SC officer who fatally shot man in Georgetown should not have been hired, lawsuit says
The police officer who fatally shot a Black man in February in Georgetown County was hired despite numerous red flags that should have kept her from holding a badge, according to allegations from family of the slain man.
Family members of Robert Langley filed suit this week against the officer, Town of Hemingway, Williamsburg County and South Carolina Criminal Justice Academy, according to online court records.
Cassandra Dollard, previously a sergeant with the Hemingway Police Department, shot and killed Langley, 46, on Feb. 6 after a police chase that began in Hemingway and ended with Langley crashing his car into a ditch in Georgetown County.
The chase was initiated after Langley allegedly rolled through a stop sign.
Dollard, who is also Black, was arrested and is facing voluntary manslaughter charges related to the shooting. She’s currently free on $150,000 bond.
Dollard continued the chase even after leaving her jurisdiction, and Williamsburg County’s Police Dispatch did not instruct her to stop the chase as it should have, the Langley family alleges.
Langley was unarmed and exiting his car when Dollard shot him once in the chest. She later told officers that she was “in fear for her safety,” according to her arrest warrant.
Dollard, who has since been fired, was hired by the Hemingway Police Department despite a known “history of substandard performance and improper conduct,” the lawsuit states.
The Sun News has reported that Dollard was previously fired from two law enforcement jobs, including in 2014 from her job with the South Carolina Department of Public Safety as a corporal for the State Transport Police.
That termination occurred after she fired her gun at two dogs in Berkeley County while she was on a morning job and then waited nearly six hours before telling her supervisor.
She ended up suing the S.C. public safety department alleging gender and racial discrimination related to her firing, and the two sides settled for an undisclosed sum.
“It’s hard to believe that an officer with this kind of record wasn’t in jail much less that she was recertified and hired,” Attorney Bakari Sellers, who is representing the Langley family, said in a news release. “It’s irresponsible, it’s dangerous and, in this case, it was deadly.”
Dollard’s concerning work history was ignored by the Town of Hemingway, the Langley family alleges, in part due to issues staffing the police department, which was left with just two active officers after Dollard was fired.
The Hemingway department was just established in July 2021, according to its Facebook page.
The family is seeking unspecified financial damages from the suit.
Officials from Hemingway and Williamsburg County could not immediately be reached for comment, and a spokeswoman for the criminal justice academy declined to comment.
This story was originally published April 20, 2022 at 2:46 PM.
