something about that particular officer from coming forward with information that may be helpful,” he said.
The opposite concern holds too, though, Hinckley said, who noted someone could come forward with information — negative or positive — that could undermine the integrity of the investigation.
“It is not uncommon for people to have positive or negative biases against police officers based on past involvements,” Hinckley said.
New Hampshire’s policy for releasing the names of officers involved in shootings is in contrast to policies in other locales, including the speed at which authorities release such information, the Union Leader reported in July.
For example, following an officer-involved shooting in Baton Rouge, La., this summer, the police chief released the officers’ names within 24 hours, the Union Leader reported.
With attention to officer-involved shootings on the rise, both the U.S. Department of Justice and a White House task force have urged authorities to promptly communicate with citizens and the media, and in “critical incidents,” do so within 72 hours, the newspaper reported.
Hinckley said New Hampshire follows a practice that has been in place for at least 12 years; that’s the length of time he has been with the department.
According to the Washington Post, which tracks law enforcement shootings, police officers across the country have killed 714 people this year. Of those, officers in 257 of those cases have been publicly identified.
The state Attorney General’s Office will issue a report on its findings at the conclusion of an investigation into the incident. When that will be is unclear, Hinckley said.
Jordan Cuddemi can be reached at jcuddemi@vnews.com or 603-727-3248.