Tonight on CBS NCIS: New Orleans returns with an all-new Sunday, November 22, 2020, season 7 episode 3 called, “One Of Our Own,” and we have your NCIS: New Orleans recap below. On tonight’s NCIS: New Orleans season 7 episode 3 as per the CBS synopsis, “When an NOPD officer is murdered, Pride and the NCIS team take on a group of dirty cops.
They discover that the victim was also a key witness in multiple excessive force cases. Also, Tammy faces the reality of being in a new relationship.”
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An officer was ambushed. Officer Mark Palmer and his partner were responding to a call from dispatch. They were told that it was a B&E otherwise known as breaking and entering. The officers arrived at the location they were given and, at first, they believed it was deserted because they didn’t any signs of this supposed B&E. Only they couldn’t just leave things at initial impressions because there might have been something they missed. They tried to enter the building through one of the entranceways and that was the moment someone began firing at them. Palmer was killed instantly. His partner walked away unscathed and that seemed too suspicious to Mayor Taylor.
Taylor got involved in this case. She reached out to Pride and she asked him to run a shadow investigation into Palmer’s death. She told Pride that Palmer had been an informant. He was willing to tell investigators about the details surrounding excessive force cases. He even mentioned that he knew what really happened to Naval Ensign Nathan Cox and that he was prepared to testify against the man that sent Cox to the hospital. Cox is a black man. He spotted a guy getting too heavy-handed with his girlfriend at a bar and he stepped in to defend this young woman. Cox was just helping when the police arrive and they brutally took him down.
Cox was in the hospital for a week. He made a complaint and then he received a visit at the hospital. He was told that his word as a black man meant nothing against two cops. Cox had fought back when the officers tried to detain him and so they already had a great case, but they chose to threaten him because they didn’t want to be questioned at all. The two cops that worked against Cox was Palmer and his old partner. He and his old partner worked together for years. Then Palmer wanted to suddenly change things. Palmer must have realized how bad his partner was getting and he tried to do the right thing. And now he’s dead.
Palmer was killed over cases of excessive force. He wasn’t talking about manslaughter or even murder. It was just excessive force and that was enough to kill him. Palmer was going against a very strong union. This same union would have made a case that the officers involved in the complaint shouldn’t be fired and, in a pre-Black Lives Matter world, they wouldn’t have faced repercussions.
Not for their actions or the cover-ups. Things were different now because the Mayor wanted New Orleans to change for the better and she would have pursued charges. Mayor Taylor was so upset with Palmer’s death that she asked Pride to run a shadow investigation that they didn’t want NOPD to find out about.
The team was very careful. They did their best to investigate Officer Palmer’s death and one of the first things they did was look for DNA. Sebastian can pull DNA off of bullets. He found out the bullet in Palmer traced back to Lamont Russell and he did his research of Russell. He was a known crook. He’s been in and out of prison for several years now. Both Sebastian and Pride believe that Palmer’s partner Laughton would know about Palmer’s connection to Russell. They went to her house with the best of intentions and they were almost shot and killed because Laughton was truly afraid of her fellow officers.
Laughton has been getting threats. Many of the dirty cops blamed her for Palmer’s change in behavior because Laughton was a black woman and she’s been there for Palmer since his divorce. Palmer recently went through a nasty divorce. He lost custody of his kids and he himself was feeling lost. He opened up to Laughton because he had needed a confidant at the time.
Palmer told her about how he ran with a wild group within the department and how they received clearance to pull stunts by their bosses. They were apparently protected from any repercussions. They knew that and so they acted, however, way they wanted.
Palmer only saw the light after he made friends with Laughton. He started telling her how he wanted to make amends and so that’s why he agreed to testify against the dirty cops. Laughton couldn’t help the team. She wasn’t there when these incidents happened and she only heard about it from Palmer. If the team truly wanted to take down these dirty cops, they have to find a new angle on these excessive force cases.
Pride tried speaking with the officer who signed off on all of these cases and it soon became clear that he wasn’t worried about the excessive force. He was worried about something else. He even thought Pride had found it until Pride mentioned the other thing.
Pride asked Gregorio to look into it. She checked out every excessive force case and that’s how she found out about Jasper Taggert. Taggert was autistic. He was working at a supermarket and there was an incident. Cops were called. The cops cited that they had to use force because Taggert was resisting arrest and what isn’t in the file was the fact that this officer put Taggert in a coma.
Taggert later died from his injuries. The excessive force case wasn’t about excessive force at all. It was about the murder of a mentally-challenged young man. Taggert didn’t have any living family. The only person he had was the woman who ran his group home and she tried to make a complaint. And she was stopped by an officer who visited her.
This officer claimed that he would be forced to press official charges against Taggert if the woman followed through on her complaint. She didn’t want Taggert to get into trouble and so she let it go. Only then Taggert died. The officer who beat him to death and the officer who covered it up for him were now in serious trouble. They couldn’t let Taggert’s story get out there because then it might actually cost them their jobs as well as their freedom.
They had covered up the death of an innocent man and this man was white. His death was ruled accidental and it wasn’t. Dr. Wade looked at his file. She saw clear evidence that Taggert had been restrained and then beaten to death.
Wade also noticed that Taggert was on anti-anxiety medication. This medication would have kept him sedated and calm and so there’s no way he could have been as aggressive as the detective claimed. Detective Blakely lied about what happened. He then covered up this murder with help from more dirty officers and, frankly, Wade was sick of it. Wade has been around a long time. She knows this isn’t the first time that a person has been killed by an officer just because the officer was having a bad day and so she asked Pride when was it going to end? Pride didn’t have an answer for her.
Pride is doing his best to solve Palmer’s death. He had his people looking for Russell because Russell might lead them back to the dirty cops and unfortunately the dirty cops were thinking the same thing. They had Russell killed. They claimed that he tried to come after them and that they were forced to kill him in self-defense. They were making it out like their murder of this man was justified.
There were no witnesses or surveillance cameras. The dirty cops were going to get away with what they did and so Pride gave them a warning. He told Detective Blakely that eventually, he’ll get him. It doesn’t matter how long it will take; Pride will get them in the end.
Pride later held a small concert in the park. He invited his team and Gregorio invited her new girlfriend to it.
Khoury didn’t show, but that’s only because she was helping out the other women that had been targeted by Van Cleef.
THE END!