ABINGDON, Va. — His dog’s loyalty may have given him away.

On Oct. 8, 2017, the Washington County Sheriff’s Office Special Response Team arrived at a trailer on Golden View Lane in Abingdon to serve a search warrant for suspected drug possession and distribution. Hours later, Roberto Avendano was dead.

Avendano, believed to have been 41 years old, fled the trailer when the team arrived, according to officer statements. He barricaded himself in a hidden room in a shed nearby. While officers saw him flee, the shed appeared empty on their first sweep.

A small dog kept returning to the shed, though — sometimes sniffing the covered door, sometimes sitting calmly on the couch. Such details are only publicly available because the Washington County Sheriff’s Office agreed to share nine officer statements with the Bristol Herald Courier.

Those statements represent a sliver of the investigation into Avendano’s death conducted by the Virginia State Police’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation. In Virginia — where police killed 30 civilians last year and six were unarmed, according to an activist-compiled database called the Police Violence Report — investigative records are released at the discretion of law enforcement.

Virginia State Police refused to release two such investigations to the Herald Courier last month. Just south in Tennessee, a law that went into effect last May offers civilians greater transparency.

“A huge, all-encompassing exemption”

It wasn’t one bullet, or even two. Four officers shot Avendano. He came out of hiding after they cracked the door open with a battering ram. Each officer fired multiple times. They were cornered in the shed and Avendano was about 6 feet away, lunging at them with a machete.

When a civilian is killed by police, what follows varies from state to state and agency to agency. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation can only investigate officer-involved shootings, whether or not the shooting was fatal, when a district attorney calls the agency in. But that happens for most shootings across the state, according to TBI spokeswoman Leslie Earhart.

In Virginia, State Police investigate when called in by a police chief or sheriff. Spokeswoman Corinne Geller could not speak to whether that happens in a majority of cases. But Virginia State Police were called in for two local officer-involved shooting deaths late last year.

If an officer is charged, at least some of the investigation is likely to be part of the court record that becomes publicly available. But more than 1,100 people were killed by police in the United States last year, according to the Police Violence Report. Officers were charged in just 13 cases, none of which were in Virginia or Tennessee.

On Jan. 3, the Herald Courier submitted a Freedom of Information request to VSP for files related to Avendano’s death and the death of Jimmie Smith, who was killed by the Grayson County Sheriff’s Office in September 2017.

“The only information that the Department will be releasing at this time is the criminal incident information that was provided,” VSP Freedom of Information specialist Angela Kepus stated in an email. 

The full investigation into Avendano’s death was provided for a period of time to Washington Commonwealth’s Attorney Josh Cumbow, so he could decide whether the officers involved should be criminally prosecuted.

“In reviewing the facts of the case, it is undisputed that Avendano struck the battering ram that was used to breach the door with a machete almost striking an officer in the arm,” Cumbow wrote in a letter to the sheriff.

“It is my opinion that the officers exercised great restraint and that they could have shot before they did,” he added.

Cumbow believes his letter, which is public, contains all the relevant information from the inches-thick investigative file.

“It was boiled down, but facts don’t change,” he said.

Maj. Byron Ashbrook explained that the Sheriff Office’s decision to share officer statements with the Herald Courier. He said the agency believes it has a responsibility to be transparent about what happened. But he also doesn’t want officers to relive the shooting or face reprisal within the community. All names were redacted in the statements shared.

Ashbrook expressed surprise that the VSP did not release the full investigation.

“Criminal investigative records are exempt from disclosure, whether the investigation is ongoing or not,” said Megan Rhyne, of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government. “It’s a huge, all-encompassing exemption, and like all exemptions, it is dependent on the discretion of the agency as to whether any of it will ever be released.”

According to Grayson County Sheriff Richard Vaughan, VSP has completed its investigation into Jimmie Smith’s death. As of Jan. 30, Grayson Commonwealth’s Attorney Doug Vaught had not yet notified the Sheriff’s Office whether officers would be prosecuted, according to Vaughan. The Police Violence Report shows Smith was also armed and died from gunshots.

“No one wants to hamper an investigation with the premature release of information, but if a life has been taken by the government, the people should, at some point, be told something about what happened and — if possible — why,” Rhyne added.

“The only way to understand”

Last year, police killed 28 people in Tennessee. Two were unarmed. As of May 11, 2017, TBI investigations of officer-involved shooting deaths are publicly available once the case is closed. Other TBI investigative records remain sealed and must be requested in court.

State Rep. G.A. Hardaway, D-Memphis, was a sponsor of the bipartisan bill that changed Tennessee’s policy.

“The community, and parents in particular, couldn’t understand why some of the [officer-involved shooting] cases weren’t prosecuted. And the only way to understand it is to have access to the data — the same data the district attorney has,” he said.

Hardaway cited cases and protests across the country, which brought the use of deadly force to the forefront of the nation’s consciousness.

“We just didn’t think we were doing enough in Tennessee to keep those kinds of powder kegs from occurring just because information wasn’t accessible,” he said.

According to the Police Violence Report, Tennessee is one of four states where police can only use deadly force if all other reasonable means of apprehension have been exhausted.

“That overall sense that you’ve had a fair shake and that the system was fair, that’s important,” Hardaway said. “When there are riots in St. Louis or Chicago, it impacts the peace and calm of Memphis and Nashville and Chattanooga and Jackson.”

“[The bill] allows the public to do what citizens of the United States are supposed to do,” he added. “That’s to give oversight to government functions and entities — especially those that can take your freedom or your life.”

Maryland State Police, like VSP, investigate officer-involved shootings when called in — something that usually happens for agencies in western Maryland or on the state’s eastern shore, according to spokeswoman Elena Russo. Once a case is closed, she said, the investigation would likely be released with sociological details redacted, per Maryland’s Public Information Act.

But according to Lisa Kershner, Maryland’s Public Access ombudsman, exemptions could come into play.

“It’s probably fair to say that this issue is very much in the public eye and the subject of ongoing debate,” she said.

The Office of the Ombudsman was created in Maryland in 2015, because there was no recourse for those denied public records except taking the case to court, according to Rebecca Snyder, executive director of the Maryland-Delaware-DC Press Association.

Snyder said citizens — not the media — request more than half of public records. The Office of the Ombudsman provides relief to people less familiar with the process, she said.

Del. Danica Roem, D-Prince William, recently introduced a bill to create a similar office in Virginia. It died in sub-committee Jan. 23.