The City of Akron has fired the police officer who fatally shot 15-year-old Jazmir Tucker on Thanksgiving night in 2024 and has reached a tentative $4.75 million settlement with the teenager's family. Officer Davon Fields was terminated for failing to properly provide medical aid to Tucker and for violating the police department's body-worn camera policy, city officials said.
Akron Mayor Shammas Malik said the shooting carried enormous human and financial costs, according to Cleveland.com. Malik questioned both the use of deadly force against Tucker and the roughly eight-minute delay before officers rendered aid, per the same report. The settlement, reached through a federal mediation process, still requires approval by a probate judge and contains no admission of wrongdoing.
Tucker, a North High School freshman, was shot and killed after officers encountered him near East Avenue and Vernon Odom Boulevard. An autopsy found he was shot three times, including twice in the back, and the Summit County Medical Examiner's Office said two gunshot wounds to his torso were fatal. Investigators recovered shell casings matching Tucker's firearm near the scene, and authorities found a handgun with an extended magazine zipped inside Tucker's jacket pocket, the outlet reported.
The Weapon and the Missing Audio
Fields did not use his department-issued handgun when he fired at Tucker. He instead grabbed his personally owned Aero Precision X15 rifle from his patrol cruiser's gun rack after hearing distant gunshots while parked nearby, according to Signal Akron. Fields and another officer at the scene failed to activate their body cameras before leaving their cruiser, and a second officer was separately disciplined for a body-worn camera violation, Cleveland.com reported.
The body-camera footage that was eventually released contained no audio of the moments leading up to the shooting. WKYC reported that the cameras were automatically triggered by a nearby cruiser's emergency lights, which started a 30-second silent video buffer rather than capturing sound. Akron is required by a 2021 city ordinance, passed after 89 percent of voters approved a charter amendment, to release body-camera footage within seven days of any police use of deadly force.
A Summit County grand jury declined to charge Fields in Tucker's death in October 2025, after the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation examined the shooting and the case was referred to the Mahoning County Prosecutor's Office to present evidence to jurors, avoiding a local conflict of interest. Fields had been placed on administrative leave following the shooting. The Summit County Medical Examiner's Office said faster medical intervention would not have changed the outcome, according to Cleveland.com.
A Contested Internal Investigation
Malik publicly rejected the police department's initial draft internal investigation into the shooting, saying its conclusions lacked credibility and were unsupported by the weight of the evidence, according to WKYC. He indicated he could not rely on that draft to determine what discipline was appropriate for Fields.
The city's decision to fire Fields also cited an open criminal investigation into allegations that he drugged and sexually assaulted a woman in Akron on May 2, 2026, an inquiry being handled by the Summit County Sheriff's Office. The police union has argued the city improperly padded the termination grounds by including those unproven allegations alongside the policy violations tied to the Tucker shooting, per Signal Akron.
This was not Fields' first involvement in a high-profile Akron police shooting. Before the Tucker shooting, Fields was involved in the 2022 fatal police shooting of Lawrence Rodgers and was present during the 2022 shooting of Jayland Walker, according to Signal Akron reporting.
Family Pursued a Wrongful Death Lawsuit
Tucker's family filed a federal wrongful death lawsuit in November 2025, alleging Fields used excessive force and violated police policies. Robert Gresham, who represents Tucker's family, said the family wanted answers, accountability and changes to prevent another family from suffering similarly, Cleveland.com reported. Gregory Beck, who represents Fields in the civil case, declined to comment.
Brian Angeloni said the settlement minimizes the financial cost and emotional burden of prolonged litigation, according to the same report. The $4.75 million payout comes less than two years after Akron agreed to pay $4.85 million in October 2024 to settle a federal civil rights suit brought by the family of Jayland Walker, who was killed by Akron police in 2022 after a 94-shot foot pursuit, as reported by the Associated Press.
City Points to Structural Reforms
Alongside the firing and settlement, Akron officials unveiled changes to the city's internal review process for use-of-force incidents. The city is implementing a new model for investigating such cases and has established a Critical Incident Review Board within the police department to evaluate major incidents and suggest operational improvements, per WKYC.
Akron now requires independent reviews by the chief of police and the chief of public safety before deadly-force investigations close. The changes follow an earlier independent review of departmental use-of-force policies released by the Police Executive Research Forum; city officials said 18 of that report's 58 recommendations have been implemented so far, Cleveland.com reported.
The department had already shifted its investigative approach once before. In December 2023, the Akron Police Department updated internal policy to designate the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation as the default primary agency for investigating officer-involved fatal shootings, moving away from reliance on internal detectives for crime scene probes, according to Signal Akron.
