President Donald Trump has continued his pardons and commutations for those he is allied with. The latest came Wednesday evening when he announced "a full and unconditional pardon" for Andrew Zabavsky, one of two Washington, D.C. police officers who were convicted of killing a 20-year-old scooter rider during a police chase.
In 2020, police pursued Karon Hylton-Brown for riding a scooter without a helmet. Hylton-Brown crashed the rented moped as officers gave chase. Authorities described the chase at the time as "illegally reckless."
Police policy bars an officer from pursuing a motorist because of a traffic violation, the report also said.
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Officer Terence Sutton and Zabavsky later lied about the incident to prevent a possible federal civil rights investigation, reported The Washington Post in 2022. Sutton got the longer sentence of the two after being found guilty of second-degree murder. Zabavsky was found guilty of conspiracy and obstructing justice.
When asked about it, Trump claimed the police "were arrested, put in jail for five years, because they went after an illegal and I guess something happened where something went wrong and they arrested the two officers and put them in jail for going after a criminal. A rough criminal, by the way. And I’m actually releasing… no I’m the friend, I am the friend of police more than any president who’s ever been in this office.”
Hylton-Brown grew up in the D.C. neighborhood of Brightwood "and played football at the nearby Emery Heights Recreation Center," reported DCist.
Additionally, Hylton-Brown was neither "an illegal" nor "a rough criminal."