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ADC Update – August 4, 2005
Off Duty CBP Officer Charged with
Killing Arab American
An off-duty Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer who shot to death a young Arab-American man was finally indicted, on July 6 2005, under state manslaughter charges, after initially being released. A federal investigation of the incident continues.
On February 5, Officer Douglas Bates, shot and killed Bassim Schmait following an altercation outside his Los Alisos Boulevard apartment in Orange County, California. Reports on the incident vary; with the Sheriff's Department reporting that the officer apparently committed no crime when he came out of his apartment to investigate a disturbance. Bassim’s friends however, contend that Bates had pistol-whipped one of them, and that when Bassim tried to intervene, he was brutally shot and killed.
According to the Sheriff's spokesman Jim Amormino, the department did not initially book Bates because "There was no clear evidence of a crime being committed, so there was nothing to book him on."
Since then, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) has taken an active role in raising the issue at various meetings with CBP and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) representatives, stressing the importance of a thorough investigation in building trust between government agencies and the Arab-American community.
ADC raised the matter at meetings on April 13, June 1, and July 27. On July 27, in response to these concerns, CBP and DHS officials advised ADC that there was a California State indictment against Officer Bates for voluntary manslaughter and that the federal investigation continues.
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