Metro Cop Verdict: Not Guilty

The Metro police officer charged with 2 counts of reckless driving was found not guilty after a jury only deliberated 1 hour and 15 minutes. Probably 1 hour was a lunch or dinner break.
The case involves a Metro cop who was involved in a chase with a meth user who was driving and being a danger to the public. The supervisor of the Metro cops called the chase off (which in my mind was very stupid, but that's another story) 3 times. A Metro officer followed the car without lights and sirens and possibly struck the meth head's car, and the meth head hit another car and into a wall and the thug died.
From the Las Vegas Sun: Former Metro Police officer Aron Carpenter has been found not guilty of two felony reckless driving charges stemming from a fatal crash during a pursuit last year.
The jury deliberated about an hour and 15 minutes before returning its verdict at 5:55 p.m.
One count of reckless driving was for the death of the man he was following, Ivan Carrillo, 27, and the other count was for injuring Andrea Hottel, a driver involved in a multiple-car pileup that occurred May 19, 2010, near the intersection of Lone Mountain Road and Lamb Boulevard.
In testimony Tuesday morning, an expert witness for the defense told the jury he saw nothing wrong with the actions taken by Carpenter as he followed Carrillo's black Honda through North Las Vegas.
"I think his actions are very reasonable," said Jeffrey Martin, a former San Jose police officer and detective who is an expert in police pursuits and police pursuit policy.
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2011/jul/19/defense-rests-trial-ex-cop-accused-ignoring-comman/

As was stated in the testimony, it is not against the law not to follow the orders of your supervisor. Also, if you believe the cop's version, he didn't touch or barely touched the meth head's car, so he didn't cause the crash.
Further, it would have been a dereliction of duty not to follow this meth head's car to try and prevent the thug from crashing into another car.
I think Metro hung this cop out to dry and to cover up for the supervisor who was derelict in his duty by calling off the chase to begin with. This drug driver was a danger to the public with or without the cops following him. For the supervisor to call off the chase and not have cops follow the thug driver with their lights and sirens off was the problem, not what officer Carpenter did.
But the Metro supervisors were not going to find fault with the supervisor, so they blamed the cop on patrol.

This time, the jury got one right. Now, will Metro give this officer his job back and go after the supervisor? Hope so.