BATON ROUGE – A grand jury did not return criminal charges against a former Baton Rouge Police officer who was accused of lying about a shooting in 2018.

The then-officer, Yuseff Hamadeh, claimed a suspect, later identified as Raheem Howard, shot at him on Aug. 7. during a traffic stop on N. 15th Street. Hamadeh said Howard shot at him first and he returned fire. Howard was arrested for that incident and prior offenses.

An investigation later indicated that Hamadeh fabricated part of the encounter. Audio from the police unit's rearview camera and video from a neighbor's home did not align with Hamadeh's account of events. On the night of his arrest, Howard told TV cameras he never had a gun and did not shoot at Hamadeh.

During an internal investigation of Hamadeh, it was found that the officer's body camera and dashboard camera were not recording during the incident.

Hamadeh was fired but the civil service board overturned the firing, citing proper protocols were not followed during a lie detector test. After reaching a settlement, Hamadeh was allowed to have his record show he resigned from the police department.

At the time, it was believed Hamadeh was entitled to back pay between the time he was suspended or fired until he submitted his resignation. An exact dollar amount was not immediately available then. Hamadeh made about $48,000 in 2018, including over-time.

Thursday (2/6/20), court records indicated a grand jury was held to determine criminal charges for Hamadeh related to the Howard case and a separate, deadly officer-involved shooting in 2017. The grand jury returned no charges and made no determination at all on some of the items it was asked to consider: Homicide, murder, manslaughter, attempted murder and illegal use of a weapon.