Why the Pa. Attorney General’s office won’t take over the Osaze Osagie case
Pennsylvania’s top prosecutor will not investigate new allegations lodged by the family of a State College resident who was fatally shot by a borough police officer, despite calls for an investigation to be conducted outside Centre County.
Borough Council President Jesse Barlow asked the state attorney general’s office earlier this month to investigate whether now-retired borough police Captain Chris Fishel acted properly when he led the department’s internal investigation into the fatal shooting of Osaze Osagie.
His request was turned down. Barlow said he was “disappointed” by the decision.
Pennsylvania law limits the state attorney general’s ability to prosecute county cases unless a narrow set of circumstances are met.
Conditions range from a potential conflict of interest — county District Attorney Bernie Cantorna handed the Beta Theta Pi investigation to the state for that reason, for example — to a lack of resources to carry out an adequate investigation.
That will keep the reopened investigation into the Osagie shooting in Cantorna’s office, unless there is a change. He cleared the three officers who responded to Osagie’s apartment of wrongdoing in May 2019.
The 3/20 Coalition and a broader group of advocates have also pushed for an organization other than state police at Rockview to investigate the shooting.
“The police cannot investigate themselves, as demonstrated by Captain Fishel, who was warned of Officer Pieniazek’s concerning behavior and hid it from the SCPD’s internal investigation,” 3/20 Coalition Secretary Melanie Morrison said earlier this month. “None of these investigations have been independent.”
Osagie family attorneys Andy Shubin and Kathleen Yurchak alleged in a federal lawsuit that Fishel either ignored or withheld information about the behavior of the officer who fired the deadly shots.
Borough Council was “completely blindsided” by the allegations, Barlow said.
“None of us had any idea about that,” Barlow said Wednesday. “... I was angry. I don’t like being blindsided; I’ll leave it at that.”
The borough’s deadline to respond to the family’s most recent legal filing is March 26.
This story was originally published February 18, 2021 at 12:16 PM.