A former Wilmington Police corporal was convicted of false statements when he would not admit changing the barrel of his service weapon.
A former Wilmington police officer has been convicted of misconduct and making false statements to law enforcement.
James MacColl, who was a corporal, was charged in March 2021 after a shooting on Feb. 2, 2019, according to a press release from the Delaware Department of Justice.
MacColl responded to a 911 call of an armed carjacking, where he shot Yahim Harris twice in the upper left torso, according to court records.
During a use of force investigation, a ballistics analysis said the bullets fired by MacColl didn’t match the barrel of his service weapon.
The service weapon would have had five distinct markings, but the bullet had six.
The Department of Justice concluded that MacColl was justified in shooting Harris, but noted the discrepancy.
MacColl initially said he did not change the gun barrel and did not explain how the discrepancy occurred.
But in January 2020, he admitted changing the five-twist barrel on his service weapon to an aftermarket six-twist in 2017.
Due to MacColl’s “total lack of candor,” prosecutors were forced to drop the then-pending charges against Harris for the alleged carjacking, the press release said.
MacColl will be sentenced later. The maximum sentence he could receive would be three years, said Mat Marshall, public information officer for the Department of Justice.
“At the absolute minimum, we should be able to expect honesty from those we trust to enforce the law,” Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings said in the press release.
This was MacColl’s second use of force investigation. His actions were reviewed following the shooting of Jeremy McDole on Sept. 23, 2015.
McDole was a 28-year-old African American paraplegic who was shot and killed by police in Wilmington, Delaware as he sat in his wheelchair.,
Neither MacColl, nor three other officers, have been charged in that shooting.
They were answering a call about a man with a gun.
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