Fatal Nashville Police Shooting: Officer Who Fired Deadly Shots Disciplined Twice For Excessive Force

NASHVILLE, TN — The Metro Nashville police officer who fired the shots that killed a 31-year-old man at Cayce Homes Friday has been suspended eight times for a total of 20 days in his five-year tenure with the department, including twice for using unnecessary force.

MNPD released the disciplinary record of Officer Joshua Lippert Monday. Lippert is on administrative assignment following Friday's deadly encounter with Jocques Clemmons in a parking lot at the Cayce Homes federal housing complex (for updates on this story and other local news, find and subscribe to your local Middle Tennessee Patch).

Lippert's suspensions range from the mundane — smoking in his cruiser and loaning a woman his department-issued jacket — to two incidents of excessive force.

In the first of those two incidents, on June 2, 2013, Lippert was patrolling Lower Broadway when he was flagged down by security at Honky Tonk Central. Security had detained and handcuffed an apparently intoxicated man. Lippert said the man had tried to leave without paying his bar bill and became combative with the venue's bouncers. Though security told Lippert they did not want to prosecute the man, Lippert said he decided to arrest the man for public intoxication.

Lippert then removed the venue security's handcuffs to replace them with his own, but, according to Lippert, the man tried to hit him and break away from the bouncers and Lippert. During the ensuing struggle, Lippert punched the man in the face and sprayed him with chemical spray.

In a report on the incident, Sgt. Brian Brown reprimanded Lippert for his decision to remove the handcuffs which "effectively created the necessity to use force" and cited him for excessive force for the closed hand strike, while also suggesting the use of the chemical spray may have been unnecessary. Lippert was suspended for three days, which was taken from his vacation time.

Lippert was suspended eight days without pay for displaying "poor judgment in using physical force to extract a motorist from his vehicle on a traffic stop" in October 2015.

"The decision unnecessarily escalated the encounter when the motorist had indicated he was willing to voluntarily step from the car if a supervisor was present. Following the arrest, the suspect's car was towed without providing him an opportunity to park it or turn it over to someone else, as required by policy," a summary of the incident reads.

Lippert served his eight day suspension in May 2016.

Lippert's file shows he was also cited for failing to report for two days of required training, smoking in a police vehicle, failing to submit an accident report in a timely manner, an infraction related to a court appearance, negligence in operating a police vehicle (Lippert has been involved in three accidents in his cruiser), and for loaning his police-issued jacket to a civilian. In that last case, Lippert said he loaned the jacket to an employee of a downtown business who had been vomited on. His "chivalrous act," as he described it, was discovered when another officer saw the woman in the jacket at a pizza joint, apparently waiting for Lippert to join her.

Lippert also received the department's lifesaving medal in 2014 for performing CPR on a person at Bridgestone Arena until paramedics arrived on scene.

Earlier Monday, the Nashville NAACP branch called for a transparent and immediate investigation, while the MNPD announced that the FBI would be monitoring and reviewing the investigation.

Image via Metro Police