Why wasn't Gabriel Hood in prison?

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) - In the hours after Gabriel Hood was shot by a Grand Rapids police officer after he said Hood pulled a gun on him, a visibly upset GRPD Police Chief Kevin Belk spoke out on state policies regarding parolees.

"We're concerned," Belk said Thursday as he stood yards from where the officer shot Hood. "We've seen that the state of Michigan continues to release people on parole at an alarming rate."

One week later, Target 8 investigators have tracked the last months of Hood's life.

Despite parole violations and a number of contacts with police, the state failed to get Hood back behind bars. A rare look inside the system that handles parolees provides an answer to why Hood was out of prison.

Our investigation found there are more parolees on the streets today and Hood would have been sent back to prison if the state did things the old way.

But in 1998, long before the current budget crisis, the Department of Corrections started making those decisions on a case-by-case basis.

Corrections officials say the one-size-fits-all approach to automatically revoking an offender's parole for any violation wasn't working.

Now, a parolee returns to prison if he commits multiple violations or an act that's considered a "threat to the general public," according to department spokesman John Cordell.

More than 13,000 prisoners were paroled in 2000, Cordell said. That number jumped to more than 20,000 by 2009, which helps explain why Hood was on the street when the officer shot and killed him Thursday.

Released from prison in 2008, Hood would have been off parole in February if he hadn't started violating his terms in October 2009.

And despite at least two contacts with police after those violations last fall, Hood still was a free man. The details of his violations explain why.

Early on, Hood had stayed out of trouble. On April 15, 2009, a check of the Law Enforcement Information Network by his parole office showed just that. On Sept. 17, he had another clean check.

Hood had a job, was attending school and wasn't using drugs, corrections officials say.

But a couple weeks later, on Sept. 30, Kent County deputies picked Hood up on a parole violation. He was out after curfew and had been drinking. The sheriff's department notified corrections.

The next day, deputies were called to a Cascade Township hotel on a domestic assault complaint. Hood was the suspect, but he took off before officers arrived. A judge put out a warrant for Hood with a $500 bond attached and the requirement was for Hood to report to his parole officer.

On Oct. 22, Wyoming police made a traffic stop and found Hood in the vehicle. The officer ran Hood's name and found the warrant. Hood payed the $500 bond and was released. The Wyoming officer did not notify the DOC.

But the department said that was a nonissue. If every officer called in every time he or she came across a parolee during a traffic stop, "it would inundate the system," Cordell said.

Hood did show up for his arraignment on the domestic assault charge and was ordered by the judge to report to his probation officer. On Oct. 15, Hood called his officer to set up a meeting, but never showed up.

That's when the DOC considered Hood a fugitive, and turned his case over to the absconder unit.

Days later, on Oct. 21, Grand Rapids police with their guns drawn searched a neighborhood west of Division for a man witnesses say flashed a gun during a road rage incident.

The man later was identified as Hood. He bailed from a Chevy Avalanche after flashing the gun, witnesses said.

GRPD notified the DOC of the incident, Cordell said.

On Dec. 15, the absconder unit received a tip on Hood's whereabouts. Representatives visited the home of his girlfriend, but he was not there. The search continued.

Cordell said everyone -- from the DOC to the police agencies that had contact with Hood -- took appropriate actions.

On March 18, the search for Hood ended when he was shot by GRPD Officer Donald Lake.