Last month, Elizabeth City, N.C., council member Gabriel Adkins held back tears as he delivered a speech to his colleagues hours after police fatally shot Andrew Brown Jr., saying that he feared he might be next.
Now, after joining protesters demanding that video of the shooting be released, he claims police are targeting him. Twice last week, Adkins said, surveillance video at a funeral home he owns showed a police officer in uniform urinating on his property.
“I’m completely furious that any member of the sheriff department would think these acts are acceptable,” Adkins told The Washington Post in an email. “This is a funeral home. A place where we house family’s loved ones. I have lost all trust and respect for our sheriff department.”
Adkins posted a video of the incident on Facebook. The news was first reported by the Raleigh News & Observer.
Pasquotank County Sheriff Tommy Wooten told The Post that one of his deputies who was working the midnight night shift recently and conducting a typical safety check in the county around 2:30 a.m., used the outdoor area of Adkins funeral home as a restroom after he checked his business.
“The deputy, who had been on shift for 9 hours, needed to relieve himself and was miles away from a restroom,” Wooten said in an email to The Post. “He relieved himself near an outbuilding behind the business close to a nearby field.”
He added, “The deputy, who is Black, didn’t know who owned the business and meant no disrespect to Mr. Adkins and has reached out to apologize to him. I’ve reinforced to all deputies the need to respect the community and avoid even the appearance of anything that could be seen as disrespectful.”
Deputies shot Brown outside his home on April 21. The sheriff’s office said deputies were executing arrest warrants for Brown on drug charges but has yet to say whether Brown was armed, complying or fleeing.
Prosecutors have said the shooting was justified because Brown hit officers with his car before they fired. But Brown’s family and attorneys said a 20-second “snippet” of body-cam footage they reviewed shows an “execution,” and an autopsy commissioned by the family revealed Brown was shot five times, including once in the back of the head.
Three officers involved in the shooting who had been suspended as the State Bureau of Investigation conducted an inquiry will be reinstated and retrained. During a news conference on Tuesday, Pasquotank County District Attorney Andrew Womble said the deputies who fired at Brown were justified in their actions because they had reason to believe they were in danger.
Adkins, an Elizabeth City native who is serving his second term on the council, owns a funeral home, a catering business, and an income tax and financial services company.
In the weeks since police fatally shot Brown, Adkins has organized and attended protests and demanded the full video of Brown’s shooting be released by the sheriff’s office.
Now, Adkins says that advocacy has led to retaliation by police. Adkins said that security video shows one officer urinating on the property of his funeral home on Friday; that video, which he hasn’t released, is still being processed, he said.
Video from a security camera recorded Saturday and posted to Facebook shows a police cruiser with blinking lights parking in front of a shed and a garage that Adkins uses to store his hearses, Adkins said. Then, an officer in uniform walks to the middle of both structures, turning his back to the camera before he appears to urinate. After several seconds, the one-minute clip shows, the officer walks back to the patrol car before leaving.
“Since this case with Andrew Brown, I’ve been out protesting,” Adkins told the News & Observer. “I really feel like they are retaliating back against me. Maybe they didn’t know I had surveillance, but it’s a funeral home.”
Adkins also told the News & Observer that the sheriff’s department had previously provided escorts for his funeral home but hasn’t responded to his past two requests. He said he is seeking legal representation and plans to press charges.
“I’m just getting real worried I might be the next target, or they’re trying to set me up,” Adkins said. “On top of it being a crime.”
