Harold Titus's Blog, page 10
July 4, 2021
Bad Apples -- Christian Cooper -- May 25, 2020
When Amy Cooper, a white woman, called 911 from an isolated patch in Central Park where she was standing with her unleashed dog on Memorial Day, she said an “African-American man” was threatening her, emphasizing his race to the operator.
Moments before Ms. Cooper made the call, the man, Christian Cooper, an avid bird-watcher, had asked her to leash her dog, and she had refused.
On Monday, Ms. Cooper was charged with filing a false report, a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail, the latest fallout from an encounter that resonated across the country and provoked intense discussions about how Black people are harmed when sham reports to the police are made about them by white people.
Video of the encounter that Mr. Cooper shot on his phone has been viewed more than 40 million times. It was widely perceived as a startling and sobering example of racial attitudes in New York City, which prides itself on its supposedly progressive ideals.
The confrontation between Ms. Cooper and Mr. Cooper, who are not related, occurred when she encountered him in the Ramble, a semi-wild area where dogs must be leashed and hers was not.
Mr. Cooper said he asked Ms. Cooper to leash her dog. When she refused, he said, he tried to lure the dog with treats in hopes of compelling her to restrain her pet.
The encounter turned ugly when Ms. Cooper told Mr. Cooper that she was calling the police and that she planned to tell them an African-American man was threatening her life.
Mr. Cooper’s camera captured what happened next.
“I’m in the Ramble, there is a man, African-American, he has a bicycle helmet and he is recording me and threatening me and my dog,” Ms. Cooper, gripping her dog’s collar tightly, says in a hysterical tone to the 911 operator.
Then, before ending the call, she adds, “I am being threatened by a man in the Ramble, please send the cops immediately!”
“Thank you,” Mr. Cooper says after she puts her dog’s leash on, just before the video ends.
[Paste the following on Google to watch the video]
Video: Video Shows White Woman Calling Police on Black ...
Mr. Cooper, 57, a Harvard graduate who works in communications, has long been a prominent birder in the city and is on the board of the New York City Audubon Society.
Shortly after video of the episode went viral, Ms. Cooper surrendered her dog, Henry, to the cocker spaniel rescue group she had adopted him from two years earlier. She and the dog have since been reunited (Ransom 1-3)
Christian Cooper, the Black man who filmed a White woman calling the police on him while he was birdwatching in Central Park in May, has not cooperated with the Manhattan district attorney's investigation, The New York Times reported Tuesday.
"On the one hand, she's already paid a steep price," Cooper said in a statement, according to the Times. "That's not enough of a deterrent to others? Bringing her more misery just seems like piling on."
On Monday, the Manhattan district attorney announced plans to prosecute the woman, Amy Cooper ... on a charge of falsely reporting an incident in the third degree. She has been issued a desk appearance ticket and is scheduled for arraignment October 14.
Christian Cooper expressed his personal ambivalence with the prosecution in his statement to the Times.
"So if the DA feels the need to pursue charges, he should pursue charges. But he can do that without me," he said.
An attorney for Amy Cooper said on Tuesday that she would be acquitted and decried the rise of "cancel culture."
"When all the facts are known, Amy Cooper will be found not guilty of the single misdemeanor charge she faces," attorney Robert Barnes said in a statement. "Based on a misunderstood 60 seconds of video, she lost her job, her home and her reputation.
"Public shaming, lost employment, denied benefits & now prison time for a mis-perceived, momentary alleged 'wrong think'? For words said in a sixty second interaction where even the alleged victim calls this reaction way excessive? This criminalized, cancel culture is cancerous & precarious. That is why acquitting Amy Cooper is important" (Joseph and Levenson 1-2).
"I think it's a mistake to focus on this one individual," Cooper wrote in an Opinion piece Monday in The Washington Post. "The important thing the incident highlights is the long-standing, deep-seated racial bias against us black and brown folk that permeates the United States."
...
"I'm ambivalent about the prosecution and have chosen not to aid the investigation," Cooper wrote.
"Focusing on charging Amy Cooper lets white people off the hook from all that," he added.
"They can scream for her head while leaving their own prejudices unexamined. They can push for her prosecution and pat themselves on the back for having done something about racism, when they've actually done nothing, and their own Amy Cooper remains only one purse-clutch in the presence of a black man away" (Sanchez and Joseph 1).
… there was a second, previously unreported call between Cooper and 911. A 911 dispatcher called Cooper back and she repeated the accusation, adding that the man "tried to assault her," the DA's office said.
"When responding officers arrived, Ms. Cooper admitted that the male had not 'tried to assault' or come into contact with her," a release from the DA's office said (Levenson and Sgueglia 1).
Ms. Cooper, 41, who had been a head of insurance portfolio management at Franklin Templeton, was fired from her job after the confrontation with Mr. Cooper.
She ... issued a public apology and tried to explain her response.
“I reacted emotionally and made false assumptions about his intentions when, in fact, I was the one who was acting inappropriately by not having my dog on a leash,” Ms. Cooper said in the statement.
She added that when Mr. Cooper said she would not like what he was “going to do next” and then offered her dog treats, she assumed he was threatening her. Mr. Cooper said the remark was merely meant to signal that he planned to offer the treats.
“I assumed we were being threatened when all he had intended to do was record our encounter on his phone,” Ms. Cooper said (Ransom 4).
...
"I'm not a racist. I did not mean to harm that man in any way," she said, adding that she also didn't mean any harm to the African American community.
Christian Cooper has acknowledged her apology but said her act was racist.
"I think her apology is sincere," Cooper told CNN's Don Lemon. "I'm not sure that in that apology she recognizes that while she may not be or consider herself a racist, that particular act was definitely racist" (Joseph and Levenson 3).
[Paste the following video on Google to watch the encounter and an interview of Christian Cooper]
Christian Cooper on being racially targeted while ...
Amy Cooper … had her misdemeanor charge ... dropped on Tuesday.
...
"Given the issues at hand and Ms. Cooper's lack of criminal background, we offered her, consistent with our position on many misdemeanor cases involving a first arrest, an alternative, restorative justice resolution," Assistant District Attorney Joan Illuzzi told a Manhattan judge, according to a statement provided to NPR.
The program, Illuzzi explained, is "designed not just to punish but to educate and promote community healing."
Illuzzi said Cooper completed a total of five sessions and that her therapist described it as a "moving experience," adding that Amy Cooper "learned a lot in their sessions together."
Because Cooper completed the restorative justice sessions to the prosecutor's satisfaction, the Manhattan District Attorney's office moved to dismiss the charge.
The judge then granted a motion to dismiss, according to the District Attorney's Office statement.
It also noted that Christian Cooper declined to participate in the criminal justice process, but added the District Attorney's Office went forward with the proceedings because it determined the offense was not just against Cooper, but also "a threat to the community if allowed to go unchecked."
"The simple principle is that one cannot use the police to threaten another and in this case, in a racially offensive and charged manner," the statement read (Booker 1-2).
Commentary
Though Amy Cooper has since apologized for her behavior and actions in Central Park, she still describes herself in victim terms. She has stated that her life is being “destroyed” by others since Christian Cooper’s Facebook video went viral. In apologizing, Amy says that “words are just words and I can’t undo what I did, but I sincerely and humbly apologize to everyone.” Oh—will someone help me tell Amy Cooper that it was about so much more than words?
What happened in Central Park has far reaching consequences and was about so much more than words. That apology apparently wasn’t enough for her to hold on to her job with Franklin Templeton, and it won’t be enough for her to rebuild her reputation and career either because you first have to own what you did before you can successfully repair it.
1. Amy Cooper leaned on white privilege and demonstrated blatant racism.
Amy Cooper was the one breaking the rules in Central Park that day. She was walking her dog in an area that explicitly calls for dogs to be put on a leash. Yet upon being asked to follow this rule, Amy responded with the kind of superiority and indignation that could only be read as white privilege. Her next move was to put race smack dab in the middle of the episode by emphasizing Christian Cooper’s race and placing heavy importance on him being an “African American man.” She wasn’t just calling the police to claim that a man was threatening her. She went out of her way to let Christian know that if he didn’t stop recording her, she could get back at him by using her privilege to cry out that an “African American man” was the one doing the deed.
Before actually calling the police, Amy Cooper first threatened to do so. In doing this, she was letting Christian Cooper know in the most pressing way she could that she had power over him; that she could use her race and gender to get over on him; that she could truly hurt—even destroy—him with one phone call. Then she followed through on the threat and set things in motion for him to suffer for even daring to request that she put a leash on her dog. Amy Cooper decided that Christian Cooper would indeed suffer for having the audacity to challenge her power and her privilege.
The behavior displayed on the video is arguably racism. I don’t know if Amy Cooper is racist or not, but her behavior on the Monday in question was indistinguishable from what most people expect from racists.
Using nothing but the color of his skin, Amy sent the message that she was superior to Christian and that he needed to step back in his place because he was a black man. That is racist, and that kind of behavior can damage reputations and careers. It also damages a leader’s credibility. And based on these messages, Franklin Templeton seems to think so as well.
2. Amy Cooper conjured up memories of Emmett Till and the white woman who lied on him.
The first thing I thought about after watching Christian Cooper’s Facebook video was the Emmett Till case. I have studied the Till case in recent years, and the ease at which Amy Cooper lied is one of the most frightening things she did that day. It was remarkable to see how winning in that moment would cause Amy to create an entirely false narrative and then do whatever she felt necessary on the call with the 911 operator to get officials to believe the lie. Watching this uncomfortable and angry white woman go to unthinkable extremes to make a point is so doggone frightening that it scares me to think of what would have happened had Christian not had the video recording.
Emmett Till was a 14-year-old black boy from Chicago. In 1955, his mom begrudgingly allowed him to visit relatives in Mississippi. He was murdered three days after entering a local store when the clerk, a 21-year-old white woman, told people, “I was just scared to death” of Emmett Till. She claimed that Emmett had been inappropriate and whistled at her among other things. The result was that Emmett Till was kidnapped from the home he was staying, tortured for hours and then brutally murdered.
52 years later, Carolyn Bryant Dunham, admitted that she lied and made the story up. ...
Things in Central Park between Amy Cooper and Christian Cooper could have ended similarly horribly. If there wasn’t video for this incident, how far would Amy Cooper have taken her lie? If there had not been video, what horrors would Amy Cooper have brought down upon Christian Cooper’s life?
3. Amy Cooper weaponized police against Christian Cooper by feigning assault.
When Amy Cooper exalted her voice and played damsel in distress on the 911 call, she put Christian Cooper’s life on the line. Notice in the above video just how dramatic Amy Cooper became. To increase the sense of urgency for police, she changed her demeanor, raised her voice inflections, and heightened her cries and animations all in an attempt to get police on the scene ASAP. She put it all on the line to ensure that the person on the other end of the 911 call would believe that she was indeed being assaulted.
She was trying to ensure that the only impression the individual could get was that her very life may be taken if he or she didn’t act quickly.
With her performance, Amy Cooper raised the stakes and increased the likelihood that police would not just show up to Central Park, but they would show up with guns drawn ready to cause immediate harm to Christian Cooper. She raised the stakes to make police prepared to do whatever they needed to do to ensure her safety.
The very message Amy Cooper was sending to Christian Cooper was that police exist to serve and protect her. She was sending a loud and clear message that she believes police work for her good and will work to Christian’s bad. Her actions left no doubt that she believes that police will do whatever she wants—even arrest, brutalize or kill Christian Cooper—and she was determined to punish him. And all of it was predicated upon the fact that Amy is white and Christian is black.
Again, Amy Cooper says that others are now destroying her life. That is where she is wrong. She did this. She ruined her reputation and career, and until she owns her part in it, nothing will get better. We all make mistakes as human beings. Sometimes we do bad things, but we can certainly repair and rebuild—and Amy Cooper can too. I firmly believe that she can repair this damage. She can rebuild her reputation and career, but first she has to take full responsibility for destroying it.
I recommend that instead of complaining about how her life is now destroyed, Amy Cooper should reflect on how so many people now believe that she tried to destroy Christian Cooper’s life. And instead of apologizing by saying that she basically used bad words on Monday, Amy needs to reflect on the above three things she did that caused harm to her own reputation and career. After this, she can work to successfully repair the damage (Allen 1-3).
Works cited:
Allen, Terina. “3 Things Amy Cooper Did in Central Park To Damage Her Reputation and Career.” Forbes, May 29, 2020. Net. https://www.forbes.com/sites/terinaal...
Booker, Brakkton. “Amy Cooper, White Woman Who Called Police on Black Bird-Watcher, Has Charge Dismissed.” NPR, February 16, 2021. Net. https://www.npr.org/2021/02/16/968372...
Joseph, Elizabeth and Levenson, Eric. “Black Birdwatcher in Central Park 911 Call Doesn't Want To Be Involved in Prosecution of Amy Cooper, NYT Reports.” CNN, updated July 8, 2020. Net. https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/08/us/chr...
Levenson, Eric and Sgueglia, Kristina. “There Were Two Calls between Amy Cooper and 911 about a Black Birdwatcher in Central Park, Prosecutors Say.” CNN, updated November 17, 2020. Net. https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/14/us/amy...
Ransom, Jan. “Amy Cooper Faces Charges after Calling Police on Black Bird-Watcher.” The New York Times, October 14, 2020. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/06/ny...
Sanchez, Ray and Joseph, Elizabeth. “Black Birdwatcher Christian Cooper Says Prosecuting Amy Cooper 'Lets White People off the Hook.'” CNN, updated July 15, 2020. Net. https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/15/us/chr...
Moments before Ms. Cooper made the call, the man, Christian Cooper, an avid bird-watcher, had asked her to leash her dog, and she had refused.
On Monday, Ms. Cooper was charged with filing a false report, a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail, the latest fallout from an encounter that resonated across the country and provoked intense discussions about how Black people are harmed when sham reports to the police are made about them by white people.
Video of the encounter that Mr. Cooper shot on his phone has been viewed more than 40 million times. It was widely perceived as a startling and sobering example of racial attitudes in New York City, which prides itself on its supposedly progressive ideals.
The confrontation between Ms. Cooper and Mr. Cooper, who are not related, occurred when she encountered him in the Ramble, a semi-wild area where dogs must be leashed and hers was not.
Mr. Cooper said he asked Ms. Cooper to leash her dog. When she refused, he said, he tried to lure the dog with treats in hopes of compelling her to restrain her pet.
The encounter turned ugly when Ms. Cooper told Mr. Cooper that she was calling the police and that she planned to tell them an African-American man was threatening her life.
Mr. Cooper’s camera captured what happened next.
“I’m in the Ramble, there is a man, African-American, he has a bicycle helmet and he is recording me and threatening me and my dog,” Ms. Cooper, gripping her dog’s collar tightly, says in a hysterical tone to the 911 operator.
Then, before ending the call, she adds, “I am being threatened by a man in the Ramble, please send the cops immediately!”
“Thank you,” Mr. Cooper says after she puts her dog’s leash on, just before the video ends.
[Paste the following on Google to watch the video]
Video: Video Shows White Woman Calling Police on Black ...
Mr. Cooper, 57, a Harvard graduate who works in communications, has long been a prominent birder in the city and is on the board of the New York City Audubon Society.
Shortly after video of the episode went viral, Ms. Cooper surrendered her dog, Henry, to the cocker spaniel rescue group she had adopted him from two years earlier. She and the dog have since been reunited (Ransom 1-3)
Christian Cooper, the Black man who filmed a White woman calling the police on him while he was birdwatching in Central Park in May, has not cooperated with the Manhattan district attorney's investigation, The New York Times reported Tuesday.
"On the one hand, she's already paid a steep price," Cooper said in a statement, according to the Times. "That's not enough of a deterrent to others? Bringing her more misery just seems like piling on."
On Monday, the Manhattan district attorney announced plans to prosecute the woman, Amy Cooper ... on a charge of falsely reporting an incident in the third degree. She has been issued a desk appearance ticket and is scheduled for arraignment October 14.
Christian Cooper expressed his personal ambivalence with the prosecution in his statement to the Times.
"So if the DA feels the need to pursue charges, he should pursue charges. But he can do that without me," he said.
An attorney for Amy Cooper said on Tuesday that she would be acquitted and decried the rise of "cancel culture."
"When all the facts are known, Amy Cooper will be found not guilty of the single misdemeanor charge she faces," attorney Robert Barnes said in a statement. "Based on a misunderstood 60 seconds of video, she lost her job, her home and her reputation.
"Public shaming, lost employment, denied benefits & now prison time for a mis-perceived, momentary alleged 'wrong think'? For words said in a sixty second interaction where even the alleged victim calls this reaction way excessive? This criminalized, cancel culture is cancerous & precarious. That is why acquitting Amy Cooper is important" (Joseph and Levenson 1-2).
"I think it's a mistake to focus on this one individual," Cooper wrote in an Opinion piece Monday in The Washington Post. "The important thing the incident highlights is the long-standing, deep-seated racial bias against us black and brown folk that permeates the United States."
...
"I'm ambivalent about the prosecution and have chosen not to aid the investigation," Cooper wrote.
"Focusing on charging Amy Cooper lets white people off the hook from all that," he added.
"They can scream for her head while leaving their own prejudices unexamined. They can push for her prosecution and pat themselves on the back for having done something about racism, when they've actually done nothing, and their own Amy Cooper remains only one purse-clutch in the presence of a black man away" (Sanchez and Joseph 1).
… there was a second, previously unreported call between Cooper and 911. A 911 dispatcher called Cooper back and she repeated the accusation, adding that the man "tried to assault her," the DA's office said.
"When responding officers arrived, Ms. Cooper admitted that the male had not 'tried to assault' or come into contact with her," a release from the DA's office said (Levenson and Sgueglia 1).
Ms. Cooper, 41, who had been a head of insurance portfolio management at Franklin Templeton, was fired from her job after the confrontation with Mr. Cooper.
She ... issued a public apology and tried to explain her response.
“I reacted emotionally and made false assumptions about his intentions when, in fact, I was the one who was acting inappropriately by not having my dog on a leash,” Ms. Cooper said in the statement.
She added that when Mr. Cooper said she would not like what he was “going to do next” and then offered her dog treats, she assumed he was threatening her. Mr. Cooper said the remark was merely meant to signal that he planned to offer the treats.
“I assumed we were being threatened when all he had intended to do was record our encounter on his phone,” Ms. Cooper said (Ransom 4).
...
"I'm not a racist. I did not mean to harm that man in any way," she said, adding that she also didn't mean any harm to the African American community.
Christian Cooper has acknowledged her apology but said her act was racist.
"I think her apology is sincere," Cooper told CNN's Don Lemon. "I'm not sure that in that apology she recognizes that while she may not be or consider herself a racist, that particular act was definitely racist" (Joseph and Levenson 3).
[Paste the following video on Google to watch the encounter and an interview of Christian Cooper]
Christian Cooper on being racially targeted while ...
Amy Cooper … had her misdemeanor charge ... dropped on Tuesday.
...
"Given the issues at hand and Ms. Cooper's lack of criminal background, we offered her, consistent with our position on many misdemeanor cases involving a first arrest, an alternative, restorative justice resolution," Assistant District Attorney Joan Illuzzi told a Manhattan judge, according to a statement provided to NPR.
The program, Illuzzi explained, is "designed not just to punish but to educate and promote community healing."
Illuzzi said Cooper completed a total of five sessions and that her therapist described it as a "moving experience," adding that Amy Cooper "learned a lot in their sessions together."
Because Cooper completed the restorative justice sessions to the prosecutor's satisfaction, the Manhattan District Attorney's office moved to dismiss the charge.
The judge then granted a motion to dismiss, according to the District Attorney's Office statement.
It also noted that Christian Cooper declined to participate in the criminal justice process, but added the District Attorney's Office went forward with the proceedings because it determined the offense was not just against Cooper, but also "a threat to the community if allowed to go unchecked."
"The simple principle is that one cannot use the police to threaten another and in this case, in a racially offensive and charged manner," the statement read (Booker 1-2).
Commentary
Though Amy Cooper has since apologized for her behavior and actions in Central Park, she still describes herself in victim terms. She has stated that her life is being “destroyed” by others since Christian Cooper’s Facebook video went viral. In apologizing, Amy says that “words are just words and I can’t undo what I did, but I sincerely and humbly apologize to everyone.” Oh—will someone help me tell Amy Cooper that it was about so much more than words?
What happened in Central Park has far reaching consequences and was about so much more than words. That apology apparently wasn’t enough for her to hold on to her job with Franklin Templeton, and it won’t be enough for her to rebuild her reputation and career either because you first have to own what you did before you can successfully repair it.
1. Amy Cooper leaned on white privilege and demonstrated blatant racism.
Amy Cooper was the one breaking the rules in Central Park that day. She was walking her dog in an area that explicitly calls for dogs to be put on a leash. Yet upon being asked to follow this rule, Amy responded with the kind of superiority and indignation that could only be read as white privilege. Her next move was to put race smack dab in the middle of the episode by emphasizing Christian Cooper’s race and placing heavy importance on him being an “African American man.” She wasn’t just calling the police to claim that a man was threatening her. She went out of her way to let Christian know that if he didn’t stop recording her, she could get back at him by using her privilege to cry out that an “African American man” was the one doing the deed.
Before actually calling the police, Amy Cooper first threatened to do so. In doing this, she was letting Christian Cooper know in the most pressing way she could that she had power over him; that she could use her race and gender to get over on him; that she could truly hurt—even destroy—him with one phone call. Then she followed through on the threat and set things in motion for him to suffer for even daring to request that she put a leash on her dog. Amy Cooper decided that Christian Cooper would indeed suffer for having the audacity to challenge her power and her privilege.
The behavior displayed on the video is arguably racism. I don’t know if Amy Cooper is racist or not, but her behavior on the Monday in question was indistinguishable from what most people expect from racists.
Using nothing but the color of his skin, Amy sent the message that she was superior to Christian and that he needed to step back in his place because he was a black man. That is racist, and that kind of behavior can damage reputations and careers. It also damages a leader’s credibility. And based on these messages, Franklin Templeton seems to think so as well.
2. Amy Cooper conjured up memories of Emmett Till and the white woman who lied on him.
The first thing I thought about after watching Christian Cooper’s Facebook video was the Emmett Till case. I have studied the Till case in recent years, and the ease at which Amy Cooper lied is one of the most frightening things she did that day. It was remarkable to see how winning in that moment would cause Amy to create an entirely false narrative and then do whatever she felt necessary on the call with the 911 operator to get officials to believe the lie. Watching this uncomfortable and angry white woman go to unthinkable extremes to make a point is so doggone frightening that it scares me to think of what would have happened had Christian not had the video recording.
Emmett Till was a 14-year-old black boy from Chicago. In 1955, his mom begrudgingly allowed him to visit relatives in Mississippi. He was murdered three days after entering a local store when the clerk, a 21-year-old white woman, told people, “I was just scared to death” of Emmett Till. She claimed that Emmett had been inappropriate and whistled at her among other things. The result was that Emmett Till was kidnapped from the home he was staying, tortured for hours and then brutally murdered.
52 years later, Carolyn Bryant Dunham, admitted that she lied and made the story up. ...
Things in Central Park between Amy Cooper and Christian Cooper could have ended similarly horribly. If there wasn’t video for this incident, how far would Amy Cooper have taken her lie? If there had not been video, what horrors would Amy Cooper have brought down upon Christian Cooper’s life?
3. Amy Cooper weaponized police against Christian Cooper by feigning assault.
When Amy Cooper exalted her voice and played damsel in distress on the 911 call, she put Christian Cooper’s life on the line. Notice in the above video just how dramatic Amy Cooper became. To increase the sense of urgency for police, she changed her demeanor, raised her voice inflections, and heightened her cries and animations all in an attempt to get police on the scene ASAP. She put it all on the line to ensure that the person on the other end of the 911 call would believe that she was indeed being assaulted.
She was trying to ensure that the only impression the individual could get was that her very life may be taken if he or she didn’t act quickly.
With her performance, Amy Cooper raised the stakes and increased the likelihood that police would not just show up to Central Park, but they would show up with guns drawn ready to cause immediate harm to Christian Cooper. She raised the stakes to make police prepared to do whatever they needed to do to ensure her safety.
The very message Amy Cooper was sending to Christian Cooper was that police exist to serve and protect her. She was sending a loud and clear message that she believes police work for her good and will work to Christian’s bad. Her actions left no doubt that she believes that police will do whatever she wants—even arrest, brutalize or kill Christian Cooper—and she was determined to punish him. And all of it was predicated upon the fact that Amy is white and Christian is black.
Again, Amy Cooper says that others are now destroying her life. That is where she is wrong. She did this. She ruined her reputation and career, and until she owns her part in it, nothing will get better. We all make mistakes as human beings. Sometimes we do bad things, but we can certainly repair and rebuild—and Amy Cooper can too. I firmly believe that she can repair this damage. She can rebuild her reputation and career, but first she has to take full responsibility for destroying it.
I recommend that instead of complaining about how her life is now destroyed, Amy Cooper should reflect on how so many people now believe that she tried to destroy Christian Cooper’s life. And instead of apologizing by saying that she basically used bad words on Monday, Amy needs to reflect on the above three things she did that caused harm to her own reputation and career. After this, she can work to successfully repair the damage (Allen 1-3).
Works cited:
Allen, Terina. “3 Things Amy Cooper Did in Central Park To Damage Her Reputation and Career.” Forbes, May 29, 2020. Net. https://www.forbes.com/sites/terinaal...
Booker, Brakkton. “Amy Cooper, White Woman Who Called Police on Black Bird-Watcher, Has Charge Dismissed.” NPR, February 16, 2021. Net. https://www.npr.org/2021/02/16/968372...
Joseph, Elizabeth and Levenson, Eric. “Black Birdwatcher in Central Park 911 Call Doesn't Want To Be Involved in Prosecution of Amy Cooper, NYT Reports.” CNN, updated July 8, 2020. Net. https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/08/us/chr...
Levenson, Eric and Sgueglia, Kristina. “There Were Two Calls between Amy Cooper and 911 about a Black Birdwatcher in Central Park, Prosecutors Say.” CNN, updated November 17, 2020. Net. https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/14/us/amy...
Ransom, Jan. “Amy Cooper Faces Charges after Calling Police on Black Bird-Watcher.” The New York Times, October 14, 2020. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/06/ny...
Sanchez, Ray and Joseph, Elizabeth. “Black Birdwatcher Christian Cooper Says Prosecuting Amy Cooper 'Lets White People off the Hook.'” CNN, updated July 15, 2020. Net. https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/15/us/chr...
July 1, 2021
Bad Apples -- 05--06--2020, Sean Reed
On the evening of May 6, 21-year-old Dreasjon “Sean” Reed was fatally shot by an Indianapolis police officer on the northwest side of the city following a pursuit captured in part on Facebook Live.
Since then there have been multiple protests in Reed’s honor, an officer heard making a joke about Reed’s body has been disciplined, and video captured at the scene raises new questions about how IMPD handled the situation.
In the courts, Reed's family filed a federal lawsuit against the city and the IMPD; and a special prosecutor overseeing the case called for a grand jury to decide whether to indict the officer who shot Reed.
On Tuesday, November 10, the grand jury determined there was not enough probable cause to indict [Officer Dejoure] Mercer.
According to IMPD, the incident started on I-65 near 30th Street about 6 p.m., when IMPD Deputy Chief Kendale Adams saw a gray Toyota Corolla operated by Reed driving recklessly.
Police said Reed's vehicle had almost struck other vehicles while it exited the interstate.
Adams initiated a pursuit. Chief Randal Taylor, in another car behind Adams, aided.
Other officers joined the pursuit as Adams and Taylor dropped off, but by 6:10 p.m. an IMPD sergeant ordered that those other officers stop because of how fast the suspect was driving.
An officer [Mercer] then saw Reed driving eastbound on 62nd Street before parking at a business. Both the officer and Reed left their cars, and a foot pursuit began.
Police said there was a confrontation between the two near the intersection of West 62nd Street and Michigan Road that involved an exchange of gunfire, and the officer called in the shooting at 6:16 p.m.
Police said the officer used his service weapon after a Taser deployment was “ineffective.”
Fifteen casings were recovered at the scene. Police said they believe a weapon found at the scene belonged to Reed.
Additional information about the weapon has not been released by investigators.
In a Facebook Live video, a shirtless Reed is recording himself as he drives (Mack 2).
… Reed was … on his way to pick up his girlfriend and was driving her car. He called her and told her he had just awakened and was running late. Later, the girlfriend saw Reed on Facebook Live broadcasting the pursuit.
"Almost lost him y'all!" Reed says. "Almost got rid of his ass!"
A little while later, Reed is laughing and cheering as he thinks he lost the officer. "I'm not going to jail today!" he shouts (Hackney 3).
"You gotta look," he says, as he positions his camera phone to show what's behind the moving car. It appears to be a police car that's tailing him. "It's just one right now," he says to the camera.
After telling viewers that he thinks the officer is gone, Reed is trying to figure out where he has driven.
"What street is this? I'm going to park this (expletive) and get the (expletive) out," he says. "At 62nd and Michigan, somebody come get my stupid (expletive)!"
He goes on: "Please come get me. Please come get me!"
He then appears to park the car and leaves his vehicle. The video, at this point, is unclear.
But within 18 seconds, Reed is responding to another voice. He asks: "What'd you say?"
About 11 seconds go by when there is more inaudible shouting.
Then two pops can be heard. Reed appears to either drop his phone or collapse or both.
Then, as the camera points toward the sky, the sounds of more than a dozen other pops ring out.
By then, more than 4,000 people had tuned in to watch the Facebook Live video.
The audio appears to interrupt for a few moments. But when it returns, a voice repeats the phrase "Oh my God," while an orchestra of police sirens grows louder in the background.
Another recording of the Facebook Live appears to show the aftermath. The camera is still pointing to the sky, with more than 16,000 people watching.
A detective, who IMPD later identified as Officer Steven Scott, was recorded saying of Reed’s body: “I think it’s going to be closed casket, homie” — referring to a closed casket funeral for Reed.
IMPD Chief Randal Taylor called the comments "inappropriate" in the wake of the shooting, stating that the officer would be disciplined.
…
An eyewitness video obtained by attorneys representing Reed in June alleges that Reed was Tased and then shot in the back after running from officers.
The video … is of three women describing the events they say they witnessed on May 6.
“We saw it from the beginning to end,” one says. “We seen the whole thing,” another woman says (Mack 1-3).
“They just shot this man, y’all,” one unidentified woman said on the video. “The police just shot this dude on 62nd and Michigan, y’all.”
She continues: “They done shot this man, y’all in his back for no reason after they done already tased this (slur). He was on the ground shaking, and they still shot this man. That is so crazy.”
There’s back and forth conversation, and she adds: “They killed this man for no reason; shot this man in his back.”
[Elayne] Rivers, [of the law firm of Fatima Johnson, which represents Reed's family] said the women who witnessed the incident in the video I watched were hesitant to come forward because they feared for their safety but felt compelled in part because of the protests and unrest occurring in American cities grappling with police brutality and excessive use of force (Hackney 3).
A spokesperson for the Reed family attorney said the video disproves the police department's assertions that Reed fired at officers.
“It’s a blatant cover-up of an unjust murder in broad daylight," said Elayne Rivers ... “We have sufficient evidence that shows that the murder was completely unnecessary.”
Surveillance footage released in July shows the moment Reed stepped out of his car and fled before being fatally shot. The video, which does not show Reed being shot, was captured by security cameras at ACE Lock & Key in the 6100 block of North Michigan Road.
It shows a shirtless Reed parking his gray Toyota and exiting from the driver's side.
He glances behind him as he steps out of the car before running in the opposite direction. He looks back once more before he runs out of the camera's view.
Reed appears to be holding a white article of clothing in his left hand, and an object that cannot be identified by viewing the video in his right hand.
Moments later, an IMPD officer can be seen running after Reed.
The video, which is about 15 seconds long, has no audio and does not show any part of the interaction between Reed and the officer that ended in Reed's death.
…
Nearly three months after Reed's death, Reed’s mother Demetree Wynn was given her son’s autopsy report in early August.
The report was released after multiple public appeals by the family and protests demanding that the document be released to the public.
After reading the report, Wynn told media gathered outside the Marion County Coroner's Office for a scheduled a news conference that what the public has been told about her son by officials is a lie, and that fabrications continue in an effort to cast her son in a negative light.
"You can try if you want to, but you cannot do what you did to my son and tell me it was right ... I've been a nurse for 20 years. I'm not stupid, and don't insult my intelligence by assuming I don't know how to read," she said. "I know what it says, and if that was your child, I promise you ... you couldn't stand here and read it without wanting to throw up."
…
About 200 people gathered downtown the next morning in protest of the fatal shooting, and continued to protest that evening near the scene of the shooting.
It was at 62nd and Michigan that Reed's father, Jamie Reed, came face-to-face with the chief of police.
In an emotional, public conversation, Jamie Reed asked Taylor why his officers killed his son.
"Ya'll be murdering us black people for years," he said. "What's going on? What's the investigation? What's going on?"
Jamie Reed criticized the fact that IMPD doesn’t outfit its officers with dash or body cameras. His questions were immediately followed by cries from Jazmine Reed, Dreasjon's older sister.
"They Tased him and shot my little brother," she screamed as her father held her up. "They shot my little brother dead after he was already down.
"They took him from us."
Taylor kept his composure while flanked by protesters. Speaking into a microphone, he promised the family that the investigation would be open and impartial.
"I can't be here to debate the case," Taylor said. "There's no way I can do that. The only thing I can do is assure this family that an investigation is ongoing" (Mack 4-6).
Call 6 Investigates obtained the surveillance video just one day after a lawsuit was filed in Federal Court targeting the City of Indianapolis, IMPD, the police chief, a deputy chief and two officers.
The video, which is about 24 seconds in length, shows Reed stopping his vehicle behind ACE Lock & Key near 62nd Street and Michigan Road after leading police on a long chase — which he was also streaming on Facebook Live.
Reed can be seen getting out of his vehicle and running with what appears to be a white t-shirt in his left hand and two cell phones in his right hand, while metro police officer Dejoure Mercer comes running after him.
“How in the world could you shoot if you had a t-shirt in one hand and a phone in the other? There is no way. You can’t … You can’t shoot someone,” [Reed’s mother Demetree] Wynn said.
The Reed family’s lawyers say the video is helping them build their case against IMPD.
“To us, this shows it’s consistent with what we thought … he did not have the capacity to fire a gun at Officer Mercer because his hands were occupied and he was running,” Fatima Johnson, the family’s attorney told Rafael Sanchez.
Dreasjon was known as "Sean" on Facebook Live.
According to his mother, Reed changed his name after he was robbed in January 2019. Wynn says the incident changed him into a completely different person.
“That day changed my son,” Wynn said. “He got to the point he felt like he had to look over his shoulder constantly. That’s when he changed his name to Sean.”
Reed was working at Discount Tire at the time. On January 28, Wynn says Reed cashed his check and was later robbed, leaving him with “significant” injuries.
“I have led a modest life so my children can have a modest life or even a better life than I had,” Wynn said. “So they (the robbers) saw this kid with money and they tried to take it from him, and he was completely different after that.”
The Reed family’s legal team has not shied away from the fact that Reed has a criminal history. Reed had a previous traffic stop out of Marion County from September, and multiple videos on his social media account show him handling a weapon. But the legal team says that has nothing to do with why Reed was killed by police.
Reed, a Lawrence Central graduate, served in the Air Force from February through November 2017 (Sanchez and Cox 2, 4-5).
Special prosecutor Rosemary Khoury, who was appointed in June to oversee the investigation into the shooting, announced Tuesday that the grand jury had declined to indict Mercer, who is also Black. She said the grand jurors found there was insufficient evidence to indict or accuse Mercer of a crime but that she couldn’t discuss what evidence was presented because grand jury proceedings are secret.
…
Attorneys for the family of a 21-year-old Black man who was shot and killed in May by an Indianapolis police officer blasted the investigation on Saturday, saying a more thorough one could have led the grand jury to return a criminal indictment against the officer.
The lawyers for Dreasjon Reed’s family maintain that at least 10 eyewitnesses saw Officer Dejoure Mercer shoot Reed with his stun gun and then repeatedly with his firearm while Reed lay writhing on the ground.
Contrary to findings of a State Police investigation, those witnesses maintain that Reed didn’t fire on the officer, the lawyers said.
“Their testimony was consistent — Dreasjon was tased, he fell, he was shot while still shaking on the ground. He did not shoot back,” attorney Fatima Johnson said during an online news conference Saturday. She said she was “beyond disgusted” that Mercer won’t face charges — at one point repeating the word “again” 13 times to represent how many times Mercer fired at Reed.
“Dejoure Mercer did not stop shooting until Dreasjon stopped moving, until Dreasjon stopped breathing, until his life was gone and he was not here anymore,” Johnson said.
…
Reed’s mother, Demetree Wynn, filed a federal wrongful death lawsuit in June against the city, its police department and four officers, including Mercer. That suit alleges the department failed to adequately train, screen and supervise officers to prevent them from engaging in excessive or deadly force.
[Attorney Swaray] Conteh said Saturday that the family would now concentrate on the lawsuit rather than pressing for a federal civil rights investigation (AP 2-3).
[Paste the following on Google to see video and TV coverage]
New surveillance video shows moments before Dreasjon ...
Works cited:
Associated Press. “Attorneys ‘Disgusted’ No Charges against Indianapolis Cop.” The Garden Island, November 14, 2020. Net. https://www.thegardenisland.com/2020/...
Hackney, Suzette. “Hackney: New Video Raises Questions about IMPD Actions in Dreasjon Reed Shooting.” IndyStar, updated June 2, 2020. Net. https://www.indystar.com/story/opinio...
Mack, Justin L. “Dreasjon Reed Shooting: What We Know about the Indianapolis Police Shooting.” IndyStar, updated November 10, 2020. Net. https://www.indystar.com/story/news/c...
Sanchez, Rafael and Cox, Katie. “ New Surveillance Video Shows Moments before Dreasjon Reed Killed by IMPD Officer.” WRTV, June 17. 2020. Net. https://www.wrtv.com/news/america-in-...
Since then there have been multiple protests in Reed’s honor, an officer heard making a joke about Reed’s body has been disciplined, and video captured at the scene raises new questions about how IMPD handled the situation.
In the courts, Reed's family filed a federal lawsuit against the city and the IMPD; and a special prosecutor overseeing the case called for a grand jury to decide whether to indict the officer who shot Reed.
On Tuesday, November 10, the grand jury determined there was not enough probable cause to indict [Officer Dejoure] Mercer.
According to IMPD, the incident started on I-65 near 30th Street about 6 p.m., when IMPD Deputy Chief Kendale Adams saw a gray Toyota Corolla operated by Reed driving recklessly.
Police said Reed's vehicle had almost struck other vehicles while it exited the interstate.
Adams initiated a pursuit. Chief Randal Taylor, in another car behind Adams, aided.
Other officers joined the pursuit as Adams and Taylor dropped off, but by 6:10 p.m. an IMPD sergeant ordered that those other officers stop because of how fast the suspect was driving.
An officer [Mercer] then saw Reed driving eastbound on 62nd Street before parking at a business. Both the officer and Reed left their cars, and a foot pursuit began.
Police said there was a confrontation between the two near the intersection of West 62nd Street and Michigan Road that involved an exchange of gunfire, and the officer called in the shooting at 6:16 p.m.
Police said the officer used his service weapon after a Taser deployment was “ineffective.”
Fifteen casings were recovered at the scene. Police said they believe a weapon found at the scene belonged to Reed.
Additional information about the weapon has not been released by investigators.
In a Facebook Live video, a shirtless Reed is recording himself as he drives (Mack 2).
… Reed was … on his way to pick up his girlfriend and was driving her car. He called her and told her he had just awakened and was running late. Later, the girlfriend saw Reed on Facebook Live broadcasting the pursuit.
"Almost lost him y'all!" Reed says. "Almost got rid of his ass!"
A little while later, Reed is laughing and cheering as he thinks he lost the officer. "I'm not going to jail today!" he shouts (Hackney 3).
"You gotta look," he says, as he positions his camera phone to show what's behind the moving car. It appears to be a police car that's tailing him. "It's just one right now," he says to the camera.
After telling viewers that he thinks the officer is gone, Reed is trying to figure out where he has driven.
"What street is this? I'm going to park this (expletive) and get the (expletive) out," he says. "At 62nd and Michigan, somebody come get my stupid (expletive)!"
He goes on: "Please come get me. Please come get me!"
He then appears to park the car and leaves his vehicle. The video, at this point, is unclear.
But within 18 seconds, Reed is responding to another voice. He asks: "What'd you say?"
About 11 seconds go by when there is more inaudible shouting.
Then two pops can be heard. Reed appears to either drop his phone or collapse or both.
Then, as the camera points toward the sky, the sounds of more than a dozen other pops ring out.
By then, more than 4,000 people had tuned in to watch the Facebook Live video.
The audio appears to interrupt for a few moments. But when it returns, a voice repeats the phrase "Oh my God," while an orchestra of police sirens grows louder in the background.
Another recording of the Facebook Live appears to show the aftermath. The camera is still pointing to the sky, with more than 16,000 people watching.
A detective, who IMPD later identified as Officer Steven Scott, was recorded saying of Reed’s body: “I think it’s going to be closed casket, homie” — referring to a closed casket funeral for Reed.
IMPD Chief Randal Taylor called the comments "inappropriate" in the wake of the shooting, stating that the officer would be disciplined.
…
An eyewitness video obtained by attorneys representing Reed in June alleges that Reed was Tased and then shot in the back after running from officers.
The video … is of three women describing the events they say they witnessed on May 6.
“We saw it from the beginning to end,” one says. “We seen the whole thing,” another woman says (Mack 1-3).
“They just shot this man, y’all,” one unidentified woman said on the video. “The police just shot this dude on 62nd and Michigan, y’all.”
She continues: “They done shot this man, y’all in his back for no reason after they done already tased this (slur). He was on the ground shaking, and they still shot this man. That is so crazy.”
There’s back and forth conversation, and she adds: “They killed this man for no reason; shot this man in his back.”
[Elayne] Rivers, [of the law firm of Fatima Johnson, which represents Reed's family] said the women who witnessed the incident in the video I watched were hesitant to come forward because they feared for their safety but felt compelled in part because of the protests and unrest occurring in American cities grappling with police brutality and excessive use of force (Hackney 3).
A spokesperson for the Reed family attorney said the video disproves the police department's assertions that Reed fired at officers.
“It’s a blatant cover-up of an unjust murder in broad daylight," said Elayne Rivers ... “We have sufficient evidence that shows that the murder was completely unnecessary.”
Surveillance footage released in July shows the moment Reed stepped out of his car and fled before being fatally shot. The video, which does not show Reed being shot, was captured by security cameras at ACE Lock & Key in the 6100 block of North Michigan Road.
It shows a shirtless Reed parking his gray Toyota and exiting from the driver's side.
He glances behind him as he steps out of the car before running in the opposite direction. He looks back once more before he runs out of the camera's view.
Reed appears to be holding a white article of clothing in his left hand, and an object that cannot be identified by viewing the video in his right hand.
Moments later, an IMPD officer can be seen running after Reed.
The video, which is about 15 seconds long, has no audio and does not show any part of the interaction between Reed and the officer that ended in Reed's death.
…
Nearly three months after Reed's death, Reed’s mother Demetree Wynn was given her son’s autopsy report in early August.
The report was released after multiple public appeals by the family and protests demanding that the document be released to the public.
After reading the report, Wynn told media gathered outside the Marion County Coroner's Office for a scheduled a news conference that what the public has been told about her son by officials is a lie, and that fabrications continue in an effort to cast her son in a negative light.
"You can try if you want to, but you cannot do what you did to my son and tell me it was right ... I've been a nurse for 20 years. I'm not stupid, and don't insult my intelligence by assuming I don't know how to read," she said. "I know what it says, and if that was your child, I promise you ... you couldn't stand here and read it without wanting to throw up."
…
About 200 people gathered downtown the next morning in protest of the fatal shooting, and continued to protest that evening near the scene of the shooting.
It was at 62nd and Michigan that Reed's father, Jamie Reed, came face-to-face with the chief of police.
In an emotional, public conversation, Jamie Reed asked Taylor why his officers killed his son.
"Ya'll be murdering us black people for years," he said. "What's going on? What's the investigation? What's going on?"
Jamie Reed criticized the fact that IMPD doesn’t outfit its officers with dash or body cameras. His questions were immediately followed by cries from Jazmine Reed, Dreasjon's older sister.
"They Tased him and shot my little brother," she screamed as her father held her up. "They shot my little brother dead after he was already down.
"They took him from us."
Taylor kept his composure while flanked by protesters. Speaking into a microphone, he promised the family that the investigation would be open and impartial.
"I can't be here to debate the case," Taylor said. "There's no way I can do that. The only thing I can do is assure this family that an investigation is ongoing" (Mack 4-6).
Call 6 Investigates obtained the surveillance video just one day after a lawsuit was filed in Federal Court targeting the City of Indianapolis, IMPD, the police chief, a deputy chief and two officers.
The video, which is about 24 seconds in length, shows Reed stopping his vehicle behind ACE Lock & Key near 62nd Street and Michigan Road after leading police on a long chase — which he was also streaming on Facebook Live.
Reed can be seen getting out of his vehicle and running with what appears to be a white t-shirt in his left hand and two cell phones in his right hand, while metro police officer Dejoure Mercer comes running after him.
“How in the world could you shoot if you had a t-shirt in one hand and a phone in the other? There is no way. You can’t … You can’t shoot someone,” [Reed’s mother Demetree] Wynn said.
The Reed family’s lawyers say the video is helping them build their case against IMPD.
“To us, this shows it’s consistent with what we thought … he did not have the capacity to fire a gun at Officer Mercer because his hands were occupied and he was running,” Fatima Johnson, the family’s attorney told Rafael Sanchez.
Dreasjon was known as "Sean" on Facebook Live.
According to his mother, Reed changed his name after he was robbed in January 2019. Wynn says the incident changed him into a completely different person.
“That day changed my son,” Wynn said. “He got to the point he felt like he had to look over his shoulder constantly. That’s when he changed his name to Sean.”
Reed was working at Discount Tire at the time. On January 28, Wynn says Reed cashed his check and was later robbed, leaving him with “significant” injuries.
“I have led a modest life so my children can have a modest life or even a better life than I had,” Wynn said. “So they (the robbers) saw this kid with money and they tried to take it from him, and he was completely different after that.”
The Reed family’s legal team has not shied away from the fact that Reed has a criminal history. Reed had a previous traffic stop out of Marion County from September, and multiple videos on his social media account show him handling a weapon. But the legal team says that has nothing to do with why Reed was killed by police.
Reed, a Lawrence Central graduate, served in the Air Force from February through November 2017 (Sanchez and Cox 2, 4-5).
Special prosecutor Rosemary Khoury, who was appointed in June to oversee the investigation into the shooting, announced Tuesday that the grand jury had declined to indict Mercer, who is also Black. She said the grand jurors found there was insufficient evidence to indict or accuse Mercer of a crime but that she couldn’t discuss what evidence was presented because grand jury proceedings are secret.
…
Attorneys for the family of a 21-year-old Black man who was shot and killed in May by an Indianapolis police officer blasted the investigation on Saturday, saying a more thorough one could have led the grand jury to return a criminal indictment against the officer.
The lawyers for Dreasjon Reed’s family maintain that at least 10 eyewitnesses saw Officer Dejoure Mercer shoot Reed with his stun gun and then repeatedly with his firearm while Reed lay writhing on the ground.
Contrary to findings of a State Police investigation, those witnesses maintain that Reed didn’t fire on the officer, the lawyers said.
“Their testimony was consistent — Dreasjon was tased, he fell, he was shot while still shaking on the ground. He did not shoot back,” attorney Fatima Johnson said during an online news conference Saturday. She said she was “beyond disgusted” that Mercer won’t face charges — at one point repeating the word “again” 13 times to represent how many times Mercer fired at Reed.
“Dejoure Mercer did not stop shooting until Dreasjon stopped moving, until Dreasjon stopped breathing, until his life was gone and he was not here anymore,” Johnson said.
…
Reed’s mother, Demetree Wynn, filed a federal wrongful death lawsuit in June against the city, its police department and four officers, including Mercer. That suit alleges the department failed to adequately train, screen and supervise officers to prevent them from engaging in excessive or deadly force.
[Attorney Swaray] Conteh said Saturday that the family would now concentrate on the lawsuit rather than pressing for a federal civil rights investigation (AP 2-3).
[Paste the following on Google to see video and TV coverage]
New surveillance video shows moments before Dreasjon ...
Works cited:
Associated Press. “Attorneys ‘Disgusted’ No Charges against Indianapolis Cop.” The Garden Island, November 14, 2020. Net. https://www.thegardenisland.com/2020/...
Hackney, Suzette. “Hackney: New Video Raises Questions about IMPD Actions in Dreasjon Reed Shooting.” IndyStar, updated June 2, 2020. Net. https://www.indystar.com/story/opinio...
Mack, Justin L. “Dreasjon Reed Shooting: What We Know about the Indianapolis Police Shooting.” IndyStar, updated November 10, 2020. Net. https://www.indystar.com/story/news/c...
Sanchez, Rafael and Cox, Katie. “ New Surveillance Video Shows Moments before Dreasjon Reed Killed by IMPD Officer.” WRTV, June 17. 2020. Net. https://www.wrtv.com/news/america-in-...
June 27, 2021
Bad Apples -- 03--30--2020, Daniel Prude
Mr. Prude, a father of five children, lived in Chicago, where he grew up in a public housing complex. He, too, was one of five children, two of whom died in tragic incidents that left Mr. Prude rattled.
As an adult, Mr. Prude worked in warehouses and factories on Chicago’s Southwest Side, and friends remembered him working to help find jobs for others in the neighborhood. He lived with his sister, Tameshay, and grew close to her teenage sons.
In September 2018, one of Mr. Prude’s nephews shot and killed himself in the home they shared. Mr. Prude’s friends said that after the nephew’s death, he increasingly used phencyclidine, or PCP, and his behavior became more erratic. Before he traveled to Rochester, his sister had kicked him out of her home, after a series of paranoid outbursts.
Mr. Prude arrived in Rochester the day before his death. His brother, Joe, picked him up from a shelter in nearby Buffalo after Mr. Prude had been kicked off a train from Chicago, Joe Prude told the police.
Soon after his arrival, Mr. Prude began behaving erratically, accusing his brother of wanting to kill him. Joe Prude had his brother taken to a hospital for an evaluation, but he was released within hours and returned to Joe Prude’s home.
Mr. Prude appeared to have calmed down. But hours after his return, he asked for a cigarette, and when his brother rose to get one, he bolted out a back door, dressed only in a tank top and long johns. Joe Prude called the police for assistance.
Officers found Mr. Prude naked in the street shortly after 3 a.m. [March 23, 2020] They ordered him to lie on his belly, and Officer Mark Vaughn handcuffed him without incident or resistance (Gold and Closson 2).
But police body-camera footage and written reports indicate that the officers did little to try to soothe Mr. Prude as he grew increasingly frantic after his arrest. The officers did not call for mental health professionals to respond to the scene. Nor did they offer him a blanket or put him in a police car for warmth, though he had stripped off his clothes and was naked.
The officers instead ordered him to lie on his stomach, and he complied, according to body camera footage and police reports. Pointing a Taser, one officer told Mr. Prude to “Chill out, man, don’t move, all right man?” before handcuffing him with relative ease at 3:16 a.m.
For three minutes, Mr. Prude made delusional comments as the officers stood around him. Then he sat upright and yelled, “Give me that mask, man!” and spat on the ground.
An officer responded by putting a so-called spit hood over Mr. Prude’s head from behind, which seemed to increase his panic (Sandoval 4).
Mr. Prude began rolling in the road, asking for the hood to be removed. Then, after shouting “give me the gun” to officers, he tried to stand again, the footage showed. Three officers pinned him to the ground, with Officer Vaughn holding his head to the pavement.
Mr. Prude pleaded to be let up, but he seemed to struggle to breathe, according to the footage. His words turned to gurgles, then stopped. After two minutes, Mr. Prude was no longer moving or speaking, and an officer asked, “You good, man?”
When paramedics arrived, Mr. Prude had no heartbeat, and they began CPR. He was revived and taken to a hospital.
Mr. Prude died on March 30 after he was removed from life support, seven days after he was detained.
The Monroe County medical examiner ruled Mr. Prude’s death a homicide that was caused by “complications of asphyxia in the setting of physical restraint,” according to an autopsy report.
The report also said that “excited delirium” and acute intoxication by PCP were contributing factors in his death.
After Mr. Prude’s death, an unofficial police narrative took hold that Mr. Prude had suffered an overdose while in police custody.
The Rochester Police Department offered no public comment in Mr. Prude’s death and for months treated it as an overdose.
…
Since the release of the footage in September, which was obtained through a public records request, Mr. Prude’s family has accused officials of covering up his death to protect the police officers involved.
Seven officers involved in the encounter with Mr. Prude were suspended on Sept. 3, the day after the release of the body camera footage and more than five months after Mr. Prude’s death. Two days after that, New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, set up a grand jury in the fall to consider evidence in Mr. Prude’s death (Gold and Closson 2-4).
Lawyers for the seven officers involved in Mr. Prude’s arrest said on Thursday that the officers knew Mr. Prude had taken phencyclidine, or PCP, and as a result they thought some techniques employed with mentally ill people would not work.
“Many in the media and elsewhere have cast this incident as a mental health event. It was not,” said Matthew Rich, a lawyer for four of the officers. “It was an event that involved the use of a dangerous drug with very serious side effects.”
Still, internal police documents show that from the moment that the officers responded to the 911 call on March 23, they knew that they were dealing with a so-called mental hygiene case involving a person who had not committed a serious crime but instead seemed to be experiencing a psychotic episode.
…
Training manuals in Rochester do not specify under what circumstances officers are allowed to use a spit hood, a loose breathable fabric sack that can be placed over a person’s head to prevent biting or spitting.
The city and county do have mental health professionals on call whom the Rochester police can summon in such situations, but it is not mandatory for officers to do so.
“They were not dispatched,” said Willie Lightfoot Jr., chairman of the City Council’s Public Safety Committee. “I don’t know why. I am looking for answers.”
The four lawyers representing the officers said they had followed their training precisely, using pinning techniques designed to avoid blocking airways and waiting for an ambulance as they had been taught to do in such cases. They added that mental health experts do not usually accompany officers on such calls.
The lawyers said that because their clients knew Mr. Prude was high on PCP, they relied on common physical maneuvers used to control people on drugs rather than softer methods like talking, which are often employed in mental hygiene calls.
The officers had also been taught that PCP can cause a body to overheat, so putting a blanket over Mr. Prude “would had done more harm than good,” said James Nobles, a lawyer for one of the officers.
The officers put a hood over Mr. Prude’s head to protect themselves from possible exposure to the coronavirus, but the hood’s mesh fabric should not have impeded Mr. Prude’s breathing.
“You can see through it, you can hear through it, you can breathe through it,” Mr. Nobles said, donning a so-called spit-sock at a news conference. “I can breathe better through this than I can through any mask that I’ve worn to prevent the coronavirus.”
The lawyers asked that the officers be reinstated. “We offer our sympathies to the family of Mr. Prude, but the officers involved in this incident did not cause his death,” Mr. Rich said.
Michael Mazzeo, president of the union representing about 700 Rochester officers, said that after viewing police footage of the arrest, he believed that the officers appear to have followed training protocols.
Mr. Mazzeo added that if training needs to change, “then change it. But don’t blame the officers.”
But Cedric Alexander, a former deputy police chief in Rochester, said the body camera footage demonstrated that the officers mishandled the arrest.
“Once they got him secured, and clearly he was having some crisis, they really should have gotten him off the ground, gotten him into that vehicle, and then taken him immediately into a mental health facility for evaluation,” Mr. Alexander said (Sandoval 5-6).
New York Attorney General Letitia James says a grand jury voted that no charges will be filed against Rochester police officers in connection with the March 2020 death of Daniel Prude, a Black man who was in the midst of a mental health crisis during his encounter with the police.
James initiated an investigation into the fatal encounter between police and Prude, who later died of asphyxiation, after his family uncovered video footage showing officers pinning him to the ground while he was in handcuffs and with a mesh hood over his head.
Police body camera footage of the arrest sparked outrage when it was published in September, prompting days of protests and accusations of a cover-up by city officials.
"We concluded that there was sufficient evidence surrounding Mr. Prude's death to warrant presenting the case to a grand jury, and we presented the most comprehensive case possible," James said in a statement announcing the decision — a culmination of a months-long investigation by the attorney general's office.
James said that the 41-year-old Prude was in the throes of a mental health crisis when police were called to the scene and that "what he needed was compassion, care, and help from trained professionals."
"Tragically, he received none of those things," she wrote.
James added: "The current laws on deadly force have created a system that utterly and abjectly failed Mr. Prude and so many others before him. Serious reform is needed, not only at the Rochester Police Department, but to our criminal justice system as a whole."
She urged the public to "respect this decision" despite feelings of injustice or disappointment (Treisman “New York” 1).
[March 5, 2020]
County Court Judge Karen Bailey Turner's order allowing the grand jury records to be unsealed is publicly released. In it, she notes the need for transparency with the case and says there is, as required by law, "compelling and particularized" reasons for taking the largely unprecedented step of unsealing grand jury records in New York (Craig and Sharp 3).
[The following information was revealed]
Prosecutors overseeing a grand jury investigation into the death of Daniel Prude last year in Rochester, New York, undercut the case for criminal charges with testimony from a medical expert who said three police officers who held Prude to the ground until he stopped breathing didn't do anything wrong.
Dr. Gary Vilke told the grand jury that Prude, a 41-year-old Black man, died of a heart attack caused by the medical phenomenon known as excited delirium. He said the officers' actions, which included placing a hood over Prude's head, had no impact on his breathing, according to transcripts of the proceedings made public Friday.
A medical examiner [had] ruled Prude's death a homicide due to asphyxiation from a physical restraint, with use of the drug PCP as a factor. There is no universally accepted definition of excited delirium and researchers have said it's not well understood.
Vilke, a University of California, San Diego professor who routinely testifies on behalf of police, said that restraining Prude during the encounter in the early hours of March 23, 2020, may have been best for his safety given his condition.
Asked by a grand juror if anything could have been done better, Vilke responded: "I wouldn't do anything differently."
The grand jury ultimately rejected criminally negligent homicide charges against the three officers by a 15-5 vote, the transcripts [revealed to the public ] show.
…
Vilke told the grand jury that drug use and mental illness contribute to excited delirium, which can make people vulnerable to cardiac arrest. He said he didn't think the spit hood was a factor or that the officers obstructed Prude's breathing.
"So, all those things allow me to be able to be comfortable saying my opinion is that none of the officers, their impact, individually or collectively, would have caused or contributed to that cardiac arrest," Vilke said.
"And, to go even one step further, if he had been allowed to get up and run around ... that would actually be more detrimental than being held down."
…
At one point, prosecutor Michael Smith [did draw] … grand jurors' attention to a 2015 training bulletin that explained to officers that "positional asphyxia may occur when the position of the person's body interferes with respiration, resulting in serious injury or death" and that the risk of such asphyxia "can increase when the person is restrained in a prone position" (Prosecutor’s 1-2).
[March 8, 2021]
The children of Daniel Prude are suing the city of Rochester, N.Y. and at least six police officers in federal court, alleging civil rights violations, gross negligence and wrongful death. The 41-year-old Black man died of asphyxiation last March after being restrained by police while he was in the midst of a mental health crisis.
Attorneys representing Nathaniel McFarland, one of Prude's five children and the administrator of his estate, filed the lawsuit on Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York.
…
The filing comes nearly a year after Prude's death, and two weeks after New York Attorney General Letitia James said a grand jury voted not to indict any of the officers involved.
Six Rochester police officers are named in the lawsuit: Mark Vaughn, Troy Taladay, Francisco Santiago, Michael Magri, Andrew Specksgoor and Josiah Harris. The defendants also include "other as-yet-unidentified Rochester police officers."
…
The lawsuit details how officers allegedly physically and verbally abused Prude instead of offering him much-needed assistance, for instance "chatting casually and making jokes at [his] expense" while he was lying on the ground, as well as laughing and repeating his words back to him "in a mocking way" as he "was rambling incoherently." It adds that the officers observing the abuse did not attempt to intervene.
The complaint also describes how, after pinning Prude down until he could no longer be heard gasping for air, officers were slow to notify the emergency medical technician on the scene and waited several minutes to uncuff his hands, rendering initial CPR efforts ineffective.
It describes the city's "broken" system for probing and disciplining incidents of excessive force, in which it says accused officers are investigated by fellow police officers and the police chief deemed "nearly every use of force incident ... justified, no matter how plainly egregious the conduct."
"As a result of the City's failure to meaningfully investigate or discipline officers who engage in excessive force, RPD officers can mete out force against citizens with impunity and take comfort in the fact their acts of violence will never be meaningfully scrutinized, even when those acts are captured on video," the complaint alleges.
Another section of the filing alleges that city policymakers did not implement appropriate training that would have prepared officers to "mitigate rather than aggravate the risk of harm" to Prude during his encounter with them.
Describing those policy failures as "deeply entrenched" the lawsuit notes that such incidents have continued even in the wake of the massive protests that followed the release of Prude's arrest footage last fall. At the end of January [2021], Rochester police officers handcuffed and pepper-sprayed a 9-year-old girl while responding to a family disturbance call.
More recently, as member station WXXI reported, an officer was placed on administrative leave after the department on Friday released body camera footage of a February incident in which a Black woman was pepper-sprayed while she was with her young child (Treisman “Daniel” 1, 3).
[Paste the following on Google to watch the 4 minute 44 second edited video of Prude’s encounter with Rochester police. There are longer versions of the encounter that include graphic language uttered by Prude that are quite crude – therefore, I offer this edited version]
Body cam video shows Rochester police arresting Daniel Prude
Works cited:
Craig, Gary and Sharp, Brian. “How Daniel Prude Died and What Happened Afterward? A Timeline of Events.” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, updated March 24, 2021. Net. https://www.democratandchronicle.com/...
Gold, Michael and Closson, Troy. “What We Know about Daniel Prude’s Case and Death.” The New York Times, April 16, 2021. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/article/what-...
“Prosecutor's Expert Told Grand Jury Police Did Not Kill Daniel Prude.” CBS News, April 17, 2021. Net. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/daniel-p...
Sandoval, Edgar. “Daniel Prude Was in ‘Mental Distress.’ Police Treated Him like a Suspect.” The New York Times, updated April 16, 2021. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/09/ny...
Treisman, Rachel. “Daniel Prude's Family Files Wrongful Death Lawsuit against Rochester Police Officers.” NPR, March 9, 2021. Net. https://www.npr.org/2021/03/09/975304...
Treisman, Rachel. “New York Grand Jury Votes Not To Indict Rochester Officers in Daniel Prude Case.” NPR, February 23, 2021. Net. https://www.npr.org/2021/02/23/970580...
As an adult, Mr. Prude worked in warehouses and factories on Chicago’s Southwest Side, and friends remembered him working to help find jobs for others in the neighborhood. He lived with his sister, Tameshay, and grew close to her teenage sons.
In September 2018, one of Mr. Prude’s nephews shot and killed himself in the home they shared. Mr. Prude’s friends said that after the nephew’s death, he increasingly used phencyclidine, or PCP, and his behavior became more erratic. Before he traveled to Rochester, his sister had kicked him out of her home, after a series of paranoid outbursts.
Mr. Prude arrived in Rochester the day before his death. His brother, Joe, picked him up from a shelter in nearby Buffalo after Mr. Prude had been kicked off a train from Chicago, Joe Prude told the police.
Soon after his arrival, Mr. Prude began behaving erratically, accusing his brother of wanting to kill him. Joe Prude had his brother taken to a hospital for an evaluation, but he was released within hours and returned to Joe Prude’s home.
Mr. Prude appeared to have calmed down. But hours after his return, he asked for a cigarette, and when his brother rose to get one, he bolted out a back door, dressed only in a tank top and long johns. Joe Prude called the police for assistance.
Officers found Mr. Prude naked in the street shortly after 3 a.m. [March 23, 2020] They ordered him to lie on his belly, and Officer Mark Vaughn handcuffed him without incident or resistance (Gold and Closson 2).
But police body-camera footage and written reports indicate that the officers did little to try to soothe Mr. Prude as he grew increasingly frantic after his arrest. The officers did not call for mental health professionals to respond to the scene. Nor did they offer him a blanket or put him in a police car for warmth, though he had stripped off his clothes and was naked.
The officers instead ordered him to lie on his stomach, and he complied, according to body camera footage and police reports. Pointing a Taser, one officer told Mr. Prude to “Chill out, man, don’t move, all right man?” before handcuffing him with relative ease at 3:16 a.m.
For three minutes, Mr. Prude made delusional comments as the officers stood around him. Then he sat upright and yelled, “Give me that mask, man!” and spat on the ground.
An officer responded by putting a so-called spit hood over Mr. Prude’s head from behind, which seemed to increase his panic (Sandoval 4).
Mr. Prude began rolling in the road, asking for the hood to be removed. Then, after shouting “give me the gun” to officers, he tried to stand again, the footage showed. Three officers pinned him to the ground, with Officer Vaughn holding his head to the pavement.
Mr. Prude pleaded to be let up, but he seemed to struggle to breathe, according to the footage. His words turned to gurgles, then stopped. After two minutes, Mr. Prude was no longer moving or speaking, and an officer asked, “You good, man?”
When paramedics arrived, Mr. Prude had no heartbeat, and they began CPR. He was revived and taken to a hospital.
Mr. Prude died on March 30 after he was removed from life support, seven days after he was detained.
The Monroe County medical examiner ruled Mr. Prude’s death a homicide that was caused by “complications of asphyxia in the setting of physical restraint,” according to an autopsy report.
The report also said that “excited delirium” and acute intoxication by PCP were contributing factors in his death.
After Mr. Prude’s death, an unofficial police narrative took hold that Mr. Prude had suffered an overdose while in police custody.
The Rochester Police Department offered no public comment in Mr. Prude’s death and for months treated it as an overdose.
…
Since the release of the footage in September, which was obtained through a public records request, Mr. Prude’s family has accused officials of covering up his death to protect the police officers involved.
Seven officers involved in the encounter with Mr. Prude were suspended on Sept. 3, the day after the release of the body camera footage and more than five months after Mr. Prude’s death. Two days after that, New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, set up a grand jury in the fall to consider evidence in Mr. Prude’s death (Gold and Closson 2-4).
Lawyers for the seven officers involved in Mr. Prude’s arrest said on Thursday that the officers knew Mr. Prude had taken phencyclidine, or PCP, and as a result they thought some techniques employed with mentally ill people would not work.
“Many in the media and elsewhere have cast this incident as a mental health event. It was not,” said Matthew Rich, a lawyer for four of the officers. “It was an event that involved the use of a dangerous drug with very serious side effects.”
Still, internal police documents show that from the moment that the officers responded to the 911 call on March 23, they knew that they were dealing with a so-called mental hygiene case involving a person who had not committed a serious crime but instead seemed to be experiencing a psychotic episode.
…
Training manuals in Rochester do not specify under what circumstances officers are allowed to use a spit hood, a loose breathable fabric sack that can be placed over a person’s head to prevent biting or spitting.
The city and county do have mental health professionals on call whom the Rochester police can summon in such situations, but it is not mandatory for officers to do so.
“They were not dispatched,” said Willie Lightfoot Jr., chairman of the City Council’s Public Safety Committee. “I don’t know why. I am looking for answers.”
The four lawyers representing the officers said they had followed their training precisely, using pinning techniques designed to avoid blocking airways and waiting for an ambulance as they had been taught to do in such cases. They added that mental health experts do not usually accompany officers on such calls.
The lawyers said that because their clients knew Mr. Prude was high on PCP, they relied on common physical maneuvers used to control people on drugs rather than softer methods like talking, which are often employed in mental hygiene calls.
The officers had also been taught that PCP can cause a body to overheat, so putting a blanket over Mr. Prude “would had done more harm than good,” said James Nobles, a lawyer for one of the officers.
The officers put a hood over Mr. Prude’s head to protect themselves from possible exposure to the coronavirus, but the hood’s mesh fabric should not have impeded Mr. Prude’s breathing.
“You can see through it, you can hear through it, you can breathe through it,” Mr. Nobles said, donning a so-called spit-sock at a news conference. “I can breathe better through this than I can through any mask that I’ve worn to prevent the coronavirus.”
The lawyers asked that the officers be reinstated. “We offer our sympathies to the family of Mr. Prude, but the officers involved in this incident did not cause his death,” Mr. Rich said.
Michael Mazzeo, president of the union representing about 700 Rochester officers, said that after viewing police footage of the arrest, he believed that the officers appear to have followed training protocols.
Mr. Mazzeo added that if training needs to change, “then change it. But don’t blame the officers.”
But Cedric Alexander, a former deputy police chief in Rochester, said the body camera footage demonstrated that the officers mishandled the arrest.
“Once they got him secured, and clearly he was having some crisis, they really should have gotten him off the ground, gotten him into that vehicle, and then taken him immediately into a mental health facility for evaluation,” Mr. Alexander said (Sandoval 5-6).
New York Attorney General Letitia James says a grand jury voted that no charges will be filed against Rochester police officers in connection with the March 2020 death of Daniel Prude, a Black man who was in the midst of a mental health crisis during his encounter with the police.
James initiated an investigation into the fatal encounter between police and Prude, who later died of asphyxiation, after his family uncovered video footage showing officers pinning him to the ground while he was in handcuffs and with a mesh hood over his head.
Police body camera footage of the arrest sparked outrage when it was published in September, prompting days of protests and accusations of a cover-up by city officials.
"We concluded that there was sufficient evidence surrounding Mr. Prude's death to warrant presenting the case to a grand jury, and we presented the most comprehensive case possible," James said in a statement announcing the decision — a culmination of a months-long investigation by the attorney general's office.
James said that the 41-year-old Prude was in the throes of a mental health crisis when police were called to the scene and that "what he needed was compassion, care, and help from trained professionals."
"Tragically, he received none of those things," she wrote.
James added: "The current laws on deadly force have created a system that utterly and abjectly failed Mr. Prude and so many others before him. Serious reform is needed, not only at the Rochester Police Department, but to our criminal justice system as a whole."
She urged the public to "respect this decision" despite feelings of injustice or disappointment (Treisman “New York” 1).
[March 5, 2020]
County Court Judge Karen Bailey Turner's order allowing the grand jury records to be unsealed is publicly released. In it, she notes the need for transparency with the case and says there is, as required by law, "compelling and particularized" reasons for taking the largely unprecedented step of unsealing grand jury records in New York (Craig and Sharp 3).
[The following information was revealed]
Prosecutors overseeing a grand jury investigation into the death of Daniel Prude last year in Rochester, New York, undercut the case for criminal charges with testimony from a medical expert who said three police officers who held Prude to the ground until he stopped breathing didn't do anything wrong.
Dr. Gary Vilke told the grand jury that Prude, a 41-year-old Black man, died of a heart attack caused by the medical phenomenon known as excited delirium. He said the officers' actions, which included placing a hood over Prude's head, had no impact on his breathing, according to transcripts of the proceedings made public Friday.
A medical examiner [had] ruled Prude's death a homicide due to asphyxiation from a physical restraint, with use of the drug PCP as a factor. There is no universally accepted definition of excited delirium and researchers have said it's not well understood.
Vilke, a University of California, San Diego professor who routinely testifies on behalf of police, said that restraining Prude during the encounter in the early hours of March 23, 2020, may have been best for his safety given his condition.
Asked by a grand juror if anything could have been done better, Vilke responded: "I wouldn't do anything differently."
The grand jury ultimately rejected criminally negligent homicide charges against the three officers by a 15-5 vote, the transcripts [revealed to the public ] show.
…
Vilke told the grand jury that drug use and mental illness contribute to excited delirium, which can make people vulnerable to cardiac arrest. He said he didn't think the spit hood was a factor or that the officers obstructed Prude's breathing.
"So, all those things allow me to be able to be comfortable saying my opinion is that none of the officers, their impact, individually or collectively, would have caused or contributed to that cardiac arrest," Vilke said.
"And, to go even one step further, if he had been allowed to get up and run around ... that would actually be more detrimental than being held down."
…
At one point, prosecutor Michael Smith [did draw] … grand jurors' attention to a 2015 training bulletin that explained to officers that "positional asphyxia may occur when the position of the person's body interferes with respiration, resulting in serious injury or death" and that the risk of such asphyxia "can increase when the person is restrained in a prone position" (Prosecutor’s 1-2).
[March 8, 2021]
The children of Daniel Prude are suing the city of Rochester, N.Y. and at least six police officers in federal court, alleging civil rights violations, gross negligence and wrongful death. The 41-year-old Black man died of asphyxiation last March after being restrained by police while he was in the midst of a mental health crisis.
Attorneys representing Nathaniel McFarland, one of Prude's five children and the administrator of his estate, filed the lawsuit on Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York.
…
The filing comes nearly a year after Prude's death, and two weeks after New York Attorney General Letitia James said a grand jury voted not to indict any of the officers involved.
Six Rochester police officers are named in the lawsuit: Mark Vaughn, Troy Taladay, Francisco Santiago, Michael Magri, Andrew Specksgoor and Josiah Harris. The defendants also include "other as-yet-unidentified Rochester police officers."
…
The lawsuit details how officers allegedly physically and verbally abused Prude instead of offering him much-needed assistance, for instance "chatting casually and making jokes at [his] expense" while he was lying on the ground, as well as laughing and repeating his words back to him "in a mocking way" as he "was rambling incoherently." It adds that the officers observing the abuse did not attempt to intervene.
The complaint also describes how, after pinning Prude down until he could no longer be heard gasping for air, officers were slow to notify the emergency medical technician on the scene and waited several minutes to uncuff his hands, rendering initial CPR efforts ineffective.
It describes the city's "broken" system for probing and disciplining incidents of excessive force, in which it says accused officers are investigated by fellow police officers and the police chief deemed "nearly every use of force incident ... justified, no matter how plainly egregious the conduct."
"As a result of the City's failure to meaningfully investigate or discipline officers who engage in excessive force, RPD officers can mete out force against citizens with impunity and take comfort in the fact their acts of violence will never be meaningfully scrutinized, even when those acts are captured on video," the complaint alleges.
Another section of the filing alleges that city policymakers did not implement appropriate training that would have prepared officers to "mitigate rather than aggravate the risk of harm" to Prude during his encounter with them.
Describing those policy failures as "deeply entrenched" the lawsuit notes that such incidents have continued even in the wake of the massive protests that followed the release of Prude's arrest footage last fall. At the end of January [2021], Rochester police officers handcuffed and pepper-sprayed a 9-year-old girl while responding to a family disturbance call.
More recently, as member station WXXI reported, an officer was placed on administrative leave after the department on Friday released body camera footage of a February incident in which a Black woman was pepper-sprayed while she was with her young child (Treisman “Daniel” 1, 3).
[Paste the following on Google to watch the 4 minute 44 second edited video of Prude’s encounter with Rochester police. There are longer versions of the encounter that include graphic language uttered by Prude that are quite crude – therefore, I offer this edited version]
Body cam video shows Rochester police arresting Daniel Prude
Works cited:
Craig, Gary and Sharp, Brian. “How Daniel Prude Died and What Happened Afterward? A Timeline of Events.” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, updated March 24, 2021. Net. https://www.democratandchronicle.com/...
Gold, Michael and Closson, Troy. “What We Know about Daniel Prude’s Case and Death.” The New York Times, April 16, 2021. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/article/what-...
“Prosecutor's Expert Told Grand Jury Police Did Not Kill Daniel Prude.” CBS News, April 17, 2021. Net. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/daniel-p...
Sandoval, Edgar. “Daniel Prude Was in ‘Mental Distress.’ Police Treated Him like a Suspect.” The New York Times, updated April 16, 2021. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/09/ny...
Treisman, Rachel. “Daniel Prude's Family Files Wrongful Death Lawsuit against Rochester Police Officers.” NPR, March 9, 2021. Net. https://www.npr.org/2021/03/09/975304...
Treisman, Rachel. “New York Grand Jury Votes Not To Indict Rochester Officers in Daniel Prude Case.” NPR, February 23, 2021. Net. https://www.npr.org/2021/02/23/970580...
June 24, 2021
Bad Apples -- 03--13--2020, Breonna Taylor
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Breonna Taylor had just done four overnight shifts at the hospital where she worked as an emergency room technician. To let off some steam, she and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, planned a date night: dinner at a steakhouse, followed by a movie in bed.
Usually, they headed to his apartment, where he lived alone and she had left a toothbrush and a flat iron. But that night, they went to the small unit she shared with her younger sister, who was away on a trip. It was dark when the couple pulled into the parking lot, then closed the door to Apartment 4 behind them.
This was the year of big plans for the 26-year-old: Her home was brimming with the Post-it notes and envelopes on which she wrote her goals. She had just bought a new car. Next on the list: buying her own home. And trying to have a baby with Mr. Walker. They had already chosen a name.
She fell asleep next to him just after midnight on March 13, the movie still playing. “The last thing she said was, ‘Turn off the TV,’” he said in an interview. (Callimachi 1).
They'd gotten back about 9 p.m., after eating at Texas Roadhouse and giving a friend's kids rides across town. It was Taylor's first night off after a few consecutive days with 12-hour shifts as an ER technician, Walker told investigators in a recorded interview hours after the shooting.
She fell asleep as the movie was still playing, and Walker wasn't far behind, he told police in that interview.
"Literally, the night was over. If nobody knocked, we would've been asleep within 10 to 15 minutes," he said.
Meanwhile, about 10 p.m., [Sgt. Jonathan] Mattingly and other officers were being briefed on the plan to execute a search warrant on Taylor's apartment as part of a larger narcotics investigation, Mattingly said in an interview after the shooting.
He said they were told that Taylor wasn't believed to have children or animals, "but they weren't sure."
Taylor "should be there alone, because they knew where their target was," Mattingly told investigators. Mattingly said he was unsure why the warrant was requested as a no-knock but he was then told to knock and announce at Taylor's door.
A man named Jamarcus Glover, who was also named on the search warrant for Taylor's apartment, was arrested the same night, 10 miles away at a house on Elliott Avenue in the Russell neighborhood.
…
[Joshua] Jaynes, a member of a different unit in Mattingly's division, had requested the warrant for Taylor's apartment and done much of the surveillance and investigation himself, according to the affidavit.
Another officer was responsible for watching Taylor's apartment earlier that night, Mattingly said.
At 12:40 a.m., police officers were in place outside of Taylor's apartment. Mattingly said he began to bang on the front door.
Inside, Walker said he and Taylor were in her bedroom when they heard the knocking.
They called out, asking who it was, but got no response, Walker said. He said later he thought it might have been Taylor's former boyfriend [Glover].
He didn't suspect it could have been police, according to his interview hours later.
Outside, Mattingly heard no response and banged on the door again, later telling investigators: "At that point we start announcing ourselves 'Police! Please come to the door. Police! We have a search warrant.'"
Mattingly estimated he banged on the door "six or seven different time periods," which "seems like an eternity when you're up at a doorway."
The knocking lasted 45 seconds to a minute, he estimated, before police decided to use a battering ram to force their way into Taylor's apartment.
An officer hit the door with the ram three times before it opened, Mattingly said.
Inside, Walker grabbed his gun, "scared to death," as both pulled on clothes and went to answer the door. They left the bedroom and hadn't made it down the hallway before the door "comes off its hinges," he said.
Walker told police he fired one shot as a warning, aimed at the ground, still unable to see and unclear on who was at the door.
"But you can't see anybody, though, when the door comes off its hinges," Walker told investigators. "It happened fast, like an explosion. Boom, one shot. Then all of the sudden, there's a whole lot of shots. We both drop to the ground. But I just hear her (Breonna Taylor) screaming."
Mattingly told investigators that while he was in the doorway, he saw a man and a woman in the hallway. Then, there was a shot.
"And as I turned the doorway, he's in a stretched-out position with his hands, with a gun," Mattingly said. "And as soon as I clear, he fires. Boom."
Mattingly felt a pain in his leg. He fired four times.
He went around the door and fired two more rounds (Duvall and Costello 4).
A little after 12:35 a.m., the officers lined up in the breezeway. Sergeant Mattingly was closest to the apartment door. Detective Myles Cosgrove was next to him, and farther back were Detective Brett Hankison, Lt. Shawn Hoover and others.
Apartment 4 sits in a complex of two-bedroom units covered in beige vinyl siding. Ms. Taylor’s 950-square-foot apartment was on the ground level, and a floor-to-ceiling sliding-glass door gave way to her patio, which faced the parking lot. Blinds covered the door and the window.
“When we all got up in line, I knocked on the door,” Sergeant Mattingly told investigators.
“Our intent was to give her plenty of time to come to the door because we said she was probably there alone,” he said. “Banged. No response. Banged on it again. No response. At that point we started announcing ourself, ‘Police, please come to the door!’”
On the other side of the locked door was a 25- to 30-foot hallway, cutting through the living room, passing her sister’s empty bedroom and ending at the door to Ms. Taylor’s bedroom.
The loud banging jarred her awake. “It scared her to death,” Mr. Walker said in his statement to the investigators. “First thing she said was, ‘Who is it?’ No response,” he recounted. “Another knock at the door. She’s like, ‘Who is it?’ Loud at the top of her lungs. No response.”
They jumped out of bed and rushed to get dressed. In the confusion, Mr. Walker put on his girlfriend’s pants.
...
Among the officers outside her door were men who had been trained by David James, the city council president. During his 19-year career as a police officer, he had instructed recruits at the local training academy about “dynamic entry.” Especially when executing a warrant at night, he said, he told them to yell “police” at the top of their lungs, specifically so that occupants would not mistake them for an intruder.
“So everyone can hear,” he added.
“Neighbors. People down the street.”
By nearly all accounts, that did not happen at Apartment 4.
Almost a dozen neighbors interviewed for this article said that they never heard the police calling out, including Clifford Tudor, who had stepped outside to smoke a cigarette. Only one person, a truck driver coming off his shift, said he heard the officers shouting. Aaron Julue Sarpee had left his 2-year-old in the care of the woman living directly above Ms. Taylor. Before the police lined up, he had run upstairs and picked up his sleeping toddler. He had just stepped out onto the exterior staircase when he saw the officers.
Before they ordered him to go back inside, Mr. Sarpee said, he heard at least three loud bangs as they knocked on Ms. Taylor’s door, and heard one or more officers scream “Police!” — a single time. He is emphatic that they said it only once.
…
“As soon as the shot hit, I could feel the heat in my leg,” Sergeant Mattingly recounted in his statement. “And so I just returned fire,” he said, adding that he shot at least four rounds immediately, and another two soon after.
Behind him, Detective Cosgrove also returned fire into the hallway, according to police statements.
The bullet tore through the sergeant’s thigh, piercing the femoral artery. He scooted out onto the breezeway, then stumbled into the parking lot, where he collapsed, he recalled.
Meanwhile, a barrage of bullets ripped into the apartment from another direction.
Detective Hankison had left the formation near the door, run into the parking lot and begun firing through the covered patio door and window, according to police records.
Unlike the two officers standing in the doorway, the 44-year-old detective probably has no self-defense claim, several local officials said. The bullets he shot from the parking lot tore diagonally through Ms. Taylor’s apartment and into Apartment 3 directly behind it, where a pregnant woman and a 5-year-old were sleeping.
His behavior was reckless, the department concluded, because he shot 10 rounds blindly, and it was not directed against someone who posed an immediate threat. He was fired in June. “I find your conduct to be a shock to the conscience,” the interim police chief said in a termination letter.
In nearly two decades with the department, Detective Hankison had received multiple complaints of excessive use of force as well as sexual misconduct, according to portions of his personnel file obtained by The Times.
Most of the complaints appear to have been dismissed or not considered credible.
One record showed he was reprimanded at least three times: for improperly charging a man with having a concealed weapon in 2005; for trying to extract crack cocaine from a suspect’s mouth and failing to call an ambulance; and for causing a car wreck in 2016 that fractured the spine of another officer.
… Sergeant Mattingly and Detective Cosgrove have been placed on administrative leave, according to a department spokeswoman, Jessie Halladay.
Mr. Walker was charged with attempted murder for shooting Sergeant Mattingly; the charges were later dropped.
Because no ambulance had been staged, the police spent the next critical minutes trying to get medical help for the injured officer.
“I kept going, ‘Where’s E.M.S.?’” said Sergeant Mattingly.
Radio logs paint a scene of chaos. An ambulance rushing to the apartment complex went to the wrong entrance, blocked by a locked gate. On the radio, officers yelled instructions to ram the vehicle through the gate. But the ambulance didn’t get past the crushed metal. Colleagues tried to put Sergeant Mattingly in the back seat of a squad car, but he couldn’t bend his leg. They tried to put him in the trunk, but it was blocked by a gun case. Finally, they laid him atop the trunk.
As officers outside scrambled to help him, no aid was rendered to Ms. Taylor. It wasn’t until 12:47 a.m. that emergency personnel realized that she was seriously wounded, after her boyfriend called 911 (Callimachi 13-18).
Ms. Taylor had been focused on her future with Mr. Walker. But her history with 30-year-old Jamarcus Glover, an on-again off-again boyfriend who had spent years in prison, was hard to escape, even after she cut ties with him a month before the raid.
…
Christopher 2X, a longtime community organizer whom Ms. Taylor’s family turned to after her death, said her relationship with Mr. Glover had to be acknowledged. “You can’t just look away from it and act like it’s not there,” he said. “My hope is courageous people will say: ‘There it is — it’s what it is — but was this shooting justified? She should be alive today.’”
…
By the end of 2019, the city had taken possession of nearly half of the vacant buildings and was working to acquire the rest — among them 2424 Elliott, 2425 Elliott, 2426 Elliott and 2427 Elliott. There, according to court records, Jamarcus Glover and his associates operated a series of “trap houses,” where they stashed crack cocaine, marijuana and prescription pills.
An informant sent inside No. 2424 reported that six men were packaging crack cocaine and passing it to customers through a mail slot in a security door.
On Dec. 30, days after the new squad was started, police executed search warrants at Nos. 2424 and 2426 and a house a few blocks away, seizing eight guns, a surveillance system and 4.9 grams of crack, according to a police log. Mr. Glover was arrested, along with five others, and soon released on bail.
On Jan. 2, Detective Joshua Jaynes of the Place-Based Investigations unit asked for a camera to be installed overlooking the 2400 block of Elliott, according to an internal report he signed. Within an hour, it had captured between 15 and 20 cars briefly stopping in front of No. 2424. “Indicative of narcotics trafficking,” his report says.
At 5:53 p.m., a white Chevrolet Impala pulled up in front of the house, and Mr. Glover exited. The car was registered to Breonna Taylor, the report says.
Over the next two months, the new squad surveilled the Elliott addresses where Mr. Glover operated, and Ms. Taylor’s apartment 10 miles away. A GPS device the police put on Mr. Glover’s car tracked it to her apartment complex six times, according to the internal report. And Ms. Taylor’s new car — a Dodge Charger — was seen at the trap house on multiple occasions; she was photographed in front of it in mid-February.
[Did the detectives have sufficient evidence to tie Ms. Taylor to Mr. Glover and seek a warrant to search her apartment?]
The warrant cited five pieces of information establishing what the police said was probable cause: Mr. Glover’s car making repeated trips between the trap house and Ms. Taylor’s home; her car’s appearance in front of 2424 Elliott on multiple occasions; surveillance footage of him leaving her apartment with a package in mid-January; a postal inspector’s confirmation that Mr. Glover used her address to receive parcels; and database searches indicating that as of late February, he listed her apartment as his home address.
…
Court records show that Mr. Glover was convicted of selling cocaine and spent years in prison, starting in 2008 in his home state of Mississippi, where he was handed a 17-year sentence. In 2014, after moving to Kentucky, he was convicted of a second drug offense. He began dating Ms. Taylor in 2016, according to a statement he gave the police (Callimachi 4, 7-9).
In the terabytes of call logs, surveillance tapes, database searches and other evidence detailing her connection to Mr. Glover, the Louisville police appeared to miss the new arc that the young woman’s life had taken, an oversight that would have calamitous consequences.
“Breonna was a woman who was figuring everything out in her life, who had turned a corner,” said Mr. Aguiar, the lawyer. “Breonna was starting to live her best life.”
Ms. Taylor was born in Grand Rapids, Mich., to a 16-year-old single mother. Her father, Everett Taylor, has been in prison since she was a child, the lawyer said. He was convicted of murder when she was 6, after shooting a man who had failed to pay for a rock of crack cocaine, court records show.
Family and friends describe the mother and daughter as close. “She was a better version of me,” said her mother, Tamika Palmer, a dialysis technician. “Full of life. Easy to love.”
As a girl, Ms. Taylor was considered by other parents to be the responsible one among their daughters’ friends. She woke them up to get to school on time after sleepovers, practiced mock interviews for an after-school job in ninth grade in Louisville, where her family had moved, and tried to dream big.
“Graduating this year on time is so important to me because I will be the first in my family to accomplish this,” she wrote in her scrapbook during her senior year, next to a photo of herself in a cap and gown. “I want to be the one who finally breaks the cycle of my family’s educational history. I want to be the one to finally make a difference.”
She enrolled at the University of Kentucky and a year later, in 2012, began a banter on Twitter with Mr. Walker, then a student at a university two and a half hours away. He was 20, she was 19. The flirtatious tweets grew into a friendship, and then a romance four years later, according to his account.
…
They began dating in the summer of 2016, he said. But a few months later, she started seeing Mr. Glover. For nearly four years — until weeks before her death — she went back and forth between the two men, Mr. Walker told the police.
Her family and friends are effusive about Mr. Walker, a former warehouse worker for Coca-Cola, describing him as “good for her” and “a man who treated her right.” None of them would discuss Mr. Glover.
Her social media posts and Mr. Glover’s, combined with court and police records, suggest he came into her life at a low point: She had dropped out of college and become an E.M.T., but she quit after a year, discouraged by the 16-hour shifts and low pay.
At times, she struggled to afford groceries, she said in one tweet. In another she wrote: “I pray 2018 is a better year for me financially. I mean by the grace of God, I always made sure my bills were covered but it’s been a long struggle & I’m over it.”
Around that time, her younger sister, Juniyah, moved in with her. Ms. Taylor was intent on setting a good example for her and for an infant goddaughter who began spending several nights a week at their home, according to Mr. Aguiar.
“These two beautiful little girls right here are my world,” she wrote in her scrapbook. “They look up to me, so when they’re around it’s almost like I become an entire new person. I know they’re watching my every move, so I make sure I don’t do anything wrong.”
…
In mid-February, she finally ended her relationship with Mr. Glover and committed to Mr. Walker, her family’s lawyer said. Among her last tweets was a message about setting a good example: “Gotta watch how you let men treat/deal with you especially when you got lil sisters/cousins looking up to ya” (Callimachi 10-12).
Two more officers involved in the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor have been fired — a detective believed to have fired the fatal shot and another who sought the search warrant that led to the deadly raid …
…
Detectives Myles Cosgrove, who shot Taylor, and Joshua Jaynes, who sought the warrant for the March 13 drug raid, were informed of their firings on Tuesday. Their dismissals follow that of officer Brett Hankison, who was fired in September after being indicted by a grand jury on charges of endangering Taylor’s neighbors by firing bullets that went through her home and into an adjacent apartment.
… None of the three white officers who fired into her home were charged by a grand jury in her death.
Investigators said Cosgrove fired 16 rounds into the apartment after police breached the front door and Taylor’s boyfriend fired a shot at them. Federal ballistics experts said they believe the shot that killed Taylor came from Cosgrove.
In Cosgrove’s dismissal letter, interim Police Chief Yvette Gentry wrote that the detective violated the department’s use-of-force policies for firing 16 shots without identifying a target and for not activating his body camera. …
“The shots you fired were in three different directions, indicating you did not verify a threat or have target acquisition,” Gentry wrote.
Jaynes, the detective who sought the narcotics warrant that led to the raid, was “untruthful” about how he obtained some information about Taylor in the warrant, Gentry wrote. Jaynes was not at the scene the night Taylor was shot.
In a May interview with Louisville police investigators, Jaynes acknowledged that he did not personally verify that a drug-trafficking suspect [Glover] was receiving mail at Taylor’s apartment, even though he had said in an earlier affidavit that he had. Jaynes said he relied instead on information from a fellow officer.
…
In September, Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who took on the role of special prosecutor in the case, said Cosgrove and Mattingly were not charged with Taylor’s killing because they acted to protect themselves. The decision disappointed and angered protesters who have been calling for justice for Taylor for six months, and they vowed to stay in the streets until all the officers involved were fired or someone was charged with her killing.
Three grand jurors have since come forward to say that Cameron did not allow the grand jury to consider homicide-related charges against the officers for Taylor’s death. Speaking anonymously, the jurors said they believe they would have brought criminal charges against the officers if given the chance (Lovan 1-2).
The Justice Department will launch an investigation into the Louisville Metro Police Department to determine if there is a pattern of discrimination or excessive force within its ranks, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Monday [April 26, 2021].
…
"The investigation will assess whether LMPD [Louisville Metro Police Department] engages in a pattern or practice of using unreasonable force, including with respect to people involved in peaceful, expressive activities," Garland said.
"It will determine whether LMPD engages in unconstitutional stops, searches and seizures, as well as whether the department unlawfully executes search warrants on private homes."
The city settled a wrongful death lawsuit with Taylor's family in September for $12 million. The settlement included a series of police reforms. Louisville had earlier also banned no-knock warrants.
The police department fired one of the officers involved in the killing last year. The department said officer Brett Hankison "displayed an extreme indifference to the value of human life."
Monday's announcement follows the launch of a similar "pattern or practice" investigation of the Minneapolis Police Department last Wednesday. That move came a day after a jury convicted former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin on murder charges for the death of George Floyd (Wise 1-2).
[The New York Times put together an excellent video that chronicles what transpired at Breonna Taylor’s apartment. I recommend that you view it. Click this link]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDaNU...
Works cited:
Callimachi, Rukmini. “Breonna Taylor’s Life Was Chinging. Then Police Came to Her Door.” The New York Times, August 30, 2020. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/30/us...
Duvall, Tessa and Costello, Darcy. “Breonna Taylor Was Briefly Alive after Police Shot Her. But No One Tried To Treat Her.” Louisville Courier Journal, updated March 13, 2021. Net. https://www.courier-journal.com/story...
Lovan, Dylan. “2 Detectives Involved in Breonna Taylor’s Death Are Fired.” AP News, January 6, 2021. Net. https://apnews.com/article/breonna-ta...
Wise, Alana. “DOJ To Investigate Louisville Police in Response to Death of Breonna Taylor.” NPR, April 26, 2021. Net. https://www.npr.org/2021/04/26/990935...
Usually, they headed to his apartment, where he lived alone and she had left a toothbrush and a flat iron. But that night, they went to the small unit she shared with her younger sister, who was away on a trip. It was dark when the couple pulled into the parking lot, then closed the door to Apartment 4 behind them.
This was the year of big plans for the 26-year-old: Her home was brimming with the Post-it notes and envelopes on which she wrote her goals. She had just bought a new car. Next on the list: buying her own home. And trying to have a baby with Mr. Walker. They had already chosen a name.
She fell asleep next to him just after midnight on March 13, the movie still playing. “The last thing she said was, ‘Turn off the TV,’” he said in an interview. (Callimachi 1).
They'd gotten back about 9 p.m., after eating at Texas Roadhouse and giving a friend's kids rides across town. It was Taylor's first night off after a few consecutive days with 12-hour shifts as an ER technician, Walker told investigators in a recorded interview hours after the shooting.
She fell asleep as the movie was still playing, and Walker wasn't far behind, he told police in that interview.
"Literally, the night was over. If nobody knocked, we would've been asleep within 10 to 15 minutes," he said.
Meanwhile, about 10 p.m., [Sgt. Jonathan] Mattingly and other officers were being briefed on the plan to execute a search warrant on Taylor's apartment as part of a larger narcotics investigation, Mattingly said in an interview after the shooting.
He said they were told that Taylor wasn't believed to have children or animals, "but they weren't sure."
Taylor "should be there alone, because they knew where their target was," Mattingly told investigators. Mattingly said he was unsure why the warrant was requested as a no-knock but he was then told to knock and announce at Taylor's door.
A man named Jamarcus Glover, who was also named on the search warrant for Taylor's apartment, was arrested the same night, 10 miles away at a house on Elliott Avenue in the Russell neighborhood.
…
[Joshua] Jaynes, a member of a different unit in Mattingly's division, had requested the warrant for Taylor's apartment and done much of the surveillance and investigation himself, according to the affidavit.
Another officer was responsible for watching Taylor's apartment earlier that night, Mattingly said.
At 12:40 a.m., police officers were in place outside of Taylor's apartment. Mattingly said he began to bang on the front door.
Inside, Walker said he and Taylor were in her bedroom when they heard the knocking.
They called out, asking who it was, but got no response, Walker said. He said later he thought it might have been Taylor's former boyfriend [Glover].
He didn't suspect it could have been police, according to his interview hours later.
Outside, Mattingly heard no response and banged on the door again, later telling investigators: "At that point we start announcing ourselves 'Police! Please come to the door. Police! We have a search warrant.'"
Mattingly estimated he banged on the door "six or seven different time periods," which "seems like an eternity when you're up at a doorway."
The knocking lasted 45 seconds to a minute, he estimated, before police decided to use a battering ram to force their way into Taylor's apartment.
An officer hit the door with the ram three times before it opened, Mattingly said.
Inside, Walker grabbed his gun, "scared to death," as both pulled on clothes and went to answer the door. They left the bedroom and hadn't made it down the hallway before the door "comes off its hinges," he said.
Walker told police he fired one shot as a warning, aimed at the ground, still unable to see and unclear on who was at the door.
"But you can't see anybody, though, when the door comes off its hinges," Walker told investigators. "It happened fast, like an explosion. Boom, one shot. Then all of the sudden, there's a whole lot of shots. We both drop to the ground. But I just hear her (Breonna Taylor) screaming."
Mattingly told investigators that while he was in the doorway, he saw a man and a woman in the hallway. Then, there was a shot.
"And as I turned the doorway, he's in a stretched-out position with his hands, with a gun," Mattingly said. "And as soon as I clear, he fires. Boom."
Mattingly felt a pain in his leg. He fired four times.
He went around the door and fired two more rounds (Duvall and Costello 4).
A little after 12:35 a.m., the officers lined up in the breezeway. Sergeant Mattingly was closest to the apartment door. Detective Myles Cosgrove was next to him, and farther back were Detective Brett Hankison, Lt. Shawn Hoover and others.
Apartment 4 sits in a complex of two-bedroom units covered in beige vinyl siding. Ms. Taylor’s 950-square-foot apartment was on the ground level, and a floor-to-ceiling sliding-glass door gave way to her patio, which faced the parking lot. Blinds covered the door and the window.
“When we all got up in line, I knocked on the door,” Sergeant Mattingly told investigators.
“Our intent was to give her plenty of time to come to the door because we said she was probably there alone,” he said. “Banged. No response. Banged on it again. No response. At that point we started announcing ourself, ‘Police, please come to the door!’”
On the other side of the locked door was a 25- to 30-foot hallway, cutting through the living room, passing her sister’s empty bedroom and ending at the door to Ms. Taylor’s bedroom.
The loud banging jarred her awake. “It scared her to death,” Mr. Walker said in his statement to the investigators. “First thing she said was, ‘Who is it?’ No response,” he recounted. “Another knock at the door. She’s like, ‘Who is it?’ Loud at the top of her lungs. No response.”
They jumped out of bed and rushed to get dressed. In the confusion, Mr. Walker put on his girlfriend’s pants.
...
Among the officers outside her door were men who had been trained by David James, the city council president. During his 19-year career as a police officer, he had instructed recruits at the local training academy about “dynamic entry.” Especially when executing a warrant at night, he said, he told them to yell “police” at the top of their lungs, specifically so that occupants would not mistake them for an intruder.
“So everyone can hear,” he added.
“Neighbors. People down the street.”
By nearly all accounts, that did not happen at Apartment 4.
Almost a dozen neighbors interviewed for this article said that they never heard the police calling out, including Clifford Tudor, who had stepped outside to smoke a cigarette. Only one person, a truck driver coming off his shift, said he heard the officers shouting. Aaron Julue Sarpee had left his 2-year-old in the care of the woman living directly above Ms. Taylor. Before the police lined up, he had run upstairs and picked up his sleeping toddler. He had just stepped out onto the exterior staircase when he saw the officers.
Before they ordered him to go back inside, Mr. Sarpee said, he heard at least three loud bangs as they knocked on Ms. Taylor’s door, and heard one or more officers scream “Police!” — a single time. He is emphatic that they said it only once.
…
“As soon as the shot hit, I could feel the heat in my leg,” Sergeant Mattingly recounted in his statement. “And so I just returned fire,” he said, adding that he shot at least four rounds immediately, and another two soon after.
Behind him, Detective Cosgrove also returned fire into the hallway, according to police statements.
The bullet tore through the sergeant’s thigh, piercing the femoral artery. He scooted out onto the breezeway, then stumbled into the parking lot, where he collapsed, he recalled.
Meanwhile, a barrage of bullets ripped into the apartment from another direction.
Detective Hankison had left the formation near the door, run into the parking lot and begun firing through the covered patio door and window, according to police records.
Unlike the two officers standing in the doorway, the 44-year-old detective probably has no self-defense claim, several local officials said. The bullets he shot from the parking lot tore diagonally through Ms. Taylor’s apartment and into Apartment 3 directly behind it, where a pregnant woman and a 5-year-old were sleeping.
His behavior was reckless, the department concluded, because he shot 10 rounds blindly, and it was not directed against someone who posed an immediate threat. He was fired in June. “I find your conduct to be a shock to the conscience,” the interim police chief said in a termination letter.
In nearly two decades with the department, Detective Hankison had received multiple complaints of excessive use of force as well as sexual misconduct, according to portions of his personnel file obtained by The Times.
Most of the complaints appear to have been dismissed or not considered credible.
One record showed he was reprimanded at least three times: for improperly charging a man with having a concealed weapon in 2005; for trying to extract crack cocaine from a suspect’s mouth and failing to call an ambulance; and for causing a car wreck in 2016 that fractured the spine of another officer.
… Sergeant Mattingly and Detective Cosgrove have been placed on administrative leave, according to a department spokeswoman, Jessie Halladay.
Mr. Walker was charged with attempted murder for shooting Sergeant Mattingly; the charges were later dropped.
Because no ambulance had been staged, the police spent the next critical minutes trying to get medical help for the injured officer.
“I kept going, ‘Where’s E.M.S.?’” said Sergeant Mattingly.
Radio logs paint a scene of chaos. An ambulance rushing to the apartment complex went to the wrong entrance, blocked by a locked gate. On the radio, officers yelled instructions to ram the vehicle through the gate. But the ambulance didn’t get past the crushed metal. Colleagues tried to put Sergeant Mattingly in the back seat of a squad car, but he couldn’t bend his leg. They tried to put him in the trunk, but it was blocked by a gun case. Finally, they laid him atop the trunk.
As officers outside scrambled to help him, no aid was rendered to Ms. Taylor. It wasn’t until 12:47 a.m. that emergency personnel realized that she was seriously wounded, after her boyfriend called 911 (Callimachi 13-18).
Ms. Taylor had been focused on her future with Mr. Walker. But her history with 30-year-old Jamarcus Glover, an on-again off-again boyfriend who had spent years in prison, was hard to escape, even after she cut ties with him a month before the raid.
…
Christopher 2X, a longtime community organizer whom Ms. Taylor’s family turned to after her death, said her relationship with Mr. Glover had to be acknowledged. “You can’t just look away from it and act like it’s not there,” he said. “My hope is courageous people will say: ‘There it is — it’s what it is — but was this shooting justified? She should be alive today.’”
…
By the end of 2019, the city had taken possession of nearly half of the vacant buildings and was working to acquire the rest — among them 2424 Elliott, 2425 Elliott, 2426 Elliott and 2427 Elliott. There, according to court records, Jamarcus Glover and his associates operated a series of “trap houses,” where they stashed crack cocaine, marijuana and prescription pills.
An informant sent inside No. 2424 reported that six men were packaging crack cocaine and passing it to customers through a mail slot in a security door.
On Dec. 30, days after the new squad was started, police executed search warrants at Nos. 2424 and 2426 and a house a few blocks away, seizing eight guns, a surveillance system and 4.9 grams of crack, according to a police log. Mr. Glover was arrested, along with five others, and soon released on bail.
On Jan. 2, Detective Joshua Jaynes of the Place-Based Investigations unit asked for a camera to be installed overlooking the 2400 block of Elliott, according to an internal report he signed. Within an hour, it had captured between 15 and 20 cars briefly stopping in front of No. 2424. “Indicative of narcotics trafficking,” his report says.
At 5:53 p.m., a white Chevrolet Impala pulled up in front of the house, and Mr. Glover exited. The car was registered to Breonna Taylor, the report says.
Over the next two months, the new squad surveilled the Elliott addresses where Mr. Glover operated, and Ms. Taylor’s apartment 10 miles away. A GPS device the police put on Mr. Glover’s car tracked it to her apartment complex six times, according to the internal report. And Ms. Taylor’s new car — a Dodge Charger — was seen at the trap house on multiple occasions; she was photographed in front of it in mid-February.
[Did the detectives have sufficient evidence to tie Ms. Taylor to Mr. Glover and seek a warrant to search her apartment?]
The warrant cited five pieces of information establishing what the police said was probable cause: Mr. Glover’s car making repeated trips between the trap house and Ms. Taylor’s home; her car’s appearance in front of 2424 Elliott on multiple occasions; surveillance footage of him leaving her apartment with a package in mid-January; a postal inspector’s confirmation that Mr. Glover used her address to receive parcels; and database searches indicating that as of late February, he listed her apartment as his home address.
…
Court records show that Mr. Glover was convicted of selling cocaine and spent years in prison, starting in 2008 in his home state of Mississippi, where he was handed a 17-year sentence. In 2014, after moving to Kentucky, he was convicted of a second drug offense. He began dating Ms. Taylor in 2016, according to a statement he gave the police (Callimachi 4, 7-9).
In the terabytes of call logs, surveillance tapes, database searches and other evidence detailing her connection to Mr. Glover, the Louisville police appeared to miss the new arc that the young woman’s life had taken, an oversight that would have calamitous consequences.
“Breonna was a woman who was figuring everything out in her life, who had turned a corner,” said Mr. Aguiar, the lawyer. “Breonna was starting to live her best life.”
Ms. Taylor was born in Grand Rapids, Mich., to a 16-year-old single mother. Her father, Everett Taylor, has been in prison since she was a child, the lawyer said. He was convicted of murder when she was 6, after shooting a man who had failed to pay for a rock of crack cocaine, court records show.
Family and friends describe the mother and daughter as close. “She was a better version of me,” said her mother, Tamika Palmer, a dialysis technician. “Full of life. Easy to love.”
As a girl, Ms. Taylor was considered by other parents to be the responsible one among their daughters’ friends. She woke them up to get to school on time after sleepovers, practiced mock interviews for an after-school job in ninth grade in Louisville, where her family had moved, and tried to dream big.
“Graduating this year on time is so important to me because I will be the first in my family to accomplish this,” she wrote in her scrapbook during her senior year, next to a photo of herself in a cap and gown. “I want to be the one who finally breaks the cycle of my family’s educational history. I want to be the one to finally make a difference.”
She enrolled at the University of Kentucky and a year later, in 2012, began a banter on Twitter with Mr. Walker, then a student at a university two and a half hours away. He was 20, she was 19. The flirtatious tweets grew into a friendship, and then a romance four years later, according to his account.
…
They began dating in the summer of 2016, he said. But a few months later, she started seeing Mr. Glover. For nearly four years — until weeks before her death — she went back and forth between the two men, Mr. Walker told the police.
Her family and friends are effusive about Mr. Walker, a former warehouse worker for Coca-Cola, describing him as “good for her” and “a man who treated her right.” None of them would discuss Mr. Glover.
Her social media posts and Mr. Glover’s, combined with court and police records, suggest he came into her life at a low point: She had dropped out of college and become an E.M.T., but she quit after a year, discouraged by the 16-hour shifts and low pay.
At times, she struggled to afford groceries, she said in one tweet. In another she wrote: “I pray 2018 is a better year for me financially. I mean by the grace of God, I always made sure my bills were covered but it’s been a long struggle & I’m over it.”
Around that time, her younger sister, Juniyah, moved in with her. Ms. Taylor was intent on setting a good example for her and for an infant goddaughter who began spending several nights a week at their home, according to Mr. Aguiar.
“These two beautiful little girls right here are my world,” she wrote in her scrapbook. “They look up to me, so when they’re around it’s almost like I become an entire new person. I know they’re watching my every move, so I make sure I don’t do anything wrong.”
…
In mid-February, she finally ended her relationship with Mr. Glover and committed to Mr. Walker, her family’s lawyer said. Among her last tweets was a message about setting a good example: “Gotta watch how you let men treat/deal with you especially when you got lil sisters/cousins looking up to ya” (Callimachi 10-12).
Two more officers involved in the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor have been fired — a detective believed to have fired the fatal shot and another who sought the search warrant that led to the deadly raid …
…
Detectives Myles Cosgrove, who shot Taylor, and Joshua Jaynes, who sought the warrant for the March 13 drug raid, were informed of their firings on Tuesday. Their dismissals follow that of officer Brett Hankison, who was fired in September after being indicted by a grand jury on charges of endangering Taylor’s neighbors by firing bullets that went through her home and into an adjacent apartment.
… None of the three white officers who fired into her home were charged by a grand jury in her death.
Investigators said Cosgrove fired 16 rounds into the apartment after police breached the front door and Taylor’s boyfriend fired a shot at them. Federal ballistics experts said they believe the shot that killed Taylor came from Cosgrove.
In Cosgrove’s dismissal letter, interim Police Chief Yvette Gentry wrote that the detective violated the department’s use-of-force policies for firing 16 shots without identifying a target and for not activating his body camera. …
“The shots you fired were in three different directions, indicating you did not verify a threat or have target acquisition,” Gentry wrote.
Jaynes, the detective who sought the narcotics warrant that led to the raid, was “untruthful” about how he obtained some information about Taylor in the warrant, Gentry wrote. Jaynes was not at the scene the night Taylor was shot.
In a May interview with Louisville police investigators, Jaynes acknowledged that he did not personally verify that a drug-trafficking suspect [Glover] was receiving mail at Taylor’s apartment, even though he had said in an earlier affidavit that he had. Jaynes said he relied instead on information from a fellow officer.
…
In September, Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who took on the role of special prosecutor in the case, said Cosgrove and Mattingly were not charged with Taylor’s killing because they acted to protect themselves. The decision disappointed and angered protesters who have been calling for justice for Taylor for six months, and they vowed to stay in the streets until all the officers involved were fired or someone was charged with her killing.
Three grand jurors have since come forward to say that Cameron did not allow the grand jury to consider homicide-related charges against the officers for Taylor’s death. Speaking anonymously, the jurors said they believe they would have brought criminal charges against the officers if given the chance (Lovan 1-2).
The Justice Department will launch an investigation into the Louisville Metro Police Department to determine if there is a pattern of discrimination or excessive force within its ranks, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Monday [April 26, 2021].
…
"The investigation will assess whether LMPD [Louisville Metro Police Department] engages in a pattern or practice of using unreasonable force, including with respect to people involved in peaceful, expressive activities," Garland said.
"It will determine whether LMPD engages in unconstitutional stops, searches and seizures, as well as whether the department unlawfully executes search warrants on private homes."
The city settled a wrongful death lawsuit with Taylor's family in September for $12 million. The settlement included a series of police reforms. Louisville had earlier also banned no-knock warrants.
The police department fired one of the officers involved in the killing last year. The department said officer Brett Hankison "displayed an extreme indifference to the value of human life."
Monday's announcement follows the launch of a similar "pattern or practice" investigation of the Minneapolis Police Department last Wednesday. That move came a day after a jury convicted former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin on murder charges for the death of George Floyd (Wise 1-2).
[The New York Times put together an excellent video that chronicles what transpired at Breonna Taylor’s apartment. I recommend that you view it. Click this link]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDaNU...
Works cited:
Callimachi, Rukmini. “Breonna Taylor’s Life Was Chinging. Then Police Came to Her Door.” The New York Times, August 30, 2020. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/30/us...
Duvall, Tessa and Costello, Darcy. “Breonna Taylor Was Briefly Alive after Police Shot Her. But No One Tried To Treat Her.” Louisville Courier Journal, updated March 13, 2021. Net. https://www.courier-journal.com/story...
Lovan, Dylan. “2 Detectives Involved in Breonna Taylor’s Death Are Fired.” AP News, January 6, 2021. Net. https://apnews.com/article/breonna-ta...
Wise, Alana. “DOJ To Investigate Louisville Police in Response to Death of Breonna Taylor.” NPR, April 26, 2021. Net. https://www.npr.org/2021/04/26/990935...
June 20, 2021
Bad Apples -- 02--23--2020, Ahmaud Arbery
BRUNSWICK, Ga. — Ahmaud Arbery loved to run. It was how the 25-year-old former high school football standout stayed fit, his friends said, and it was not unusual to see him running around the outskirts of the small coastal Georgia city near where he lived.
But on a Sunday afternoon in February, as Mr. Arbery ran through a suburban neighborhood of ranch houses and moss-draped oaks, he passed a man standing in his front yard, who later told the police that Mr. Arbery looked like the suspect in a string of break-ins.
According to a police report, the man, Gregory McMichael, 64, called out to his son, Travis McMichael, 34. They grabbed their weapons, a .357 magnum revolver and a shotgun, jumped into a truck and began following Mr. Arbery.
“Stop, stop,” they shouted at Mr. Arbery, “we want to talk to you.”
Moments later, after a struggle over the shotgun, Mr. Arbery was killed, shot at least twice.
No one has been charged or arrested in connection with the Feb. 23 killing. The case has received little attention beyond Brunswick, but it has raised questions in the community about racial profiling — Mr. Arbery was black, and the father and son are white — and about the interpretation of the state’s self-defense laws (Fausset “Two” 1).
According to documents obtained by The New York Times, a prosecutor who had the case for a few weeks told the police that the pursuers had acted within the scope of Georgia’s citizen’s arrest statute, and that Travis McMichael, who held the shotgun, had acted out of self-defense.
The police report does not mention whether Mr. Arbery was in possession of a weapon.
…
The prosecutor who wrote the letter, George E. Barnhill, the district attorney for Georgia’s Waycross Judicial Circuit, recused himself from the case this month, after Mr. Arbery’s family complained that he had a conflict of interest. A prosecutor from another county is now in charge and will determine whether the case should be presented to a grand jury.
Mr. Arbery was killed in Satilla Shores, a quiet middle-class enclave that abuts a network of marshlands about 15 minutes from downtown Brunswick and a short jog from Mr. Arbery’s neighborhood.
His friends and family said they believed that Mr. Arbery, who was wearing a white T-shirt, khaki shorts, Nike sneakers and a bandanna when he was killed, had been out exercising.
“Everybody in the community knows he runs,” said Mr. Vaughn, who said he saw Mr. Arbery jogging on the streets a few months ago. Mr. Vaughn said that he himself had raised suspicions by jogging through his own neighborhood in the suburbs of Brunswick, recalling a recent instance in which a white woman followed him in a van.
But others contend that Mr. Arbery was up to no good. On the day of the shooting, and apparently moments before the chase, a neighbor in Satilla Shores called 911, telling the dispatcher that a black man in a white T-shirt was inside a house that was under construction and only partially closed in.
“And he’s running right now,” the man told the dispatcher. “There he goes right now!”
In his letter to the police, Mr. Barnhill, the prosecutor, noted that Mr. Arbery had a criminal past. Court records show that Mr. Arbery was convicted of shoplifting and of violating probation in 2018. Five years earlier, according to The Brunswick News, he was indicted on charges that he took a handgun to a high school basketball game.
…
Ms. Cooper pushed for Mr. Barnhill, a veteran prosecutor, to recuse himself from the case after she learned that his son works in the Brunswick district attorney’s office, which had previously employed Gregory McMichael. (The Brunswick district attorney, Jackie Johnson, recused herself early on, also because Mr. McMichael had worked in her office.)
“She believes there are kinships between the parties (there are not) and has made other unfounded allegations of bias(es),” Mr. Barnhill wrote in his letter, sent in early April, to the Glynn County Police Department. As such, Mr. Barnhill wrote, he had decided to step away from the case, and would ask Georgia’s attorney general’s office to pick another prosecutor.
Mr. Barnhill also wrote that he did not believe there was evidence of a crime, noting that Gregory McMichael and his son had been legally carrying their weapons under Georgia law. And because Mr. Arbery was a “burglary suspect,” the pursuers, who had “solid firsthand probable cause,” were justified in chasing him under the state’s citizen’s arrest law.
In a separate document, Mr. Barnhill stated that video exists of Mr. Arbery “burglarizing a home immediately preceding the chase and confrontation.” In the letter to the police, he cites a separate video of the shooting filmed by a third pursuer.
Mr. Barnhill said this video, which has not been made public, shows Mr. Arbery attacking Travis McMichael after he and his father pulled up to him in their truck.
After Mr. Barnhill recused himself, the case was assigned to Tom Durden, in the city of Hinesville, Ga., who must now decide whether to present the case to a grand jury for possible indictments. In an interview last week, Mr. Durden said his team had begun reviewing the evidence. “We don’t know anything about the case,” he said. “We don’t have any preconceived idea about it.”
The police report is based almost solely upon the responding officer’s interview with Gregory McMichael, who had worked at the police department from 1982 to 1989. The responding officer describes him as a witness.
According to the report, Mr. McMichael told the officer that he and his son pulled up near Mr. Arbery, that his son got out of the truck with the shotgun, and that his son and Mr. Arbery then fought over the weapon, “at which point Travis fired a shot and then a second later there was a second shot” (Fausset “Two” 1-4).
Police body camera footage released this week in the Ahmaud Arbery case shows the 25-year-old was still breathing and moving when officers arrived on the scene. Officers did not check for vital signs or render aid for nearly three minutes, though the first officer arrived within seconds of the fatal shooting.
There is no indication Arbery’s life could have been saved even if he had received immediate medical care, due to the severity of his three gunshot wounds.
…
The newly released bodycam footage shows the first officer on the scene, Glynn County Police Officer R. Minshew, activating his body worn camera as he steps out of his squad car.
Police dispatch reports show he arrived just minutes after the shooting. His first report from the scene was of a black male on the ground “bleeding out.”
His body camera captures Arbery facedown in the middle of Satilla Drive. Greg and Travis McMichael, since charged with murder, stand above him.
Thirteen seconds into the recording, Arbery’s right foot rolls over.
Seventeen seconds in, Arbery’s head moves.
53 seconds in, a large gasp is heard. His lower body appears to lift slightly.
…
At 2:17, a second officer arrives. “You get a pulse or anything?” he asks.
“Nah,” Minshew replies, taking photos. “He’s about to be 10-7, man” – police code for “out of service.”
The second officer approaches Arbery. “I think he’s still breathing,” Travis McMichael says off-camera.
It’s 2:48.
“Yep I know,” the officer replies. “I’m going to try to do something for him.”
“You got your first aid kit?” he shouts to Minshew. He rolls Arbery over on his back. His torso is soaked in blood. “Damn,” he mutters.
About a minute later, Minshew reports, “I ain't got no first aid kit.”
“I’m just going to keep my hand on him,” the officer says, pressing his gloved hand to Arbery’s chest.
At the 7:54 mark, paramedics arrive. The officer is standing over Arbery’s body.
“Looks like shotgun slug to the center chest. He was on his stomach when I got here. I rolled him over. He stopped breathing a couple minutes ago,” he tells paramedics.
He adds, “I kept pressure on it, but there was nothing I could do” (Schindler 1-2).
ATLANTA — The three white men accused of killing Ahmaud Arbery, a black man who was shot dead after being chased in a South Georgia neighborhood, have been indicted on murder charges by a Georgia grand jury, the prosecutor in the case announced on Wednesday.
The men — Gregory McMichael, 64; his son Travis McMichael, 34; and their neighbor William Bryan, 50 — were arrested and charged last month with murder and other crimes in connection with Mr. Arbery’s death, which prompted nationwide protests and indignation, particularly after a graphic video of his Feb. 23 killing was released online.
On Wednesday, the office of District Attorney Joyette M. Holmes of Cobb County announced that a grand jury in Glynn County had returned an indictment with nine counts against each of the three defendants: malice murder, four counts of felony murder, two counts of aggravated assault, false imprisonment and criminal attempt to commit false imprisonment.
…
Mr. Arbery, 25, was spotted in the Satilla Shores neighborhood, outside of Brunswick, Ga., while running on a Sunday afternoon. A surveillance camera showed that Mr. Arbery stopped for a few minutes inside a house under construction before resuming his jog. Gregory McMichael later told the authorities he thought Mr. Arbery was a suspect in a series of break-ins in the neighborhood.
He and Travis McMichael armed themselves, they told the police, got into a pickup truck, and tried to catch Mr. Arbery. Mr. Bryan, who is known as Roddie, also gave chase in his vehicle, a state investigator said, and used his cellphone to film the killing of Mr. Arbery.
The video shows Mr. Arbery running toward a pickup truck with Travis McMichael standing next to it. Mr. Arbery tries to run to the other side of the truck to avoid Mr. McMichael, who is armed with a shotgun. But the two struggle, and Mr. McMichael soon shoots Mr. Arbery.
In a court hearing this month, Richard Dial, an investigator with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, said Mr. Bryan heard Mr. McMichael use a racial slur after shooting Mr. Arbery.
According to the six-page indictment, which was returned Wednesday morning, the men are charged with trying to “unlawfully confine and detain” Mr. Arbery while chasing him, using their vehicles “offensively” and in a manner “likely to cause serious bodily injury.”
The most serious charge is malice murder, which under Georgia law is “the intentional killing of a person with malice aforethought,” said Charlie Bailey, an Atlanta-area lawyer and former assistant district attorney in Fulton County, Ga.
Mr. Bailey noted that this malice did not need to have been developed over a long period of time. “Malice can be formed in an instant,” he said (Fausset “Suspects” 1-3).
Mr. Bryan’s lawyer, Kevin Gough … has said repeatedly that his client should not be charged. Late Monday night, he released a statement saying Mr. Bryan had taken a polygraph test that proved he was unarmed at the time of the shooting and did not have a conversation with the McMichaels before the pursuit.
“Without Roddie Bryan,” Mr. Gough wrote, referring to Mr. Bryan by his nickname, “there would be no video of the shooting of Ahmaud Arbery. Without that video there would be no case. Without purporting to speak for the prosecution, as that would not be my place, we believe Mr. Bryan is not just a witness for the prosecution but a key witness.”
The McMichaels tried to cut off Mr. Arbery during the chase, according to Mr. McMichael’s account, and Mr. Arbery tried to avoid them by turning around and running in the other direction. At that point, Mr. Bryan “attempted to block him, which was unsuccessful,” according to the report.
Mr. Arbery then turned onto another street, and the McMichaels got in front of him while Mr. Bryan pursued from behind and began filming.
Mr. Bryan’s involvement is also mentioned in a letter that George E. Barnhill, the district attorney in Waycross, Ga., wrote to the Glynn County police in April. Mr. Barnhill was the second of four prosecutors who have been in charge of the case. He recused himself, citing a conflict of interest, but not before advising the police that insufficient probable cause existed to arrest the McMichaels or Mr. Bryan.
…
Mr. Bryan … and Mr. Gough appeared on the CNN program “Cuomo Prime Time.” Mr. Bryan was largely quiet, but Mr. Gough interjected as the program’s anchor, Chris Cuomo, asked Mr. Bryan about his actions on Feb. 23 and his motivation for recording the video.
Mr. Gough assigned blame for the shooting to the McMichaels, asserting that Mr. Bryan lived nearby and was drawn by the commotion.
“This is a terrible matter and some people are going to have to answer for what they did,” Mr. Gough said. “But my client is not responsible for that." Mr. Bryan, he added, “hasn’t been in so much as a fistfight since he was in high school.”
Mr. Bryan offered his sympathy to Mr. Arbery’s family, and said he was praying for them, and noted the role the video played in bringing attention to the case. “If there wasn’t a tape, then we wouldn’t know what happened,” he said (Fausset and Rojas 4).
When the Glynn County Police Department arrived at the scene of a fatal shooting in February in southeastern Georgia, officers encountered a former colleague with the victim’s blood on his hands.
They took down his version of events and let him and his adult son, who had fired the shots, go home.
Later that day, Wanda Cooper, the mother of the 25-year-old victim, Ahmaud Arbery, received a call from a police investigator. She recounted later that the investigator said her son had been involved in a burglary and was killed by “the homeowner,” an inaccurate version of what had happened.
More than two months after that fatal confrontation, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation … arrested the former officer Gregory McMichael, and his son, Travis McMichael, on charges of murder and aggravated assault.
The charges — which came after the release of a graphic video showing the killing as the two white men confront Mr. Arbery … made clear the depths of the local department’s bungling of the case, which was just the latest in a series of troubling episodes involving its officers.
…
[Attorney General Chris] Carr’s office … [had] already determined that George E. Barnhill, a district attorney who was assigned the case in February but [later] recused himself ..., should have never taken it on. Among his many conflicts: His son once worked alongside one of the suspects at the local prosecutor’s office.
…
“It’s small-town America,” Mr. [S. Lee] Merritt [a lawyer representing Mr. Arbery’s family] said in an interview .... “Those counties, the law enforcement community there they know each other well, they recycle officers in between themselves — it’s a very tight-knit community.”
Over the years, Glynn County police officers have been accused of covering up allegations of misconduct, tampering with a crime scene, interfering in an investigation of a police shooting and retaliating against fellow officers who cooperated with outside investigators.
The police chief was indicted days after Mr. Arbery’s killing on charges related to an alleged cover-up of an officer’s sexual relationship with an informant. The chief, John Powell, had been hired to clean up the department, which the Glynn County manager described last fall as suffering from poor training, outdated policies and “a culture of cronyism.”
The Glynn County force was the sort of department where disciplinary records went missing and where evidence room standards were not maintained, leading the state to strip it of its accreditation.
…
Darren W. Penn, a lawyer and a department critic, said the Ahmaud Arbery case was “another symptom or sign of a police department that appears willing to protect those that they know” (Rojas, Fausset, and Kovaleski 1-2).
Ahmaud Arbery, the black Georgia man who was fatally shot in February after being pursued by two white men, had an encounter with police in 2017 in which an officer tried to use a stun gun on him.
Police body-camera footage from that incident shows a Glynn County police officer on patrol questioning Arbery about his sitting alone in his car in a park. ...
The video, first reported on by The Guardian, and a police report on the incident were obtained by NBC News through an open records request (Burke 1).
In the video an officer patrolling the area suspected Arbery of using marijuana, saying he was in a park known for drug activity.
Arbery, dressed in a green hat, winter coat and athletic pants, said he didn’t have drugs and refused to let the officer search his car.
He told the officer he was relaxing by rapping in his car over instrumental beats and had the day off from work at Blue Beacon Truck Wash.
The incident … escalated when Arbery began to question why the officer, Michael Kanago, was hassling him. Kanago claimed he began to feel threatened by Arbery, later writing in his report that “veins were popping from [Arbery’s] chest, which made me feel that he was becoming enraged and may turn physically violent towards me”. Kanago requested help from a second officer.
“You’re bothering me for nothing,” Arbery said to Kanago, according to body camera footage.
After Kanago told him he was looking for criminal activity, Arbery said “criminal activity? I’m in a fucking park. I work.”
The second officer, David Haney, arrived minutes later and screamed at Arbery to get his hands out of his pockets, which Arbery did.
Haney then attempted to tase Arbery, but his Taser malfunctioned, according to Kanago’s report. Arbery continued to comply with instructions from the two officers to get on the ground. Kanago had already searched Arbery for weapons before Haney arrived, and deduced he was unarmed.
“I get one day off a week…I’m up early in the morning trying to chill,” Arbery told the officers as he sat on the ground. “I’m just so aggravated because I work hard, six days a week.”
The incident eventually ends with police allowing Arbery to leave, but forbidding him from driving his car because his driver’s license is suspended.
In a joint statement to the Guardian, lawyers working for the Arbery family described the video as a clear depiction of “a situation where Ahmaud was harassed by Glynn county police officers”.
The lawyers said there was “no justifiable reason” for Arbery to be threatened with a Taser. “This appears to be just a glimpse into the kind of scrutiny Ahmaud Arbery faced not only by this police department, but ultimately regular citizens like the McMichaels and their posse, pretending to be police officers” (Levine and Laughland 1-2).
Three Georgia men were indicted [April 27, 2021] on federal hate crime charges in connection with the death of Ahmaud Arbery …
…
The suspects — Travis McMichael, 35; his father, Gregory McMichael, 65; and William Bryan, 51, all of whom are white — were each charged with one count of interference with Mr. Arbery’s right to use a public street because of his race. They were also charged with one count of attempted kidnapping.
Travis and Gregory McMichael were also charged with one count each of using, carrying and brandishing a firearm. Travis McMichael is accused of shooting Mr. Arbery.
The men intimidated Mr. Arbery “because of Arbery’s race and color,” the eight-page indictment said.
…
All three suspects also face state charges of malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault, false imprisonment and criminal attempt to commit a felony.
No date has been set for the state trial. … (Benner and Wright 1, 3).
The Justice Department brought federal hate crimes charges Wednesday in the death of Ahmaud Arbery, charging a father and son who armed themselves, chased and fatally shot the 25-year-old Black man after spotting him running in their Georgia neighborhood.
Travis McMichael and his father, Gregory, were charged along with a third man, William “Roddie” Bryan, with one count of interference with civil rights and attempted kidnapping. The McMichaels are also charged with using, carrying and brandishing a firearm during a crime of violence.
The case is the most significant civil rights prosecution undertaken to date by the Biden administration Justice Department and comes as federal officials have moved quickly to open sweeping investigations into troubled police departments as civil rights takes center stage among the department’s priorities.
…
The Justice Department alleges that the men “used force and threats of force to intimidate and interfere with Arbery’s right to use a public street because of his race” (Tucker 1).
[Paste the following on Google to watch this video]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1v7o_...
[Paste the following on Google to hear an explanation of and see the video of the shooting]
Man Who Filmed the Arbery Killing Faces Calls for Arrest
Works cited:
Benner, Katie and Wright, Will. “3 Indicted on Federal Hate Crime Charges in Ahmaud Arbery Shooting.” The New York Times, updated April 29, 2021. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/28/us...
Burke, Minyvonne. “Ahmaud Arbery: A 2017 Video Shows Police Trying To Use Stun Gun on Him.” NBC News, May 19, 2020. Net. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/...
Fausset, Richard. “Suspects in Ahmaud Arbery’s Killing Are Indicted on Murder Charges.” The New York Times, updated June 24, 2020. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/24/us...
Fausset, Richard. “Two Weapons, a Chase, a Killing and No Charges.” The New York Times, updated February 28, 2021. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/26/us...
Fausset, Richard, and Rojas, Rick. “Man Who Filmed the Arbery Killing Faces Calls for Arrest.” The New York Times, updated June 24, 2020. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/18/us...
Levine, Sam and Laughland, Oliver. “Exclusive: Police Tried To Tase Ahmaud Arbery in 2017 Incident, Video Shows.” The Guardian, May 18, 2020. Net. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...
Rojas, Rick, Fausset, Richard, and Kovaleski, Serge F. “Georgia Killing Puts Spotlight on a Police Force’s Troubled History.” The New York Times, May 8, 2020. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/08/us...
Schindler, Anne. “POLICE VIDEO: Ahmaud Arbery Was ‘Breathing,' Moving When Officers Arrived.” First Coast News, updated December 19, 2020. Net. https://www.firstcoastnews.com/articl...
Tucker, Eric. “U.S. Indicts 3 on Hate Crime Charges in Death of Georgia Man.” NPR, April 28, 2021. Net. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/u...
But on a Sunday afternoon in February, as Mr. Arbery ran through a suburban neighborhood of ranch houses and moss-draped oaks, he passed a man standing in his front yard, who later told the police that Mr. Arbery looked like the suspect in a string of break-ins.
According to a police report, the man, Gregory McMichael, 64, called out to his son, Travis McMichael, 34. They grabbed their weapons, a .357 magnum revolver and a shotgun, jumped into a truck and began following Mr. Arbery.
“Stop, stop,” they shouted at Mr. Arbery, “we want to talk to you.”
Moments later, after a struggle over the shotgun, Mr. Arbery was killed, shot at least twice.
No one has been charged or arrested in connection with the Feb. 23 killing. The case has received little attention beyond Brunswick, but it has raised questions in the community about racial profiling — Mr. Arbery was black, and the father and son are white — and about the interpretation of the state’s self-defense laws (Fausset “Two” 1).
According to documents obtained by The New York Times, a prosecutor who had the case for a few weeks told the police that the pursuers had acted within the scope of Georgia’s citizen’s arrest statute, and that Travis McMichael, who held the shotgun, had acted out of self-defense.
The police report does not mention whether Mr. Arbery was in possession of a weapon.
…
The prosecutor who wrote the letter, George E. Barnhill, the district attorney for Georgia’s Waycross Judicial Circuit, recused himself from the case this month, after Mr. Arbery’s family complained that he had a conflict of interest. A prosecutor from another county is now in charge and will determine whether the case should be presented to a grand jury.
Mr. Arbery was killed in Satilla Shores, a quiet middle-class enclave that abuts a network of marshlands about 15 minutes from downtown Brunswick and a short jog from Mr. Arbery’s neighborhood.
His friends and family said they believed that Mr. Arbery, who was wearing a white T-shirt, khaki shorts, Nike sneakers and a bandanna when he was killed, had been out exercising.
“Everybody in the community knows he runs,” said Mr. Vaughn, who said he saw Mr. Arbery jogging on the streets a few months ago. Mr. Vaughn said that he himself had raised suspicions by jogging through his own neighborhood in the suburbs of Brunswick, recalling a recent instance in which a white woman followed him in a van.
But others contend that Mr. Arbery was up to no good. On the day of the shooting, and apparently moments before the chase, a neighbor in Satilla Shores called 911, telling the dispatcher that a black man in a white T-shirt was inside a house that was under construction and only partially closed in.
“And he’s running right now,” the man told the dispatcher. “There he goes right now!”
In his letter to the police, Mr. Barnhill, the prosecutor, noted that Mr. Arbery had a criminal past. Court records show that Mr. Arbery was convicted of shoplifting and of violating probation in 2018. Five years earlier, according to The Brunswick News, he was indicted on charges that he took a handgun to a high school basketball game.
…
Ms. Cooper pushed for Mr. Barnhill, a veteran prosecutor, to recuse himself from the case after she learned that his son works in the Brunswick district attorney’s office, which had previously employed Gregory McMichael. (The Brunswick district attorney, Jackie Johnson, recused herself early on, also because Mr. McMichael had worked in her office.)
“She believes there are kinships between the parties (there are not) and has made other unfounded allegations of bias(es),” Mr. Barnhill wrote in his letter, sent in early April, to the Glynn County Police Department. As such, Mr. Barnhill wrote, he had decided to step away from the case, and would ask Georgia’s attorney general’s office to pick another prosecutor.
Mr. Barnhill also wrote that he did not believe there was evidence of a crime, noting that Gregory McMichael and his son had been legally carrying their weapons under Georgia law. And because Mr. Arbery was a “burglary suspect,” the pursuers, who had “solid firsthand probable cause,” were justified in chasing him under the state’s citizen’s arrest law.
In a separate document, Mr. Barnhill stated that video exists of Mr. Arbery “burglarizing a home immediately preceding the chase and confrontation.” In the letter to the police, he cites a separate video of the shooting filmed by a third pursuer.
Mr. Barnhill said this video, which has not been made public, shows Mr. Arbery attacking Travis McMichael after he and his father pulled up to him in their truck.
After Mr. Barnhill recused himself, the case was assigned to Tom Durden, in the city of Hinesville, Ga., who must now decide whether to present the case to a grand jury for possible indictments. In an interview last week, Mr. Durden said his team had begun reviewing the evidence. “We don’t know anything about the case,” he said. “We don’t have any preconceived idea about it.”
The police report is based almost solely upon the responding officer’s interview with Gregory McMichael, who had worked at the police department from 1982 to 1989. The responding officer describes him as a witness.
According to the report, Mr. McMichael told the officer that he and his son pulled up near Mr. Arbery, that his son got out of the truck with the shotgun, and that his son and Mr. Arbery then fought over the weapon, “at which point Travis fired a shot and then a second later there was a second shot” (Fausset “Two” 1-4).
Police body camera footage released this week in the Ahmaud Arbery case shows the 25-year-old was still breathing and moving when officers arrived on the scene. Officers did not check for vital signs or render aid for nearly three minutes, though the first officer arrived within seconds of the fatal shooting.
There is no indication Arbery’s life could have been saved even if he had received immediate medical care, due to the severity of his three gunshot wounds.
…
The newly released bodycam footage shows the first officer on the scene, Glynn County Police Officer R. Minshew, activating his body worn camera as he steps out of his squad car.
Police dispatch reports show he arrived just minutes after the shooting. His first report from the scene was of a black male on the ground “bleeding out.”
His body camera captures Arbery facedown in the middle of Satilla Drive. Greg and Travis McMichael, since charged with murder, stand above him.
Thirteen seconds into the recording, Arbery’s right foot rolls over.
Seventeen seconds in, Arbery’s head moves.
53 seconds in, a large gasp is heard. His lower body appears to lift slightly.
…
At 2:17, a second officer arrives. “You get a pulse or anything?” he asks.
“Nah,” Minshew replies, taking photos. “He’s about to be 10-7, man” – police code for “out of service.”
The second officer approaches Arbery. “I think he’s still breathing,” Travis McMichael says off-camera.
It’s 2:48.
“Yep I know,” the officer replies. “I’m going to try to do something for him.”
“You got your first aid kit?” he shouts to Minshew. He rolls Arbery over on his back. His torso is soaked in blood. “Damn,” he mutters.
About a minute later, Minshew reports, “I ain't got no first aid kit.”
“I’m just going to keep my hand on him,” the officer says, pressing his gloved hand to Arbery’s chest.
At the 7:54 mark, paramedics arrive. The officer is standing over Arbery’s body.
“Looks like shotgun slug to the center chest. He was on his stomach when I got here. I rolled him over. He stopped breathing a couple minutes ago,” he tells paramedics.
He adds, “I kept pressure on it, but there was nothing I could do” (Schindler 1-2).
ATLANTA — The three white men accused of killing Ahmaud Arbery, a black man who was shot dead after being chased in a South Georgia neighborhood, have been indicted on murder charges by a Georgia grand jury, the prosecutor in the case announced on Wednesday.
The men — Gregory McMichael, 64; his son Travis McMichael, 34; and their neighbor William Bryan, 50 — were arrested and charged last month with murder and other crimes in connection with Mr. Arbery’s death, which prompted nationwide protests and indignation, particularly after a graphic video of his Feb. 23 killing was released online.
On Wednesday, the office of District Attorney Joyette M. Holmes of Cobb County announced that a grand jury in Glynn County had returned an indictment with nine counts against each of the three defendants: malice murder, four counts of felony murder, two counts of aggravated assault, false imprisonment and criminal attempt to commit false imprisonment.
…
Mr. Arbery, 25, was spotted in the Satilla Shores neighborhood, outside of Brunswick, Ga., while running on a Sunday afternoon. A surveillance camera showed that Mr. Arbery stopped for a few minutes inside a house under construction before resuming his jog. Gregory McMichael later told the authorities he thought Mr. Arbery was a suspect in a series of break-ins in the neighborhood.
He and Travis McMichael armed themselves, they told the police, got into a pickup truck, and tried to catch Mr. Arbery. Mr. Bryan, who is known as Roddie, also gave chase in his vehicle, a state investigator said, and used his cellphone to film the killing of Mr. Arbery.
The video shows Mr. Arbery running toward a pickup truck with Travis McMichael standing next to it. Mr. Arbery tries to run to the other side of the truck to avoid Mr. McMichael, who is armed with a shotgun. But the two struggle, and Mr. McMichael soon shoots Mr. Arbery.
In a court hearing this month, Richard Dial, an investigator with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, said Mr. Bryan heard Mr. McMichael use a racial slur after shooting Mr. Arbery.
According to the six-page indictment, which was returned Wednesday morning, the men are charged with trying to “unlawfully confine and detain” Mr. Arbery while chasing him, using their vehicles “offensively” and in a manner “likely to cause serious bodily injury.”
The most serious charge is malice murder, which under Georgia law is “the intentional killing of a person with malice aforethought,” said Charlie Bailey, an Atlanta-area lawyer and former assistant district attorney in Fulton County, Ga.
Mr. Bailey noted that this malice did not need to have been developed over a long period of time. “Malice can be formed in an instant,” he said (Fausset “Suspects” 1-3).
Mr. Bryan’s lawyer, Kevin Gough … has said repeatedly that his client should not be charged. Late Monday night, he released a statement saying Mr. Bryan had taken a polygraph test that proved he was unarmed at the time of the shooting and did not have a conversation with the McMichaels before the pursuit.
“Without Roddie Bryan,” Mr. Gough wrote, referring to Mr. Bryan by his nickname, “there would be no video of the shooting of Ahmaud Arbery. Without that video there would be no case. Without purporting to speak for the prosecution, as that would not be my place, we believe Mr. Bryan is not just a witness for the prosecution but a key witness.”
The McMichaels tried to cut off Mr. Arbery during the chase, according to Mr. McMichael’s account, and Mr. Arbery tried to avoid them by turning around and running in the other direction. At that point, Mr. Bryan “attempted to block him, which was unsuccessful,” according to the report.
Mr. Arbery then turned onto another street, and the McMichaels got in front of him while Mr. Bryan pursued from behind and began filming.
Mr. Bryan’s involvement is also mentioned in a letter that George E. Barnhill, the district attorney in Waycross, Ga., wrote to the Glynn County police in April. Mr. Barnhill was the second of four prosecutors who have been in charge of the case. He recused himself, citing a conflict of interest, but not before advising the police that insufficient probable cause existed to arrest the McMichaels or Mr. Bryan.
…
Mr. Bryan … and Mr. Gough appeared on the CNN program “Cuomo Prime Time.” Mr. Bryan was largely quiet, but Mr. Gough interjected as the program’s anchor, Chris Cuomo, asked Mr. Bryan about his actions on Feb. 23 and his motivation for recording the video.
Mr. Gough assigned blame for the shooting to the McMichaels, asserting that Mr. Bryan lived nearby and was drawn by the commotion.
“This is a terrible matter and some people are going to have to answer for what they did,” Mr. Gough said. “But my client is not responsible for that." Mr. Bryan, he added, “hasn’t been in so much as a fistfight since he was in high school.”
Mr. Bryan offered his sympathy to Mr. Arbery’s family, and said he was praying for them, and noted the role the video played in bringing attention to the case. “If there wasn’t a tape, then we wouldn’t know what happened,” he said (Fausset and Rojas 4).
When the Glynn County Police Department arrived at the scene of a fatal shooting in February in southeastern Georgia, officers encountered a former colleague with the victim’s blood on his hands.
They took down his version of events and let him and his adult son, who had fired the shots, go home.
Later that day, Wanda Cooper, the mother of the 25-year-old victim, Ahmaud Arbery, received a call from a police investigator. She recounted later that the investigator said her son had been involved in a burglary and was killed by “the homeowner,” an inaccurate version of what had happened.
More than two months after that fatal confrontation, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation … arrested the former officer Gregory McMichael, and his son, Travis McMichael, on charges of murder and aggravated assault.
The charges — which came after the release of a graphic video showing the killing as the two white men confront Mr. Arbery … made clear the depths of the local department’s bungling of the case, which was just the latest in a series of troubling episodes involving its officers.
…
[Attorney General Chris] Carr’s office … [had] already determined that George E. Barnhill, a district attorney who was assigned the case in February but [later] recused himself ..., should have never taken it on. Among his many conflicts: His son once worked alongside one of the suspects at the local prosecutor’s office.
…
“It’s small-town America,” Mr. [S. Lee] Merritt [a lawyer representing Mr. Arbery’s family] said in an interview .... “Those counties, the law enforcement community there they know each other well, they recycle officers in between themselves — it’s a very tight-knit community.”
Over the years, Glynn County police officers have been accused of covering up allegations of misconduct, tampering with a crime scene, interfering in an investigation of a police shooting and retaliating against fellow officers who cooperated with outside investigators.
The police chief was indicted days after Mr. Arbery’s killing on charges related to an alleged cover-up of an officer’s sexual relationship with an informant. The chief, John Powell, had been hired to clean up the department, which the Glynn County manager described last fall as suffering from poor training, outdated policies and “a culture of cronyism.”
The Glynn County force was the sort of department where disciplinary records went missing and where evidence room standards were not maintained, leading the state to strip it of its accreditation.
…
Darren W. Penn, a lawyer and a department critic, said the Ahmaud Arbery case was “another symptom or sign of a police department that appears willing to protect those that they know” (Rojas, Fausset, and Kovaleski 1-2).
Ahmaud Arbery, the black Georgia man who was fatally shot in February after being pursued by two white men, had an encounter with police in 2017 in which an officer tried to use a stun gun on him.
Police body-camera footage from that incident shows a Glynn County police officer on patrol questioning Arbery about his sitting alone in his car in a park. ...
The video, first reported on by The Guardian, and a police report on the incident were obtained by NBC News through an open records request (Burke 1).
In the video an officer patrolling the area suspected Arbery of using marijuana, saying he was in a park known for drug activity.
Arbery, dressed in a green hat, winter coat and athletic pants, said he didn’t have drugs and refused to let the officer search his car.
He told the officer he was relaxing by rapping in his car over instrumental beats and had the day off from work at Blue Beacon Truck Wash.
The incident … escalated when Arbery began to question why the officer, Michael Kanago, was hassling him. Kanago claimed he began to feel threatened by Arbery, later writing in his report that “veins were popping from [Arbery’s] chest, which made me feel that he was becoming enraged and may turn physically violent towards me”. Kanago requested help from a second officer.
“You’re bothering me for nothing,” Arbery said to Kanago, according to body camera footage.
After Kanago told him he was looking for criminal activity, Arbery said “criminal activity? I’m in a fucking park. I work.”
The second officer, David Haney, arrived minutes later and screamed at Arbery to get his hands out of his pockets, which Arbery did.
Haney then attempted to tase Arbery, but his Taser malfunctioned, according to Kanago’s report. Arbery continued to comply with instructions from the two officers to get on the ground. Kanago had already searched Arbery for weapons before Haney arrived, and deduced he was unarmed.
“I get one day off a week…I’m up early in the morning trying to chill,” Arbery told the officers as he sat on the ground. “I’m just so aggravated because I work hard, six days a week.”
The incident eventually ends with police allowing Arbery to leave, but forbidding him from driving his car because his driver’s license is suspended.
In a joint statement to the Guardian, lawyers working for the Arbery family described the video as a clear depiction of “a situation where Ahmaud was harassed by Glynn county police officers”.
The lawyers said there was “no justifiable reason” for Arbery to be threatened with a Taser. “This appears to be just a glimpse into the kind of scrutiny Ahmaud Arbery faced not only by this police department, but ultimately regular citizens like the McMichaels and their posse, pretending to be police officers” (Levine and Laughland 1-2).
Three Georgia men were indicted [April 27, 2021] on federal hate crime charges in connection with the death of Ahmaud Arbery …
…
The suspects — Travis McMichael, 35; his father, Gregory McMichael, 65; and William Bryan, 51, all of whom are white — were each charged with one count of interference with Mr. Arbery’s right to use a public street because of his race. They were also charged with one count of attempted kidnapping.
Travis and Gregory McMichael were also charged with one count each of using, carrying and brandishing a firearm. Travis McMichael is accused of shooting Mr. Arbery.
The men intimidated Mr. Arbery “because of Arbery’s race and color,” the eight-page indictment said.
…
All three suspects also face state charges of malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault, false imprisonment and criminal attempt to commit a felony.
No date has been set for the state trial. … (Benner and Wright 1, 3).
The Justice Department brought federal hate crimes charges Wednesday in the death of Ahmaud Arbery, charging a father and son who armed themselves, chased and fatally shot the 25-year-old Black man after spotting him running in their Georgia neighborhood.
Travis McMichael and his father, Gregory, were charged along with a third man, William “Roddie” Bryan, with one count of interference with civil rights and attempted kidnapping. The McMichaels are also charged with using, carrying and brandishing a firearm during a crime of violence.
The case is the most significant civil rights prosecution undertaken to date by the Biden administration Justice Department and comes as federal officials have moved quickly to open sweeping investigations into troubled police departments as civil rights takes center stage among the department’s priorities.
…
The Justice Department alleges that the men “used force and threats of force to intimidate and interfere with Arbery’s right to use a public street because of his race” (Tucker 1).
[Paste the following on Google to watch this video]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1v7o_...
[Paste the following on Google to hear an explanation of and see the video of the shooting]
Man Who Filmed the Arbery Killing Faces Calls for Arrest
Works cited:
Benner, Katie and Wright, Will. “3 Indicted on Federal Hate Crime Charges in Ahmaud Arbery Shooting.” The New York Times, updated April 29, 2021. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/28/us...
Burke, Minyvonne. “Ahmaud Arbery: A 2017 Video Shows Police Trying To Use Stun Gun on Him.” NBC News, May 19, 2020. Net. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/...
Fausset, Richard. “Suspects in Ahmaud Arbery’s Killing Are Indicted on Murder Charges.” The New York Times, updated June 24, 2020. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/24/us...
Fausset, Richard. “Two Weapons, a Chase, a Killing and No Charges.” The New York Times, updated February 28, 2021. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/26/us...
Fausset, Richard, and Rojas, Rick. “Man Who Filmed the Arbery Killing Faces Calls for Arrest.” The New York Times, updated June 24, 2020. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/18/us...
Levine, Sam and Laughland, Oliver. “Exclusive: Police Tried To Tase Ahmaud Arbery in 2017 Incident, Video Shows.” The Guardian, May 18, 2020. Net. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...
Rojas, Rick, Fausset, Richard, and Kovaleski, Serge F. “Georgia Killing Puts Spotlight on a Police Force’s Troubled History.” The New York Times, May 8, 2020. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/08/us...
Schindler, Anne. “POLICE VIDEO: Ahmaud Arbery Was ‘Breathing,' Moving When Officers Arrived.” First Coast News, updated December 19, 2020. Net. https://www.firstcoastnews.com/articl...
Tucker, Eric. “U.S. Indicts 3 on Hate Crime Charges in Death of Georgia Man.” NPR, April 28, 2021. Net. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/u...
June 17, 2021
Bad Apples -- December 3, 201-- Michael Dean
Michael Dean was a 28-year-old man who was shot and killed by a police officer during a routine traffic stop in Temple, Texas. Dean was born on May 5, 1991 to Moses and Christine Dean Jr. in Waco, Texas. He graduated from Temple High School in 2010 and pursued a business degree at Temple College. He also attended A New Day Fellowship Church in Temple. Known as “Mike” to family and friends, Dean had three daughters, Ah’Nyla Lanae, Te’Yanna Prenique, and Destiny Lariah.
On the evening of December 2, 2019, Temple Police Officer Carmen DeCruz observed Michael Dean speeding and attempted to pull him over. Dean did not stop immediately which led to a short pursuit. When Dean stopped his vehicle at an intersection, DeCruz used his squad car to block Dean’s vehicle.
The officer approached Dean with his service weapon drawn and ordered him to turn off the engine and hand over the keys. As DeCruz reached for the keys with his left hand, he fired the gun with his right hand.
The bullet struck Dean in the head. DeCruz attempted to offer medical assistance but Dean died on the scene. Dean was unarmed at the time of the shooting.
The Texas Rangers arrived on the scene and immediately assumed control of the investigation. The Southwest Institute of Forensic Sciences declared Dean’s death a homicide. DeCruz told investigators he fired the gun inadvertently, but Dean’s family questioned why the officer, a 9-year veteran of the police force, pointed the weapon directly at Dean who did not pose a threat to public safety. They also noted that the stretch of road where DeCruz first attempted to pull Dean over was dark and had no streetlights.
They believed Dean was merely pulling ahead to a well-lighted intersection for his own safety.
In February of 2020, DeCruz was charged with manslaughter, a second-degree felony. Lee Merritt, the attorney for Dean’s family, called the charge inadequate and pressed for a first-degree murder change. The Temple Police Department has refused to release dashboard and body-camera footage of the incident. The local chapter of the NAACP led a march a few days after the incident and continues to protest the failure of the Texas Rangers and other authorities to provide information about the investigation (Coen 1-2).
Dean, a father of three, died at the scene. He was found to be unarmed. According to his family’s attorney Lee Merritt he had just come from picking up a birthday cake for his daughter when the shooting happened.
Eight days after the shooting, on Dec. 10, Temple police identified Carmen DeCruz as the officer who shot Dean. He was put on administrative leave.
In February he was arrested and charged with manslaughter and later resigned from the police department.
DeCruz was indicted in March and spent about a month in jail. He was later released in March after his bond was lowered from half a million dollars to $80,000.
"It was a menial percentage of what he was held on,” said DeShaundra Dean, a sister of Michael Dean. “A life was taken. It doesn’t matter if you did it accidentally or not.”
The Dean family’s attorney Lee Merritt, who has gone on to represent other families in high profile police brutality cases, released a statement on the anniversary of Dean’s death.
“Michael Dean should be celebrating his daughter’s 7th birthday today. Instead, he was shot at point blank range in the head a year ago on the side of the road in Temple, Texas. He was unarmed and nonviolent. The legal apparatus within the city and county has failed to display any signs of transparency and continues to withhold body and dash camera footage of Michael’s death. While Michael’s family continues to grieve, Carmen DeCruz was given a reduced bail amount and can spend his holidays home with his family, a luxury that can never be enjoyed by Michael Dean’s family ever again. On the anniversary of his death, this family renews their calls for transparency and swiftness in prosecuting Michael’s killer.”
Since the shooting, the family, the attorney and the Temple NAACP have been calling for the release of the body camera and dash camera video showing the incidents. The city has refused to release it claiming it’s “in an effort to protect witnesses that can be seen in the footage.”
The family also said they are frustrated with a lack of change at Temple Police Department since their brother’s death.
“There’s been no information as far as them doing additional training so you don’t have incidents with officers who take matters into their own hands and end up where we are now-- talking to you with our brother in the ground behind us,” said Tosheena Dean.
A pre-trial hearing for ex-officer DeCruz is scheduled for January 15, 2021 (Crown 1-2).
A Texas police officer who fatally shot an unarmed man in the head in December opened fire while the pair had “an altercation of some sort,” according to a report filed in compliance with a law meant to provide more transparency in police shootings.
Temple officer Carmen DeCruz tried to pull Michael Dean over for speeding on the night of Dec. 2, but the 28-year-old did not stop and “a short pursuit ensued,” states a report city police sent to the Texas attorney general’s office.
Dean eventually pulled over and DeCruz, 52, approached his PT Cruiser. Then “there was an altercation of some sort between” the men, the report states, and during it the officer’s “service weapon discharged” striking Dean.
The report does not describe the “altercation” further. It’s “unknown” whether Dean attempted to injure the officer or others, according to the report, but the most serious offense he would have been charged with is “evading in a vehicle.”
Despite the questions it leaves open, the seven-page document offers some of the only available details on what led up to Dean’s death two months ago. Police in Temple, a city of 76,000 people about 70 miles (112 kilometers) northeast of Austin, have said little about the shooting and consistently referred questions to the Texas Rangers, who are leading the investigation.
Dallas attorney Lee Merritt, who is representing Dean’s family, suggested that Dean was looking for a safe place to pull over, not evading the officer. He called the report “disingenuous.”
“When it gets down to the critical juncture they leave out all the important detail, which leaves Mr. DeCruz a great deal of latitude to change his story at some later date,” said Merritt. “This seems to be an attempt to try to justify what is clearly unjustifiable.”
…
Since 2015, Texas law enforcement agencies have been legally required to send the attorney general’s office reports on any shooting in which an officer was hit or shot someone within 30 days (Bleiberg 1).
Dean’s mother has said she needs to hear the truth, for better or for worse. She also said a police detective initially told her that her son didn’t pull over right away and when he exited the car, he walked toward the officer, who then shot him.
“Things just don’t add up. He knows not to get out of a car when he’s pulled over. And people said they saw the police officer pull him (Michael) out of the car,” she said.
The Temple Police Department didn’t release information that someone was killed in an officer-involved shooting until the afternoon of Dec. 3. When questioned as to why this was omitted from the initial news release after Dean had already been declared dead, spokesman Chris Christoff said the incident occurred in public, “meaning that the vehicle had the potential of being easily recognizable. We wanted an opportunity to notify Dean’s family prior to releasing the information to the public.”
The officer-involved shooting also wasn’t listed on LexisNexis Community Crime Map, which is what the Temple Police Department uses to inform the public of incidents in the neighborhood.
The shooting marked the most recent high-profile instance of allegations of excessive force and police brutality against the Temple Police Department. Aside from Dean’s killing last week … , Stephen Gayle, a 40-year-old mentally ill Black man, was killed in 2017 after a struggle with police. “Multiple witnesses claimed to Channel 6 News that the officers beat the man,” the local NBC affiliate reported at the time.
“The cop, he got out the car, he body-slammed [Gayle] and put him up in the car,” one witness told Channel 6 about Gayle. “Then [the officer] took him out. He was screaming for his mom, and then he died.”
Further complicating matters is DeCruz’s violent past as a police officer. He was named in an excessive force lawsuit for his actions surrounding the apprehension of a teenage suspect in 2017. DeCruz and his partner at the time were accused of intentionally running over a 15-year-old boy and leaving him under their squad car while it idled for 10 minutes and burned the 15-year-old boy’s body. The teenager’s mother filed the lawsuit that specifically named DeCruz and blamed him and his partner for third-degree burns to her son’s “torso, thighs and pelvis while pinned beneath the running vehicle.”
Police reportedly spun the narrative to say that the teenager was hurt while fleeing an attempted home invasion with other teens. Either way, the damning report paints a picture of DeCruz’s possible preferred policing tactics of being a judge, jury and executioner instead of allowing justice to take its proper course in a court of law.
This is America (Wright 1-3).
Family and friends of Michael Dean say they are hopeful after former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted for the murder of George Floyd.
Dean was shot and killed by former Temple PD officer Carmen DeCruz during a traffic stop in December 2019. The loss is still fresh for the Dean family.
”It’s not a good feeling to know that one of your family members, close family member’s life was taken by someone that is supposed to serve and protect his community. It hurts bad,” said Jeremy Dean, Michael's brother.
Dean's loved ones and the community say they are still fighting for justice.
”This person, who would give you the shirt off his back even if he didn’t have another shirt to put on, he was a warm, kindhearted person that would help you out in any was possible," said Jeremy.
The Dean family says they understand the pain George Floyd's family feels.
…
”If you're looking at the time frame that justice was served in this case and the time frame that justice has not been served in Michael's case, that just stings, very much so,” said Terris Goodwin, a close family friend of Dean.
The Dean family hopes Chauvin's conviction is just the beginning and leads to more convictions and accountability for officers that commit similar crimes.
”Seeing that this guy has been convicted and hopefully sentenced properly, hopefully they can use this. This is a prime example of a bad cop,” said Jeremy.
”Continue to keep the Dean family in your prayers and be ready to advocate and ask the difficult questions as to why Michael Dean’s murderer is still out walking free at this moment in time,” said Goodwin.
DeCruz has been charged with manslaughter. He is scheduled to appear in court on June 10 [2021]. He is currently out on bond (Schindler 1-2).
Due to a backlog of cases not tried during the pandemic, DeCruz’s trial will not occur in 2021.
Works cited:
Bleiberg, Jake. “Report: Texas Cop Shot Man in ‘Altercation of Some Sort’.” AP News, February 5, 2020. Net. https://apnews.com/article/99e5b8938a...
Coen, Ross. “MICHAEL DEAN (1991-2019).” Black Past, August 13, 2020. Net. https://www.blackpast.org/african-ame...
Crown, Rosemond. “Family Says No Progress Made One Year after Temple Officer Kills Michael Dean.” KWTX, December 2, 2020. Net. https://www.kwtx.com/2020/12/03/famil...
Schindler, Adam. “Michael Dean's Family Hopeful after Seeing Derek Chauvin Convicted of George Floyd's Murder.” KXXV, April 21, 2021. Net. https://www.kxxv.com/hometown/bell-co...
Wright, Bruce C. T. “Why Was Michael Dean Killed? Police Confirm He Was Unarmed When Cop Shot Him in the Head.” NEWSONE, January 2, 2020. Net. https://newsone.com/3898035/michael-d...
On the evening of December 2, 2019, Temple Police Officer Carmen DeCruz observed Michael Dean speeding and attempted to pull him over. Dean did not stop immediately which led to a short pursuit. When Dean stopped his vehicle at an intersection, DeCruz used his squad car to block Dean’s vehicle.
The officer approached Dean with his service weapon drawn and ordered him to turn off the engine and hand over the keys. As DeCruz reached for the keys with his left hand, he fired the gun with his right hand.
The bullet struck Dean in the head. DeCruz attempted to offer medical assistance but Dean died on the scene. Dean was unarmed at the time of the shooting.
The Texas Rangers arrived on the scene and immediately assumed control of the investigation. The Southwest Institute of Forensic Sciences declared Dean’s death a homicide. DeCruz told investigators he fired the gun inadvertently, but Dean’s family questioned why the officer, a 9-year veteran of the police force, pointed the weapon directly at Dean who did not pose a threat to public safety. They also noted that the stretch of road where DeCruz first attempted to pull Dean over was dark and had no streetlights.
They believed Dean was merely pulling ahead to a well-lighted intersection for his own safety.
In February of 2020, DeCruz was charged with manslaughter, a second-degree felony. Lee Merritt, the attorney for Dean’s family, called the charge inadequate and pressed for a first-degree murder change. The Temple Police Department has refused to release dashboard and body-camera footage of the incident. The local chapter of the NAACP led a march a few days after the incident and continues to protest the failure of the Texas Rangers and other authorities to provide information about the investigation (Coen 1-2).
Dean, a father of three, died at the scene. He was found to be unarmed. According to his family’s attorney Lee Merritt he had just come from picking up a birthday cake for his daughter when the shooting happened.
Eight days after the shooting, on Dec. 10, Temple police identified Carmen DeCruz as the officer who shot Dean. He was put on administrative leave.
In February he was arrested and charged with manslaughter and later resigned from the police department.
DeCruz was indicted in March and spent about a month in jail. He was later released in March after his bond was lowered from half a million dollars to $80,000.
"It was a menial percentage of what he was held on,” said DeShaundra Dean, a sister of Michael Dean. “A life was taken. It doesn’t matter if you did it accidentally or not.”
The Dean family’s attorney Lee Merritt, who has gone on to represent other families in high profile police brutality cases, released a statement on the anniversary of Dean’s death.
“Michael Dean should be celebrating his daughter’s 7th birthday today. Instead, he was shot at point blank range in the head a year ago on the side of the road in Temple, Texas. He was unarmed and nonviolent. The legal apparatus within the city and county has failed to display any signs of transparency and continues to withhold body and dash camera footage of Michael’s death. While Michael’s family continues to grieve, Carmen DeCruz was given a reduced bail amount and can spend his holidays home with his family, a luxury that can never be enjoyed by Michael Dean’s family ever again. On the anniversary of his death, this family renews their calls for transparency and swiftness in prosecuting Michael’s killer.”
Since the shooting, the family, the attorney and the Temple NAACP have been calling for the release of the body camera and dash camera video showing the incidents. The city has refused to release it claiming it’s “in an effort to protect witnesses that can be seen in the footage.”
The family also said they are frustrated with a lack of change at Temple Police Department since their brother’s death.
“There’s been no information as far as them doing additional training so you don’t have incidents with officers who take matters into their own hands and end up where we are now-- talking to you with our brother in the ground behind us,” said Tosheena Dean.
A pre-trial hearing for ex-officer DeCruz is scheduled for January 15, 2021 (Crown 1-2).
A Texas police officer who fatally shot an unarmed man in the head in December opened fire while the pair had “an altercation of some sort,” according to a report filed in compliance with a law meant to provide more transparency in police shootings.
Temple officer Carmen DeCruz tried to pull Michael Dean over for speeding on the night of Dec. 2, but the 28-year-old did not stop and “a short pursuit ensued,” states a report city police sent to the Texas attorney general’s office.
Dean eventually pulled over and DeCruz, 52, approached his PT Cruiser. Then “there was an altercation of some sort between” the men, the report states, and during it the officer’s “service weapon discharged” striking Dean.
The report does not describe the “altercation” further. It’s “unknown” whether Dean attempted to injure the officer or others, according to the report, but the most serious offense he would have been charged with is “evading in a vehicle.”
Despite the questions it leaves open, the seven-page document offers some of the only available details on what led up to Dean’s death two months ago. Police in Temple, a city of 76,000 people about 70 miles (112 kilometers) northeast of Austin, have said little about the shooting and consistently referred questions to the Texas Rangers, who are leading the investigation.
Dallas attorney Lee Merritt, who is representing Dean’s family, suggested that Dean was looking for a safe place to pull over, not evading the officer. He called the report “disingenuous.”
“When it gets down to the critical juncture they leave out all the important detail, which leaves Mr. DeCruz a great deal of latitude to change his story at some later date,” said Merritt. “This seems to be an attempt to try to justify what is clearly unjustifiable.”
…
Since 2015, Texas law enforcement agencies have been legally required to send the attorney general’s office reports on any shooting in which an officer was hit or shot someone within 30 days (Bleiberg 1).
Dean’s mother has said she needs to hear the truth, for better or for worse. She also said a police detective initially told her that her son didn’t pull over right away and when he exited the car, he walked toward the officer, who then shot him.
“Things just don’t add up. He knows not to get out of a car when he’s pulled over. And people said they saw the police officer pull him (Michael) out of the car,” she said.
The Temple Police Department didn’t release information that someone was killed in an officer-involved shooting until the afternoon of Dec. 3. When questioned as to why this was omitted from the initial news release after Dean had already been declared dead, spokesman Chris Christoff said the incident occurred in public, “meaning that the vehicle had the potential of being easily recognizable. We wanted an opportunity to notify Dean’s family prior to releasing the information to the public.”
The officer-involved shooting also wasn’t listed on LexisNexis Community Crime Map, which is what the Temple Police Department uses to inform the public of incidents in the neighborhood.
The shooting marked the most recent high-profile instance of allegations of excessive force and police brutality against the Temple Police Department. Aside from Dean’s killing last week … , Stephen Gayle, a 40-year-old mentally ill Black man, was killed in 2017 after a struggle with police. “Multiple witnesses claimed to Channel 6 News that the officers beat the man,” the local NBC affiliate reported at the time.
“The cop, he got out the car, he body-slammed [Gayle] and put him up in the car,” one witness told Channel 6 about Gayle. “Then [the officer] took him out. He was screaming for his mom, and then he died.”
Further complicating matters is DeCruz’s violent past as a police officer. He was named in an excessive force lawsuit for his actions surrounding the apprehension of a teenage suspect in 2017. DeCruz and his partner at the time were accused of intentionally running over a 15-year-old boy and leaving him under their squad car while it idled for 10 minutes and burned the 15-year-old boy’s body. The teenager’s mother filed the lawsuit that specifically named DeCruz and blamed him and his partner for third-degree burns to her son’s “torso, thighs and pelvis while pinned beneath the running vehicle.”
Police reportedly spun the narrative to say that the teenager was hurt while fleeing an attempted home invasion with other teens. Either way, the damning report paints a picture of DeCruz’s possible preferred policing tactics of being a judge, jury and executioner instead of allowing justice to take its proper course in a court of law.
This is America (Wright 1-3).
Family and friends of Michael Dean say they are hopeful after former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted for the murder of George Floyd.
Dean was shot and killed by former Temple PD officer Carmen DeCruz during a traffic stop in December 2019. The loss is still fresh for the Dean family.
”It’s not a good feeling to know that one of your family members, close family member’s life was taken by someone that is supposed to serve and protect his community. It hurts bad,” said Jeremy Dean, Michael's brother.
Dean's loved ones and the community say they are still fighting for justice.
”This person, who would give you the shirt off his back even if he didn’t have another shirt to put on, he was a warm, kindhearted person that would help you out in any was possible," said Jeremy.
The Dean family says they understand the pain George Floyd's family feels.
…
”If you're looking at the time frame that justice was served in this case and the time frame that justice has not been served in Michael's case, that just stings, very much so,” said Terris Goodwin, a close family friend of Dean.
The Dean family hopes Chauvin's conviction is just the beginning and leads to more convictions and accountability for officers that commit similar crimes.
”Seeing that this guy has been convicted and hopefully sentenced properly, hopefully they can use this. This is a prime example of a bad cop,” said Jeremy.
”Continue to keep the Dean family in your prayers and be ready to advocate and ask the difficult questions as to why Michael Dean’s murderer is still out walking free at this moment in time,” said Goodwin.
DeCruz has been charged with manslaughter. He is scheduled to appear in court on June 10 [2021]. He is currently out on bond (Schindler 1-2).
Due to a backlog of cases not tried during the pandemic, DeCruz’s trial will not occur in 2021.
Works cited:
Bleiberg, Jake. “Report: Texas Cop Shot Man in ‘Altercation of Some Sort’.” AP News, February 5, 2020. Net. https://apnews.com/article/99e5b8938a...
Coen, Ross. “MICHAEL DEAN (1991-2019).” Black Past, August 13, 2020. Net. https://www.blackpast.org/african-ame...
Crown, Rosemond. “Family Says No Progress Made One Year after Temple Officer Kills Michael Dean.” KWTX, December 2, 2020. Net. https://www.kwtx.com/2020/12/03/famil...
Schindler, Adam. “Michael Dean's Family Hopeful after Seeing Derek Chauvin Convicted of George Floyd's Murder.” KXXV, April 21, 2021. Net. https://www.kxxv.com/hometown/bell-co...
Wright, Bruce C. T. “Why Was Michael Dean Killed? Police Confirm He Was Unarmed When Cop Shot Him in the Head.” NEWSONE, January 2, 2020. Net. https://newsone.com/3898035/michael-d...
June 13, 2021
Bad Apples -- October 12, 2019 -- Atatiana Jefferson
FORT WORTH — Minutes before she was shot and killed by a Fort Worth police officer, Atatiana K. Jefferson was playing video games in her bedroom with her 8-year-old nephew, a lawyer for her family said Sunday.
Ms. Jefferson, 28, was proud of being the “cool auntie” to her siblings’ children, and had stayed up into the wee hours of Saturday morning with her nephew, Xbox controllers in their hands, according to S. Lee Merritt, the family’s lawyer. But the pair grew concerned around 2:30 a.m., he said, when they heard rustling outside the house and saw flashlights.
A neighbor had called the police after seeing Ms. Jefferson’s front and side doors ajar, a call he later said he regretted making. The two responding officers quietly crept around outside the dark house, where Ms. Jefferson lived with her mother.
After unlatching a fence door and walking into the back yard, a white male officer saw Ms. Jefferson, who is black, through her bedroom window. He shouted for her to put her hands up and immediately fired a single shot through the glass, according to body camera footage released by the department.
The officers do not identify themselves as police in the video.
Ms. Jefferson’s nephew was still in the bedroom when she was killed, the police said (Martinez “Woman’”1).
Ms. Jefferson, 28, sold medical pharmaceutical equipment from home while studying to apply to medical school. She had earned a degree in biology from Xavier University of Louisiana in 2014.
Ms. Jefferson was a loving aunt who would play basketball and video games with her nephews, her sister Amber Carr said. She had recently moved in with her mother, who had health problems — and learned about her daughter’s shooting while in a hospital.
One of Ms. Jefferson’s neighbors, James Smith, had called a nonemergency line at 2:23 a.m. on Saturday to express concern that the doors of Ms. Jefferson’s house had been open for several hours.
“I haven’t seen anybody moving around,” he told the dispatcher in a calm voice. “It’s not normal for them to have the doors open this time of night.”
Mr. Smith’s niece later said that he was upset with how the police responded, and that he had never suggested a burglary was taking place (Martinez “Fort” 2).
Dana Williams, Mr. Smith’s niece, said her uncle was shaken and too distraught to talk to reporters. He was particularly upset, she said, that the police had parked on an adjacent street, rather than pulling up in front of Ms. Jefferson’s house or into her driveway.
Ms. Williams said her uncle told his family that he had never told the police that he suspected a burglary was taking place. “Why did they have to go in like that?” he keeps asking, Ms. Williams said.
Ms. Williams said Ms. Jefferson’s family had come over and told her uncle that he had done nothing wrong. She said her uncle has lived in the same house for more than 50 years, and that the family would often see Ms. Jefferson outside washing her car or taking care of her mother. Children from the two families would often play together. (Martinez “Woman” 3).
[Interim Police Chief] Kraus said the call was relayed to the two officers who responded as a call for an “open structure,” a vague classification that could mean anything from an abandoned house to a burglary in progress. It was not a welfare check, in which case officers would often knock on the house’s doors or call inside.
A gun was found on the floor of Ms. Jefferson’s bedroom near the window. When Ms. Jefferson heard noises coming from outside, she had taken a handgun from her purse and pointed it toward the window, her 8-year-old nephew told officials, according to an arrest warrant released on Tuesday.
But the other officer who responded with Mr. Dean said she could only see Ms. Jefferson’s face through the window when Mr. Dean fired, according to the warrant, and Chief Kraus has defended her right to have a gun in her own home.
“It makes sense that she would have a gun if she felt that she was being threatened or that there was someone in the back yard,” he said at a news conference on Tuesday.
Body camera footage released by the Police Department provides some details of the shooting.
Two officers responding to the call parked a block away from Ms. Jefferson’s house before unlatching a fence door and entering the backyard. “Put your hands up! Show me your hands!” Mr. Dean yelled when he saw Ms. Jefferson. He then immediately fired one shot through the glass.
“Nobody looked at that video and said there was any doubt that this officer acted inappropriately,” Chief Kraus said. “I get it. We’re trying to train our officers better.”
The officers did not identify themselves to Ms. Jefferson before she was killed.
Chief Kraus said that the officers believed they were responding to an “open structure” call and appeared to approach the house in that manner, rather than ringing a doorbell or calling into the house (What 2-3).
“I get it,” Chief Kraus said of the widespread public anger that followed the release of body camera video in the case. It showed that Ms. Jefferson had been given no warning that it was a police officer who had crept into her backyard, shined a light into her bedroom window and shouted, “Put your hands up! Show me your hands!” immediately before firing a single fatal shot.
“Nobody looked at that video and said there was any doubt that this officer acted inappropriately,” the chief said.
[A similar incident had occurred recently] in nearby Dallas where a black man had been shot by an off-duty police officer in his own apartment … (Martinez “Fort” 2-3)
Ms. Jefferson was killed less than two weeks after the conclusion of the case in Dallas, in which Amber R. Guyger, a white former police officer, was convicted of murder. Ms. Guyger shot her unarmed black neighbor, Botham Shem Jean, in his apartment last year, claiming she thought the apartment was her own. [Her apartment was directly above his] The former officer was sentenced to 10 years in prison this month after a highly publicized trial (Martinez “Fort” 5).
… Fort Worth ...residents have frequently complained about abuse at the hands of the police. Since June, Fort Worth officers have shot and killed six people.
“A murder charge and an arrest is a good start — it’s more than we are used to seeing,” S. Lee Merritt, a civil rights lawyer who is representing Ms. Jefferson’s family, said on Monday night. But like many others, he said he was waiting to see how the case was prosecuted.
“Fort Worth has a culture that has allowed this to happen,” he said. “There still needs to be a reckoning.”
In interviews on Monday, community members recited prior episodes with authorities from memory: In 2009 a man with a history of mental illness died after he was Tasered by the Fort Worth police, which his family had called for help. In 2016, a mother called the police to report that a neighbor had choked her young son for littering, but the mother herself ended up getting arrested. In the video-recorded encounter, the mother, Jacqueline Craig, was forced to the ground and placed in handcuffs; her teenage daughters were also detained.
Community activists also cited the seven police shootings since early summer, six of them fatal, including the killing of a man who the police thought was carrying a rifle but was actually pointing a flashlight at officers after barricading himself inside a house.
“We’re beyond anger,” said the Rev. Kyev Tatum, a pastor at New Mount Rose Missionary Baptist Church in Fort Worth. “It’s trauma now. It’s unaddressed, toxic stress.”
Mr. Dean had been with the Fort Worth Police Department since April 2018, after graduating from the police academy a month earlier, according to documents provided by the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement, a state regulatory agency.
On Monday night, he was released from the Tarrant County jail after posting a $200,000 bond.
…
The authorities said Mr. Dean did not identify himself as a police officer before firing a fatal shot at Ms. Jefferson through the window.
Ms. Jefferson died in her bedroom after officers tried to provide medical assistance, according to the Tarrant County medical examiner’s office. Her nephew was in the room when the shooting occurred, the authorities said (Martinez “Fort” 2-4).
Chief Kraus grew emotional this week as he described how the killing would undoubtedly erode the trust that he said officers had worked to build with the people they serve.
“I likened it to a bunch of ants building an ant hill, and somebody comes with a hose and washes it away,” he said. “They just have to start from scratch.”
Chief Kraus said he had spoken to scores of officers who all said they supported the quick move to arrest Mr. Dean and charge him with murder.
[Manny] Ramirez [president of the Fort Worth Police Officers Association] said he and other officers had been dumbfounded as to why Mr. Dean pulled the trigger. Mr. Ramirez added that there was “no way to explain” his actions (What 2).
Aaron Y. Dean, who is white, resigned earlier on Monday, hours before the police chief had planned to fire him, amid growing anger and frustration in the community … (Martinez “Fort” 1).
During a police department job interview in 2017, Dean said he wanted to serve the public and liked "the action and adventure" that he believed came with being an officer.
Dean said he had wanted to join the military and saw becoming a police officer as a "way to do some of those same things without having to deploy overseas."
He said he would have "no problem" using lethal force if necessary, according to records of his interview (Stanglin 2).
Relatives of Atatiana Jefferson ... have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the city and the former officer charged in her death.
The federal lawsuit was filed Monday in the Northern District of Texas by Jefferson’s biological father, Jerome Ekpo Eschor, against the city of Fort Worth and the former Fort Worth police officer who shot Jefferson,
Aaron Dean. Jefferson’s maternal aunt Venitta Body and paternal aunt Arita Eschor were also included as plaintiffs.
“Her father, Jerome, decided to bring the claim in order to help the family finally get some justice and to bring closure,” said lead attorney Tanika J. Solomon in a phone interview with NBC News. “This is not just about money. This is about vindication.”
…
Monday’s civil suit, which seeks an unspecified amount of money for damages and attorney fees, alleged that Dean's conduct “demonstrated a deliberate indifference to and conscious disregard for the constitutional rights and safety” of Jefferson.
…
The lawsuit also argued that the city of Fort Worth is complicit in Jefferson’s alleged murder for failing to reprimand Dean in prior instances of excessive force and for failing to adequately train officers (Sykes 1, 3).
James Smith is angry, hurt and tired. Every death of a black person at the hands of a police officer takes him back to the moment in October when Atatiana Jefferson was killed.
"I have to live with this guilt, with this cloud hanging over me for the rest of my years," he says. Because he was the reason that the police were there that night.
At around 02:30 on 12 October he was woken by his niece and nephew, who told him the front door of their neighbour's house was wide open and the lights were on.
The owner of the house, Yolanda Carr, had a heart condition and had recently been in and out of intensive care, so Smith was worried something had happened to her.
He went across the road and noticed the lawnmower and other gardening equipment were still plugged in, which he thought was strange.
So he dialled a number in the phone book to request a "wellness check" - expecting that a police officer would come out, knock on the door and check the family was OK.
He didn't know that Carr was in hospital that night and that her daughter and grandson were up late playing video games.
He was standing directly opposite the house when the police arrived.
One of the officers, Aaron Dean, had his gun drawn as he approached the front door and then walked around the side of the house to the back garden. Seconds later there was a gunshot.
"When that bullet went off I heard her spirit say, 'Don't let them get away with it,'" Smith says.
"And that's pretty much why I stayed out there all night long until they brought her out."
Police soon filled the street, but they wouldn't tell him what had happened. It wasn't until they wheeled a body out six hours later that he knew Yolanda Carr's daughter, Atatiana Jefferson, had been killed.
…
Keeping the yard straight is like a ritual in the area, he says, one that Atatiana's family had been quick to adopt. He describes Yolanda Carr as a hard-working lady. "She had some problems in life that she overcame and her home was her trophy."
Atatiana had been staying in the house while her mother was unwell. She was saving for medical school while caring for her mother and her eight-year-old nephew.
A few days before the killing there had been a car crash on the street, James Smith remembers. Atatiana rushed out to help, and she stayed with the people in the car until the ambulance came. That was just her nature, he says.
"She intended to become a doctor," he says, before going silent for a moment. "But that's not going to happen now."
Sometimes he would mow their lawn for them, Atatiana would bring him water and they'd chat. The day that she died she had been mowing the lawn herself, showing her nephew how to do it.
…
He doesn't feel that the case against Aaron Dean is being pursued properly. It troubles him that no-one from law enforcement has come to speak to him since the night of the shooting. It's his belief that if he hadn't spoken to the media the following morning, Atatiana's death might not have been investigated.
He's also upset with the pace of the trial.
"With the pandemic going on they said it could be 2021 before this thing starts. On the other hand, had it been a person of colour we'd be tried, convicted and have started our sentence already," he says.
"We're still holding our breath. Pardon the phrase, but we can't breathe" (Hegarty 1-3).
Dean resigned and was indicted on a murder charge.
The case has been delayed in court, but a Tarrant County judge recently set a tentative trial date for August [2021] - almost two years after Jefferson’s death (Woodard 3).
[Paste the following to Google to see the you-tube video of the shooting]
The night Atatiana Jefferson was killed: Bodycam footage re ...
Works cited:
Hegarty, Stephanie. “Atatiana Jefferson: 'Why I Will No Longer Call the Police'.” BBC News, June 16, 2020. Net. https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-5305...
Martinez, Marina Trahan, Bogel-Burroughs, Nichols, and Mervosh, Sarah. “Fort Worth Officer Charged with Murder for Shooting Woman in Her Home.” The New York Times, October 14, 2019. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/14/us...
Martinex, Marina Trahan, Bogel-Burroughs, Nichols, and Montgomery, Dave. “Woman Was Playing Video Game with Her Nephew When Shot by Fort Worth Police.” The New York Times, updated October 24, 2019. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/13/us...
Stanglin, Doug. “Texas Officer Who Shot Woman in Her Home Sometimes Dad 'Tunnel Vision,' Review Says.” USA Today, November 7, 2019. Net. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/n...
Sykes, Stefan. “Family of Atatiana Jefferson, Black Woman Killed by Police, Sue City of Fort Worth and Ex-Officer.” NBC News, November 18, 2020. Net. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/...
“What We Know about the Fort Worth Police Shooting of Atatiana Jefferson.” The New York Times, updated October 24, 2019. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/15/us...
Woodard, Teresa. “Sisters of Atatiana Jefferson Say One Year after George Floyd’s Death They Remain 'Stuck in 2019'.” WFAA, May 25, 2021. Net. https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/cri...
Ms. Jefferson, 28, was proud of being the “cool auntie” to her siblings’ children, and had stayed up into the wee hours of Saturday morning with her nephew, Xbox controllers in their hands, according to S. Lee Merritt, the family’s lawyer. But the pair grew concerned around 2:30 a.m., he said, when they heard rustling outside the house and saw flashlights.
A neighbor had called the police after seeing Ms. Jefferson’s front and side doors ajar, a call he later said he regretted making. The two responding officers quietly crept around outside the dark house, where Ms. Jefferson lived with her mother.
After unlatching a fence door and walking into the back yard, a white male officer saw Ms. Jefferson, who is black, through her bedroom window. He shouted for her to put her hands up and immediately fired a single shot through the glass, according to body camera footage released by the department.
The officers do not identify themselves as police in the video.
Ms. Jefferson’s nephew was still in the bedroom when she was killed, the police said (Martinez “Woman’”1).
Ms. Jefferson, 28, sold medical pharmaceutical equipment from home while studying to apply to medical school. She had earned a degree in biology from Xavier University of Louisiana in 2014.
Ms. Jefferson was a loving aunt who would play basketball and video games with her nephews, her sister Amber Carr said. She had recently moved in with her mother, who had health problems — and learned about her daughter’s shooting while in a hospital.
One of Ms. Jefferson’s neighbors, James Smith, had called a nonemergency line at 2:23 a.m. on Saturday to express concern that the doors of Ms. Jefferson’s house had been open for several hours.
“I haven’t seen anybody moving around,” he told the dispatcher in a calm voice. “It’s not normal for them to have the doors open this time of night.”
Mr. Smith’s niece later said that he was upset with how the police responded, and that he had never suggested a burglary was taking place (Martinez “Fort” 2).
Dana Williams, Mr. Smith’s niece, said her uncle was shaken and too distraught to talk to reporters. He was particularly upset, she said, that the police had parked on an adjacent street, rather than pulling up in front of Ms. Jefferson’s house or into her driveway.
Ms. Williams said her uncle told his family that he had never told the police that he suspected a burglary was taking place. “Why did they have to go in like that?” he keeps asking, Ms. Williams said.
Ms. Williams said Ms. Jefferson’s family had come over and told her uncle that he had done nothing wrong. She said her uncle has lived in the same house for more than 50 years, and that the family would often see Ms. Jefferson outside washing her car or taking care of her mother. Children from the two families would often play together. (Martinez “Woman” 3).
[Interim Police Chief] Kraus said the call was relayed to the two officers who responded as a call for an “open structure,” a vague classification that could mean anything from an abandoned house to a burglary in progress. It was not a welfare check, in which case officers would often knock on the house’s doors or call inside.
A gun was found on the floor of Ms. Jefferson’s bedroom near the window. When Ms. Jefferson heard noises coming from outside, she had taken a handgun from her purse and pointed it toward the window, her 8-year-old nephew told officials, according to an arrest warrant released on Tuesday.
But the other officer who responded with Mr. Dean said she could only see Ms. Jefferson’s face through the window when Mr. Dean fired, according to the warrant, and Chief Kraus has defended her right to have a gun in her own home.
“It makes sense that she would have a gun if she felt that she was being threatened or that there was someone in the back yard,” he said at a news conference on Tuesday.
Body camera footage released by the Police Department provides some details of the shooting.
Two officers responding to the call parked a block away from Ms. Jefferson’s house before unlatching a fence door and entering the backyard. “Put your hands up! Show me your hands!” Mr. Dean yelled when he saw Ms. Jefferson. He then immediately fired one shot through the glass.
“Nobody looked at that video and said there was any doubt that this officer acted inappropriately,” Chief Kraus said. “I get it. We’re trying to train our officers better.”
The officers did not identify themselves to Ms. Jefferson before she was killed.
Chief Kraus said that the officers believed they were responding to an “open structure” call and appeared to approach the house in that manner, rather than ringing a doorbell or calling into the house (What 2-3).
“I get it,” Chief Kraus said of the widespread public anger that followed the release of body camera video in the case. It showed that Ms. Jefferson had been given no warning that it was a police officer who had crept into her backyard, shined a light into her bedroom window and shouted, “Put your hands up! Show me your hands!” immediately before firing a single fatal shot.
“Nobody looked at that video and said there was any doubt that this officer acted inappropriately,” the chief said.
[A similar incident had occurred recently] in nearby Dallas where a black man had been shot by an off-duty police officer in his own apartment … (Martinez “Fort” 2-3)
Ms. Jefferson was killed less than two weeks after the conclusion of the case in Dallas, in which Amber R. Guyger, a white former police officer, was convicted of murder. Ms. Guyger shot her unarmed black neighbor, Botham Shem Jean, in his apartment last year, claiming she thought the apartment was her own. [Her apartment was directly above his] The former officer was sentenced to 10 years in prison this month after a highly publicized trial (Martinez “Fort” 5).
… Fort Worth ...residents have frequently complained about abuse at the hands of the police. Since June, Fort Worth officers have shot and killed six people.
“A murder charge and an arrest is a good start — it’s more than we are used to seeing,” S. Lee Merritt, a civil rights lawyer who is representing Ms. Jefferson’s family, said on Monday night. But like many others, he said he was waiting to see how the case was prosecuted.
“Fort Worth has a culture that has allowed this to happen,” he said. “There still needs to be a reckoning.”
In interviews on Monday, community members recited prior episodes with authorities from memory: In 2009 a man with a history of mental illness died after he was Tasered by the Fort Worth police, which his family had called for help. In 2016, a mother called the police to report that a neighbor had choked her young son for littering, but the mother herself ended up getting arrested. In the video-recorded encounter, the mother, Jacqueline Craig, was forced to the ground and placed in handcuffs; her teenage daughters were also detained.
Community activists also cited the seven police shootings since early summer, six of them fatal, including the killing of a man who the police thought was carrying a rifle but was actually pointing a flashlight at officers after barricading himself inside a house.
“We’re beyond anger,” said the Rev. Kyev Tatum, a pastor at New Mount Rose Missionary Baptist Church in Fort Worth. “It’s trauma now. It’s unaddressed, toxic stress.”
Mr. Dean had been with the Fort Worth Police Department since April 2018, after graduating from the police academy a month earlier, according to documents provided by the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement, a state regulatory agency.
On Monday night, he was released from the Tarrant County jail after posting a $200,000 bond.
…
The authorities said Mr. Dean did not identify himself as a police officer before firing a fatal shot at Ms. Jefferson through the window.
Ms. Jefferson died in her bedroom after officers tried to provide medical assistance, according to the Tarrant County medical examiner’s office. Her nephew was in the room when the shooting occurred, the authorities said (Martinez “Fort” 2-4).
Chief Kraus grew emotional this week as he described how the killing would undoubtedly erode the trust that he said officers had worked to build with the people they serve.
“I likened it to a bunch of ants building an ant hill, and somebody comes with a hose and washes it away,” he said. “They just have to start from scratch.”
Chief Kraus said he had spoken to scores of officers who all said they supported the quick move to arrest Mr. Dean and charge him with murder.
[Manny] Ramirez [president of the Fort Worth Police Officers Association] said he and other officers had been dumbfounded as to why Mr. Dean pulled the trigger. Mr. Ramirez added that there was “no way to explain” his actions (What 2).
Aaron Y. Dean, who is white, resigned earlier on Monday, hours before the police chief had planned to fire him, amid growing anger and frustration in the community … (Martinez “Fort” 1).
During a police department job interview in 2017, Dean said he wanted to serve the public and liked "the action and adventure" that he believed came with being an officer.
Dean said he had wanted to join the military and saw becoming a police officer as a "way to do some of those same things without having to deploy overseas."
He said he would have "no problem" using lethal force if necessary, according to records of his interview (Stanglin 2).
Relatives of Atatiana Jefferson ... have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the city and the former officer charged in her death.
The federal lawsuit was filed Monday in the Northern District of Texas by Jefferson’s biological father, Jerome Ekpo Eschor, against the city of Fort Worth and the former Fort Worth police officer who shot Jefferson,
Aaron Dean. Jefferson’s maternal aunt Venitta Body and paternal aunt Arita Eschor were also included as plaintiffs.
“Her father, Jerome, decided to bring the claim in order to help the family finally get some justice and to bring closure,” said lead attorney Tanika J. Solomon in a phone interview with NBC News. “This is not just about money. This is about vindication.”
…
Monday’s civil suit, which seeks an unspecified amount of money for damages and attorney fees, alleged that Dean's conduct “demonstrated a deliberate indifference to and conscious disregard for the constitutional rights and safety” of Jefferson.
…
The lawsuit also argued that the city of Fort Worth is complicit in Jefferson’s alleged murder for failing to reprimand Dean in prior instances of excessive force and for failing to adequately train officers (Sykes 1, 3).
James Smith is angry, hurt and tired. Every death of a black person at the hands of a police officer takes him back to the moment in October when Atatiana Jefferson was killed.
"I have to live with this guilt, with this cloud hanging over me for the rest of my years," he says. Because he was the reason that the police were there that night.
At around 02:30 on 12 October he was woken by his niece and nephew, who told him the front door of their neighbour's house was wide open and the lights were on.
The owner of the house, Yolanda Carr, had a heart condition and had recently been in and out of intensive care, so Smith was worried something had happened to her.
He went across the road and noticed the lawnmower and other gardening equipment were still plugged in, which he thought was strange.
So he dialled a number in the phone book to request a "wellness check" - expecting that a police officer would come out, knock on the door and check the family was OK.
He didn't know that Carr was in hospital that night and that her daughter and grandson were up late playing video games.
He was standing directly opposite the house when the police arrived.
One of the officers, Aaron Dean, had his gun drawn as he approached the front door and then walked around the side of the house to the back garden. Seconds later there was a gunshot.
"When that bullet went off I heard her spirit say, 'Don't let them get away with it,'" Smith says.
"And that's pretty much why I stayed out there all night long until they brought her out."
Police soon filled the street, but they wouldn't tell him what had happened. It wasn't until they wheeled a body out six hours later that he knew Yolanda Carr's daughter, Atatiana Jefferson, had been killed.
…
Keeping the yard straight is like a ritual in the area, he says, one that Atatiana's family had been quick to adopt. He describes Yolanda Carr as a hard-working lady. "She had some problems in life that she overcame and her home was her trophy."
Atatiana had been staying in the house while her mother was unwell. She was saving for medical school while caring for her mother and her eight-year-old nephew.
A few days before the killing there had been a car crash on the street, James Smith remembers. Atatiana rushed out to help, and she stayed with the people in the car until the ambulance came. That was just her nature, he says.
"She intended to become a doctor," he says, before going silent for a moment. "But that's not going to happen now."
Sometimes he would mow their lawn for them, Atatiana would bring him water and they'd chat. The day that she died she had been mowing the lawn herself, showing her nephew how to do it.
…
He doesn't feel that the case against Aaron Dean is being pursued properly. It troubles him that no-one from law enforcement has come to speak to him since the night of the shooting. It's his belief that if he hadn't spoken to the media the following morning, Atatiana's death might not have been investigated.
He's also upset with the pace of the trial.
"With the pandemic going on they said it could be 2021 before this thing starts. On the other hand, had it been a person of colour we'd be tried, convicted and have started our sentence already," he says.
"We're still holding our breath. Pardon the phrase, but we can't breathe" (Hegarty 1-3).
Dean resigned and was indicted on a murder charge.
The case has been delayed in court, but a Tarrant County judge recently set a tentative trial date for August [2021] - almost two years after Jefferson’s death (Woodard 3).
[Paste the following to Google to see the you-tube video of the shooting]
The night Atatiana Jefferson was killed: Bodycam footage re ...
Works cited:
Hegarty, Stephanie. “Atatiana Jefferson: 'Why I Will No Longer Call the Police'.” BBC News, June 16, 2020. Net. https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-5305...
Martinez, Marina Trahan, Bogel-Burroughs, Nichols, and Mervosh, Sarah. “Fort Worth Officer Charged with Murder for Shooting Woman in Her Home.” The New York Times, October 14, 2019. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/14/us...
Martinex, Marina Trahan, Bogel-Burroughs, Nichols, and Montgomery, Dave. “Woman Was Playing Video Game with Her Nephew When Shot by Fort Worth Police.” The New York Times, updated October 24, 2019. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/13/us...
Stanglin, Doug. “Texas Officer Who Shot Woman in Her Home Sometimes Dad 'Tunnel Vision,' Review Says.” USA Today, November 7, 2019. Net. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/n...
Sykes, Stefan. “Family of Atatiana Jefferson, Black Woman Killed by Police, Sue City of Fort Worth and Ex-Officer.” NBC News, November 18, 2020. Net. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/...
“What We Know about the Fort Worth Police Shooting of Atatiana Jefferson.” The New York Times, updated October 24, 2019. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/15/us...
Woodard, Teresa. “Sisters of Atatiana Jefferson Say One Year after George Floyd’s Death They Remain 'Stuck in 2019'.” WFAA, May 25, 2021. Net. https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/cri...
June 10, 2021
Bad Apples -- 08-24-2019, Elijah McClain
[Elijah] McClain worked as a massage therapist, and taught himself to play both the guitar and the violin. According to the Sentinel, he often spent his lunch breaks at local animal shelters, putting on concerts for cats and dogs because he believed music would help soothe their anxiety. Those who knew him describe him as gentle: “I don’t even think he would set a mouse trap if there was a rodent problem,” his friend, Eric Behrens, told the Sentinel.
He often developed friendships with his massage clients, like April Young, who told the Sentinel: “He had a child-like spirit … He lived in his own little world. He was never into, like, fitting in. He just was who he was.”
“He was the sweetest, purest person I have ever met,” another of his friends and former clients, Marna Arnett, added. “He was definitely a light in a whole lot of darkness.”
Arnett believes that, in addition to helping manage a chronic chill that McClain attributed to his anemia, wearing a mask helped him manage his social anxiety. “He would hide behind that mask,” Arnett said. “It was protection for him, too. It made him more comfortable being in the outside world.”
Speaking to CBSN Denver, his mother, Sheneen McClain, described her son as incredibly determined. “I thank God that he was my son because just him being born brought life into my world, you know what I mean?” she said. “I know he was giving life to other people too” (Lampen 5).
Just after 10:30 p.m. on August 24, 2019, the Aurora Police Department received a call about a “suspicious person” wearing a mask and waving his hands. They dispatched three officers — Nathan Woodyard, Jason Rosenblatt, and Randy Roedema — who subsequently said McClain “resisted contact” and continued down the street.
According to McClain’s family, the 23-year-old had made a quick trip to the convenience store to pick up an iced tea for his brother.
His sister later told a local ABC affiliate, Denver7, that McClain was wearing an open-face ski mask because he “had anemia and would sometimes get cold.” And although he was unarmed, simply walking home and, his sister said, listening to music, police say “a struggle ensued.” One officer accused McClain of reaching for his gun, and one put him in a carotid hold, which involves an officer applying pressure to the side of a person’s neck in order to temporarily cut off blood flow to the brain. “Due to the level of physical force applied while restraining the subject and his agitated mental state,” officers then called Aurora First Responders, who “administered life-saving measures,” according to a local NBC affiliate. Paramedics injected McClain with what they said was a “therapeutic” amount of ketamine to sedate him, while officers held him down.
McClain went into cardiac arrest on the way to the hospital, and was taken off life support on August 30. His family said at the time that he was brain dead, and covered in bruises.
Body cam footage of the arrest does exist, although the ADP did not release it to the public until late November 2019, months after McClain’s death. In the footage, an officer can be heard admitting McClain had done nothing illegal prior to his arrest; another accuses McClain of reaching for one of their guns. McClain, meanwhile, can be heard asking the officers to stop, explaining that they started to arrest him as he was “stopping [his] music to listen.” He gasps that he cannot breathe. He tells them his name, says he has ID but no gun, and pleads that his house is “right there.” He sobs, and vomits, and apologizes: “I wasn’t trying to do that,” he says. “I just can't breathe correctly.” One of the officers can also be heard threatening to set his dog on McClain if he “keep[s] messing around,” and claiming he exhibited an extreme show of strength when officers tried to pin back his arms.
Very little of the officers’ protocol can be seen, however, because all of their body cams allegedly fell off during the arrest. But if you watch the video from about the 15-minute mark (warning: it contains violent and upsetting content), you’ll see someone pick up the body camera and point it toward McClain and one of the officers, before dropping it back into the grass. Around 15:34, one of the officers seems to say, “Leave your camera there” (Lampen 3-4).
More officers arrived after Mr. McClain was restrained. While talking with one another, officers said that Mr. McClain was “acting crazy,” that he was “definitely on something,” and that he had attacked officers when they tried to restrain him. They also said that he had “incredible, crazy strength,” and that at one point three officers were on top of him.
... he vomited several times, for which he apologized, saying, “I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to do that, I can’t breathe correctly.”
An officer said in the body camera footage that officers had “put him out” with a carotid hold twice, “at least once successfully,” meaning Mr. McClain had lost consciousness (Tompkins 3).
McClain’s autopsy also raised questions. The Adams County Coroner announced in early November 2019 that it wasn’t clear whether his death had been an accident, or carotid hold–related homicide, or the result of natural causes. The coroner listed McClain’s cause of death as “undetermined,” but points to hemorrhaging in his neck and abrasions on different parts of his body. Noting that “an idiosyncratic drug reaction (an unexpected reaction to a drug even at a therapeutic level) cannot be ruled out” in reference to the ketamine dosage, the report’s wording seemed to pin responsibility on McClain himself.
“The decedent was violently struggling with officers who were attempting to restrain him,” it said, according to Denver 7 ABC. “Most likely the decedent’s physical exertion contributed to death. It is unclear if the officer’s action contributed as well” (Lampen 5).
In the report, it was also noted that Mr. McClain had chronic asthma.
In response to the autopsy report, Mari Newman, the lawyer representing Mr. McClain’s family, told Denver7 ABC,
“Whatever the report says, it’s clear that if the police had not attacked Elijah McClain, he would be alive today.”
“They immediately went hands on and tackled him,” she said. “And of course the fact that all three of their body cameras fell off is something that we should all be pretty suspicious about. It makes it awfully easy for them to say whatever they want, but what we know is that they attacked him for no reason whatsoever. It was excessive force and it led to his death” (Tompkins 4).
The APD placed Woodyard, Rosenblatt, and Roedema on paid administrative leave in the incident’s immediate aftermath. On November 22, 2019, Adams County prosecutors announced that they would not bring charges against the trio, who then returned to normal duty. According to the Sentinel, District Attorney Dave Young informed Aurora police chief Nick Metz in a letter that, “Based on the investigation presented and the applicable Colorado law, there is no reasonable likelihood of success of proving any state crimes beyond a reasonable doubt at trial. Therefore, no state criminal charges will be filed as a result of this incident.”
Metz subsequently called the officers’ threats to McClain “unprofessional,” and said that the comment had “been addressed with that officer through a written corrective action.”
Newman, meanwhile, told the Sentinel: “If Aurora thinks this is appropriate policing, the community should be petrified. We are disappointed, but not surprised that once again, members of law enforcement will not [be] held criminally accountable for killing an unarmed Black man.”
On June 13, the APD quietly reassigned Woodyard and Rosenblatt to “non-enforcement duties,” with Roedema following on June 20. The APD did not reply to the Cut’s request for comment, but a spokesperson intimated to Fox 31 Denver that concern for the officers’ safety motivated the decision. Rosenblatt would be let go on July 3, but not for his involvement in McClain’s death. Interim police chief Wilson fired him, along with two other officers who appeared in photos taken at a memorial for McClain in October 2019.
In the images, another officer — Jaron Jones, who resigned — posed with his arm wrapped around officer Kyle Dittrich’s neck, a mocking imitation of the hold used on McClain. Both officers were smiling, while officer Erica Marrero grinned over their shoulders.
Rosenblatt did not participate in the photograph, but he did text back “haha” when someone sent it to him, according to the New York Times. Announcing the termination, Wilson said that Rosenblatt was “being fired for his … utter inability to do the right thing here,” while Dittrich and Marrero showed “a lack of moral values and integrity.”
Over the summer, a surge in support fueled by social media campaigns and demonstrations translated to thousands of emails and calls to D.A. Young’s office, plus hundreds of complaints filed with the police department. On June 9, City Manager Jim Twombly agreed to undertake an independent investigation of McClain’s death, pursuant to Aurora lawmakers’ request. …
…
On February 22, the independent investigators released the results of their months-long inquest that combined body cam footage, videotaped interviews with the responding officers and their follow-up reports, notes from the scene, the 911 call and the dispatch record, the autopsy report, medical records, and more … (Lampen 5-6).
Police officers in Aurora, Colorado, did not have a legal basis to stop, frisk and use a chokehold on Elijah McClain, … an independent investigation has found.
According to a report published on Monday, “body worn camera audio, limited video and … interviews with the officers tell two contrasting stories. The officers’ statements on the scene and in subsequent recorded interviews suggest a violent and relentless struggle.”
The report added: “The limited video, and the audio from the body worn cameras, reveal Mr McClain surrounded by officers, all larger than he, crying out in pain, apologizing, explaining himself and pleading with the officers.”
… He was not suspected of any crime. Police had been called about a person wearing a ski mask and waving his arms. McClain was listening to music. His family said he wore the mask because he had a blood condition that caused him to get cold easily.
Police said he refused to stop and fought back when confronted. Body-camera video showed McClain telling officers: “Let go of me. I am an introvert. Please respect the boundaries that I am speaking.”
But one officer attempted twice to put him in a specialized hold, pressing against his carotid artery and cutting off blood to the brain, a practice since banned in several places.
He was held down for 15 minutes, then given 500mg of ketamine, a sedative. …
The report released on Monday found that paramedics failed to properly examine McClain before injecting him with a dose based on a “grossly inaccurate” estimation of his weight. [They injected him with enough ketamine to sedate a person weighing 190 pounds. McClain weighed about 140 pounds.]
Body camera footage showed officer Nathan Woodyard making first contact with McClain, telling him, “I have a right to stop you because you’re being suspicious.” Video showed Woodyear grabbing McClain within 10 seconds of exiting his patrol car.
In a presentation of the report, Jonathan Smith, the executive director of the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs who led the investigation, said under case law, officers must have “reasonable, objective grounds” to justify an investigatory stop. Their reasoning – that he was acting suspicious by wearing a mask and waving his arms, and that he was in an area with a high crime rate – did not hold water, first in that it was not an area of high crime but also in that wearing a mask is not enough to be linked to criminal activity.
When another officer asserted that McClain’s refusal to stop was consistent with someone who “either just committed a crime” or someone who is “concealing something whether it be a weapon or drugs”, Smith pointed out that McClain was free to go. “Declining to submit to a consensual stop cannot serve as the basis of reasonable suspicion,” the report states.
At any rate, Smith noted, “Any threat or perceived threat would have dissipated quickly once Mr McClain was taken to the ground by Woodyear.” Yet “officers continued to use pain compliance techniques”, Smith said. “These appeared to be in response to any form of movement on M.r McClain’s part.”
The report recommended the Aurora police department conduct several reviews, including of how officers are trained to decide if they have a legal reason to stop, frisk and arrest people, and urged the city to consider overhauling how it reviews incidents.
It said department investigators who questioned the three officers who stopped and arrested McClain “failed to ask basic, critical questions” about their use of force needed by any prosecutor to determine if their use of force was legally justified (Staff 1-3).
“This case is a textbook example of law enforcement’s disparate and racist treatment of Black men,” McClain’s family members and their legal team said in a joint statement on February 22, per ABC. “Aurora’s continued failure to acknowledge the wrongdoing of its employees only exacerbates the problem.”
Despite local media coverage and some smaller rallies, McClain’s death did not initially receive widespread attention in the press — not until the killing of George Floyd sparked widespread protests against racially motivated police brutality over the summer (Lampen 2-3).
Aurora police officers Nathan Woodyard and Randy Roedema and former officer Jason Rosenblatt were never prosecuted for McClains's death.
[Aurora Police Department Interim Chief Vanessa] Wilson said she has made changes in officer training to emphasize de-escalation techniques and recognizing implicit bias. She also said protocols have been changed requiring officers to not solely rely on a 911 caller's description of a subject as acting suspiciously.
She declined to comment on why Woodyard and Roedema have not been disciplined and remain members of the police force, citing the ongoing criminal investigation by the state attorney general.
Wilson fired Rosenblatt last year after failing to report photos of officers mocking a carotid hold at a makeshift memorial for McClain and for responding "haha" when he was texted the images, the chief said. Rosenblatt filed a lawsuit against Wilson and the city asking for an independent review board hearing. His termination was upheld by the Aurora Civil Service Commission earlier this month (Hutchinson 2-3).
McClain’s family filed a lawsuit against Aurora on August 11, alleging that the city’s “unconstitutional conduct on the night of August 24, 2019, is part of a larger custom, policy, and practice of racism and brutality, as reflected by its conduct both before and after its murder of Elijah McClain, a young Black man,” according to CNN.
The suit lists members of the police department, including the officers involved in McClain’s death and those involved in the photo incident, and Aurora Fire Rescue, as defendants. It argues that there was no need to restrain McClain, who had not been accused of a crime, as aggressively as the officers did, and no need to inject him with a “massive dose of ketamine.” The suit suggests that McClain’s detention was a product of racial bias, which it says is reinforced by the city’s failure to “discipline” the parties responsible for his death. Further, the lawsuit points to recent, combative police response to peaceful protesters.
Mari Newman, the family’s attorney, said she intends the lawsuit “to hold accountable the Aurora officials, police officers, and paramedics responsible for [McClain’s] murder, and to force the City of Aurora to change it longstanding pattern of brutal and racist policing” (Lampen 8).
Over the last decade, Colorado prosecutors took at least 10 cases involving police killing people while on duty to grand juries, but only secured indictments in two of them — and none of those officers was convicted of the crime.
That’s not good news for Elijah McClain’s mother and the thousands of community members who repeatedly have demanded that the Aurora police officers involved in the 23-year-old massage therapist’s death be charged and convicted of crimes.
Aurora city leaders on Monday released the damning results of an independent investigation into McClain’s 2019 death, but the city-commissioned investigators were not tasked with deciding whether police or paramedics committed crimes the night they detained, choked and sedated McClain.
That task is up to Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, who has opened a grand jury investigation in the case. Gov. Jared Polis appointed Weiser special prosecutor in the case in June and Weiser has promised a thorough investigation and said the grand jury would act as an “investigative tool” because it can compel testimony and the production of evidence.
Prosecutors in the 17th Judicial District Attorney’s Office previously declined to charge the officers involved.
But Sheneen McClain, Elijah’s mother, said she’s not happy the case is going to a grand jury. Her attorney, Qusair Mohamedbhai, said there is little transparency and few rules regarding how prosecutors conduct grand juries. Prosecutors have control over the narrative of the incident and can choose to present potential defenses for the accused, he said.
“The grand jury has traditionally been used as a political cover-up,” Mohamedbhai said.
Several local district attorneys have used grand juries in recent years in police shootings and said they are an important tool for complex cases or when prosecutors need to use the grand jury’s unique powers to force testimony.
“It can serve an incredibly valuable function,” Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty said (Schmelzer 1-2).
[Paste the following using Google to view a videotape of Elijah McClain’s arrest]
“Elijah McClain's Final Words to the Police were Heart Breaking”
Works cited:
Hutchinson, Bill. “Police Chief Responds to Report on Elijah McClain's Death: 'I'm Extremely Sorry'.” ABC News, February 23, 2021. Net. https://abcnews.go.com/US/police-chie...
Lampen, Claire. “What We Know about the Killing of Elijah McClain.” The Cut, February 22, 2021. Net. https://www.thecut.com/2021/02/the-ki...
Guardian Staff, “lijah McClain Death: Colorado Police Had No Legal Basis To Restrain Man, Report Finds.” The Guardian, February 22, 2021. Net. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...
Schmelzer, Elise. “Elijah McClain Case: Recent Colorado History Shows Few Examples of Police Indictments.” Denver Post, February 25, 2021. Net. https://www.denverpost.com/2021/02/25...
Tompkins, Lucy. “Here’s What You Need To Know about Elijah McClain’s Death.” The New York Times, February 23, 2021. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/article/who-w...
He often developed friendships with his massage clients, like April Young, who told the Sentinel: “He had a child-like spirit … He lived in his own little world. He was never into, like, fitting in. He just was who he was.”
“He was the sweetest, purest person I have ever met,” another of his friends and former clients, Marna Arnett, added. “He was definitely a light in a whole lot of darkness.”
Arnett believes that, in addition to helping manage a chronic chill that McClain attributed to his anemia, wearing a mask helped him manage his social anxiety. “He would hide behind that mask,” Arnett said. “It was protection for him, too. It made him more comfortable being in the outside world.”
Speaking to CBSN Denver, his mother, Sheneen McClain, described her son as incredibly determined. “I thank God that he was my son because just him being born brought life into my world, you know what I mean?” she said. “I know he was giving life to other people too” (Lampen 5).
Just after 10:30 p.m. on August 24, 2019, the Aurora Police Department received a call about a “suspicious person” wearing a mask and waving his hands. They dispatched three officers — Nathan Woodyard, Jason Rosenblatt, and Randy Roedema — who subsequently said McClain “resisted contact” and continued down the street.
According to McClain’s family, the 23-year-old had made a quick trip to the convenience store to pick up an iced tea for his brother.
His sister later told a local ABC affiliate, Denver7, that McClain was wearing an open-face ski mask because he “had anemia and would sometimes get cold.” And although he was unarmed, simply walking home and, his sister said, listening to music, police say “a struggle ensued.” One officer accused McClain of reaching for his gun, and one put him in a carotid hold, which involves an officer applying pressure to the side of a person’s neck in order to temporarily cut off blood flow to the brain. “Due to the level of physical force applied while restraining the subject and his agitated mental state,” officers then called Aurora First Responders, who “administered life-saving measures,” according to a local NBC affiliate. Paramedics injected McClain with what they said was a “therapeutic” amount of ketamine to sedate him, while officers held him down.
McClain went into cardiac arrest on the way to the hospital, and was taken off life support on August 30. His family said at the time that he was brain dead, and covered in bruises.
Body cam footage of the arrest does exist, although the ADP did not release it to the public until late November 2019, months after McClain’s death. In the footage, an officer can be heard admitting McClain had done nothing illegal prior to his arrest; another accuses McClain of reaching for one of their guns. McClain, meanwhile, can be heard asking the officers to stop, explaining that they started to arrest him as he was “stopping [his] music to listen.” He gasps that he cannot breathe. He tells them his name, says he has ID but no gun, and pleads that his house is “right there.” He sobs, and vomits, and apologizes: “I wasn’t trying to do that,” he says. “I just can't breathe correctly.” One of the officers can also be heard threatening to set his dog on McClain if he “keep[s] messing around,” and claiming he exhibited an extreme show of strength when officers tried to pin back his arms.
Very little of the officers’ protocol can be seen, however, because all of their body cams allegedly fell off during the arrest. But if you watch the video from about the 15-minute mark (warning: it contains violent and upsetting content), you’ll see someone pick up the body camera and point it toward McClain and one of the officers, before dropping it back into the grass. Around 15:34, one of the officers seems to say, “Leave your camera there” (Lampen 3-4).
More officers arrived after Mr. McClain was restrained. While talking with one another, officers said that Mr. McClain was “acting crazy,” that he was “definitely on something,” and that he had attacked officers when they tried to restrain him. They also said that he had “incredible, crazy strength,” and that at one point three officers were on top of him.
... he vomited several times, for which he apologized, saying, “I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to do that, I can’t breathe correctly.”
An officer said in the body camera footage that officers had “put him out” with a carotid hold twice, “at least once successfully,” meaning Mr. McClain had lost consciousness (Tompkins 3).
McClain’s autopsy also raised questions. The Adams County Coroner announced in early November 2019 that it wasn’t clear whether his death had been an accident, or carotid hold–related homicide, or the result of natural causes. The coroner listed McClain’s cause of death as “undetermined,” but points to hemorrhaging in his neck and abrasions on different parts of his body. Noting that “an idiosyncratic drug reaction (an unexpected reaction to a drug even at a therapeutic level) cannot be ruled out” in reference to the ketamine dosage, the report’s wording seemed to pin responsibility on McClain himself.
“The decedent was violently struggling with officers who were attempting to restrain him,” it said, according to Denver 7 ABC. “Most likely the decedent’s physical exertion contributed to death. It is unclear if the officer’s action contributed as well” (Lampen 5).
In the report, it was also noted that Mr. McClain had chronic asthma.
In response to the autopsy report, Mari Newman, the lawyer representing Mr. McClain’s family, told Denver7 ABC,
“Whatever the report says, it’s clear that if the police had not attacked Elijah McClain, he would be alive today.”
“They immediately went hands on and tackled him,” she said. “And of course the fact that all three of their body cameras fell off is something that we should all be pretty suspicious about. It makes it awfully easy for them to say whatever they want, but what we know is that they attacked him for no reason whatsoever. It was excessive force and it led to his death” (Tompkins 4).
The APD placed Woodyard, Rosenblatt, and Roedema on paid administrative leave in the incident’s immediate aftermath. On November 22, 2019, Adams County prosecutors announced that they would not bring charges against the trio, who then returned to normal duty. According to the Sentinel, District Attorney Dave Young informed Aurora police chief Nick Metz in a letter that, “Based on the investigation presented and the applicable Colorado law, there is no reasonable likelihood of success of proving any state crimes beyond a reasonable doubt at trial. Therefore, no state criminal charges will be filed as a result of this incident.”
Metz subsequently called the officers’ threats to McClain “unprofessional,” and said that the comment had “been addressed with that officer through a written corrective action.”
Newman, meanwhile, told the Sentinel: “If Aurora thinks this is appropriate policing, the community should be petrified. We are disappointed, but not surprised that once again, members of law enforcement will not [be] held criminally accountable for killing an unarmed Black man.”
On June 13, the APD quietly reassigned Woodyard and Rosenblatt to “non-enforcement duties,” with Roedema following on June 20. The APD did not reply to the Cut’s request for comment, but a spokesperson intimated to Fox 31 Denver that concern for the officers’ safety motivated the decision. Rosenblatt would be let go on July 3, but not for his involvement in McClain’s death. Interim police chief Wilson fired him, along with two other officers who appeared in photos taken at a memorial for McClain in October 2019.
In the images, another officer — Jaron Jones, who resigned — posed with his arm wrapped around officer Kyle Dittrich’s neck, a mocking imitation of the hold used on McClain. Both officers were smiling, while officer Erica Marrero grinned over their shoulders.
Rosenblatt did not participate in the photograph, but he did text back “haha” when someone sent it to him, according to the New York Times. Announcing the termination, Wilson said that Rosenblatt was “being fired for his … utter inability to do the right thing here,” while Dittrich and Marrero showed “a lack of moral values and integrity.”
Over the summer, a surge in support fueled by social media campaigns and demonstrations translated to thousands of emails and calls to D.A. Young’s office, plus hundreds of complaints filed with the police department. On June 9, City Manager Jim Twombly agreed to undertake an independent investigation of McClain’s death, pursuant to Aurora lawmakers’ request. …
…
On February 22, the independent investigators released the results of their months-long inquest that combined body cam footage, videotaped interviews with the responding officers and their follow-up reports, notes from the scene, the 911 call and the dispatch record, the autopsy report, medical records, and more … (Lampen 5-6).
Police officers in Aurora, Colorado, did not have a legal basis to stop, frisk and use a chokehold on Elijah McClain, … an independent investigation has found.
According to a report published on Monday, “body worn camera audio, limited video and … interviews with the officers tell two contrasting stories. The officers’ statements on the scene and in subsequent recorded interviews suggest a violent and relentless struggle.”
The report added: “The limited video, and the audio from the body worn cameras, reveal Mr McClain surrounded by officers, all larger than he, crying out in pain, apologizing, explaining himself and pleading with the officers.”
… He was not suspected of any crime. Police had been called about a person wearing a ski mask and waving his arms. McClain was listening to music. His family said he wore the mask because he had a blood condition that caused him to get cold easily.
Police said he refused to stop and fought back when confronted. Body-camera video showed McClain telling officers: “Let go of me. I am an introvert. Please respect the boundaries that I am speaking.”
But one officer attempted twice to put him in a specialized hold, pressing against his carotid artery and cutting off blood to the brain, a practice since banned in several places.
He was held down for 15 minutes, then given 500mg of ketamine, a sedative. …
The report released on Monday found that paramedics failed to properly examine McClain before injecting him with a dose based on a “grossly inaccurate” estimation of his weight. [They injected him with enough ketamine to sedate a person weighing 190 pounds. McClain weighed about 140 pounds.]
Body camera footage showed officer Nathan Woodyard making first contact with McClain, telling him, “I have a right to stop you because you’re being suspicious.” Video showed Woodyear grabbing McClain within 10 seconds of exiting his patrol car.
In a presentation of the report, Jonathan Smith, the executive director of the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs who led the investigation, said under case law, officers must have “reasonable, objective grounds” to justify an investigatory stop. Their reasoning – that he was acting suspicious by wearing a mask and waving his arms, and that he was in an area with a high crime rate – did not hold water, first in that it was not an area of high crime but also in that wearing a mask is not enough to be linked to criminal activity.
When another officer asserted that McClain’s refusal to stop was consistent with someone who “either just committed a crime” or someone who is “concealing something whether it be a weapon or drugs”, Smith pointed out that McClain was free to go. “Declining to submit to a consensual stop cannot serve as the basis of reasonable suspicion,” the report states.
At any rate, Smith noted, “Any threat or perceived threat would have dissipated quickly once Mr McClain was taken to the ground by Woodyear.” Yet “officers continued to use pain compliance techniques”, Smith said. “These appeared to be in response to any form of movement on M.r McClain’s part.”
The report recommended the Aurora police department conduct several reviews, including of how officers are trained to decide if they have a legal reason to stop, frisk and arrest people, and urged the city to consider overhauling how it reviews incidents.
It said department investigators who questioned the three officers who stopped and arrested McClain “failed to ask basic, critical questions” about their use of force needed by any prosecutor to determine if their use of force was legally justified (Staff 1-3).
“This case is a textbook example of law enforcement’s disparate and racist treatment of Black men,” McClain’s family members and their legal team said in a joint statement on February 22, per ABC. “Aurora’s continued failure to acknowledge the wrongdoing of its employees only exacerbates the problem.”
Despite local media coverage and some smaller rallies, McClain’s death did not initially receive widespread attention in the press — not until the killing of George Floyd sparked widespread protests against racially motivated police brutality over the summer (Lampen 2-3).
Aurora police officers Nathan Woodyard and Randy Roedema and former officer Jason Rosenblatt were never prosecuted for McClains's death.
[Aurora Police Department Interim Chief Vanessa] Wilson said she has made changes in officer training to emphasize de-escalation techniques and recognizing implicit bias. She also said protocols have been changed requiring officers to not solely rely on a 911 caller's description of a subject as acting suspiciously.
She declined to comment on why Woodyard and Roedema have not been disciplined and remain members of the police force, citing the ongoing criminal investigation by the state attorney general.
Wilson fired Rosenblatt last year after failing to report photos of officers mocking a carotid hold at a makeshift memorial for McClain and for responding "haha" when he was texted the images, the chief said. Rosenblatt filed a lawsuit against Wilson and the city asking for an independent review board hearing. His termination was upheld by the Aurora Civil Service Commission earlier this month (Hutchinson 2-3).
McClain’s family filed a lawsuit against Aurora on August 11, alleging that the city’s “unconstitutional conduct on the night of August 24, 2019, is part of a larger custom, policy, and practice of racism and brutality, as reflected by its conduct both before and after its murder of Elijah McClain, a young Black man,” according to CNN.
The suit lists members of the police department, including the officers involved in McClain’s death and those involved in the photo incident, and Aurora Fire Rescue, as defendants. It argues that there was no need to restrain McClain, who had not been accused of a crime, as aggressively as the officers did, and no need to inject him with a “massive dose of ketamine.” The suit suggests that McClain’s detention was a product of racial bias, which it says is reinforced by the city’s failure to “discipline” the parties responsible for his death. Further, the lawsuit points to recent, combative police response to peaceful protesters.
Mari Newman, the family’s attorney, said she intends the lawsuit “to hold accountable the Aurora officials, police officers, and paramedics responsible for [McClain’s] murder, and to force the City of Aurora to change it longstanding pattern of brutal and racist policing” (Lampen 8).
Over the last decade, Colorado prosecutors took at least 10 cases involving police killing people while on duty to grand juries, but only secured indictments in two of them — and none of those officers was convicted of the crime.
That’s not good news for Elijah McClain’s mother and the thousands of community members who repeatedly have demanded that the Aurora police officers involved in the 23-year-old massage therapist’s death be charged and convicted of crimes.
Aurora city leaders on Monday released the damning results of an independent investigation into McClain’s 2019 death, but the city-commissioned investigators were not tasked with deciding whether police or paramedics committed crimes the night they detained, choked and sedated McClain.
That task is up to Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, who has opened a grand jury investigation in the case. Gov. Jared Polis appointed Weiser special prosecutor in the case in June and Weiser has promised a thorough investigation and said the grand jury would act as an “investigative tool” because it can compel testimony and the production of evidence.
Prosecutors in the 17th Judicial District Attorney’s Office previously declined to charge the officers involved.
But Sheneen McClain, Elijah’s mother, said she’s not happy the case is going to a grand jury. Her attorney, Qusair Mohamedbhai, said there is little transparency and few rules regarding how prosecutors conduct grand juries. Prosecutors have control over the narrative of the incident and can choose to present potential defenses for the accused, he said.
“The grand jury has traditionally been used as a political cover-up,” Mohamedbhai said.
Several local district attorneys have used grand juries in recent years in police shootings and said they are an important tool for complex cases or when prosecutors need to use the grand jury’s unique powers to force testimony.
“It can serve an incredibly valuable function,” Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty said (Schmelzer 1-2).
[Paste the following using Google to view a videotape of Elijah McClain’s arrest]
“Elijah McClain's Final Words to the Police were Heart Breaking”
Works cited:
Hutchinson, Bill. “Police Chief Responds to Report on Elijah McClain's Death: 'I'm Extremely Sorry'.” ABC News, February 23, 2021. Net. https://abcnews.go.com/US/police-chie...
Lampen, Claire. “What We Know about the Killing of Elijah McClain.” The Cut, February 22, 2021. Net. https://www.thecut.com/2021/02/the-ki...
Guardian Staff, “lijah McClain Death: Colorado Police Had No Legal Basis To Restrain Man, Report Finds.” The Guardian, February 22, 2021. Net. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...
Schmelzer, Elise. “Elijah McClain Case: Recent Colorado History Shows Few Examples of Police Indictments.” Denver Post, February 25, 2021. Net. https://www.denverpost.com/2021/02/25...
Tompkins, Lucy. “Here’s What You Need To Know about Elijah McClain’s Death.” The New York Times, February 23, 2021. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/article/who-w...
June 6, 2021
Bad Apples -- 06--06--2019, Ryan Twyman
It was 7.30pm on 6 June when two LASD deputies drove up to the apartment complex in Willowbrook in south LA, a mile-and-a-half from Twyman’s home in Compton. It was still light out when two deputies got out of the car, with guns pointed at a parked Kia, according to surveillance footage released by the department, which did not include audio.
As the men approached on either side of the vehicle and opened one of the doors, the car appeared to reverse. Both deputies opened fire and continued shooting from a distance as the car rolled. One deputy returned to his vehicle, opened the trunk, grabbed a larger rifle – and continued shooting at the unmoving car in the distance.
Within roughly 30 seconds, the men had fired a total of about 34 rounds at Twyman in the driver’s seat, and a 22-year-old man in the passenger seat.
“They came to assassinate and kill,” said Chiquita, Ryan’s sister, saying she was particularly disturbed by the first five seconds of the video: “Watch the demeanor when they get out the car … They came there with intention to kill. They came there hunting for my brother” (Levin 4-5).
Ryan Twyman was unarmed inside a parked car when two Los Angeles sheriff deputies approached and fired 34 rounds.
Video of the entire incident, which happened in roughly 50 seconds, was as shocking as many police brutality cases that have gone viral in the US. But the killing of the 24-year-old father of three barely made the news.
On that day, his death was far from unique: officers across LA shot five people in five separate incidents in just over 24 hours. Only one person survived. Families and activists said the bloodshed on 6 June provided a terrifying illustration of the culture of police violence and a system that trains officers to kill – while ensuring they won’t face consequences.
“Nobody deserves to be treated like that,” Tommy Twyman, Ryan’s mother, said on a recent afternoon, recounting how her son liked to talk to her on the phone once a day, always a true “mama’s boy”. He loved sheltering dogs and dreamed of becoming a veterinarian, she said. “You took something that I’m not gonna ever get back. You robbed me.”
Twyman was one of the more than 500 people who have been killed by on-duty officers in LA county or died in custody since 2013. That’s according to Black Lives Matter LA, which maintains detailed spreadsheets tracking deaths at the hands of local law enforcement (Levin 1).
A summary of the shooting provided to the board by the sheriff’s department indicated that the deputies got a cell phone call June 6, 2019, from a detective who was looking for a suspect in possession of illegal firearms. He gave them Twyman’s name and the car’s license plate number, along with descriptions of both.
Guns had been found at Twyman’s home in April, when he was not at the address, sheriff’s officials told the Los Angeles Times.
On June 6, the deputies went to an apartment complex in the 13100 block of South San Pedro Street about 7:30 p.m. and found Twyman in the driver’s seat of the Kia.
Another man was in the passenger seat of the car, which had heavily tinted windows, according to the deputies.
Security video footage released by the department showed the deputies approaching the car with weapons drawn, and one of them opening the rear passenger side door in an attempt to talk with Twyman, who started the car’s engine and put it in reverse.
The other deputy moved in and tried to open the driver’s side door, but the video showed the Kia moving in reverse, knocking the deputy on the passenger side of the car off balance.
“The first deputy feared he would get caught underneath (Twyman’s) moving vehicle and (Twyman) would run him over and kill him, (and) fired his duty weapon five times at (Twyman),” according to the summary.
The second deputy immediately saw a muzzle flash from inside the back seat of the car and yelled, “gun, gun, gun!” before firing 15 shots from his weapon to protect the other deputy, according to the deputies’ account.
The Kia continued in reverse in a looping turn as deputies fired in the direction of Twyman.
One deputy then ran back to the patrol vehicle and retrieved an AR-15 duty rifle from the trunk, according to the sheriff’s department.
The video showed both deputies firing additional shots in the direction of the car, which continued in reverse until it hit a metal post in the parking lot.
A total of 34 shots were fired, according to the sheriff’s department.
Ultimately, one of the two deputies reported hearing someone inside the car saying, “He’s dead, he’s dead, I don’t have a gun.”
Twyman was struck by bullets in the neck and upper body and pronounced dead at the scene. [Daimeon] Leffall [the passenger] was not struck by gunfire, but had fragments of glass in his hair and was taken to Harbor-UCLA Medical Center for evaluation.
The summary faulted the deputy for opening the car’s rear door while trying to detain Twyman and both deputies for not calling for backup, but said Twyman failed to follow the deputies’ commands.
The department submitted its investigation to the District Attorney’s Office to determine whether the use of deadly force was legally justified, and investigations remain underway (Marcellino 2-4).
The department’s incident video narrator said that the deputy was trying to maintain his balance and not get “knocked down and run over” when he and his partner began firing into the car. The deputy — who remained standing throughout — and his partner continued to fire, even after the first officer had gotten out of the way of the car, which continued to slowly reverse until it hit a carport support beam. At this point, the second deputy retrieved a rifle from the trunk of the patrol car and both deputies appeared to fire more rounds at Twyman and Leffall in the Kia.
According to the LASD, Twyman was on probation and was under investigation for possessing guns with a felony on his record.
The department had been looking for Twyman to arrest him on the weapons charge after a search of the young man’s house turned up firearms. Twyman wasn’t home at the time of the search.
“At no time during the course of these events” did Twyman or Leffall “pose any reasonable or credible threat of violence” to the deputies, “nor did they do anything to justify the force used against them.” according to the complaint filed by the family’s lawyer, Brian Dunn, of the Cochran Firm California.
That force, the complaint alleged, was not only deadly, but also “excessive, unnecessary, and unlawful,” and in violation of the LASD’s policy against shooting into vehicles.
The Twyman family’s legal team also accused the deputies of “deliberate indifference,” by failing to render medical aid to the dying man, writing that “after a significant and appreciable period of time had passed following the shooting, Ryan Twyman died as a direct and proximate result of the gunshot wounds inflicted upon his person” by the defendants.
Twyman’s loved ones were also among a handful of grieving families who, speaking before the board of supervisors last year, reported taunting and intimidation from East LA and Century Station deputies at funerals and public memorials honoring people killed by members of the LASD (Walker 1-2).
“… both deputies fired their service pistols at Mr. Wyman in order to stop the vehicle form seriously injuring the passenger deputy,” said commander April Tardy who narrates the Sheriff Department’s critical incident briefing in a video that includes surveillance footage of the shooting.
...
Just hours after the video’s release Ryan Tyman’s family held a press conference at the offices of the Chochran law firm in Hancock Park. They stood at a podium covered in microphones. Members of Tyman’s family spoke along with Daimein Lafell, the passenger who was inside the car when Twyman was killed.
Twyman’s father was one of the first to speak. He said that after watching the critical incident report he believed his son was murdered. Twyman’s older sister Chiquita Twyman also took the podium. “My brother was my brother. He was human. He had a big family and a big support system and a community that loved him regardless of what the media is showing of him,” she said, trying to hold back tears.
Next to speak was Brian Dunn, an attorney who has represented over 200 families in wrongful death suits including some of LA’s most high profile police misconduct cases.
Dunn held up a laptop and played the sheriff department’s critical incident report, pausing it at times to explain why he believed the officers had failed to follow proper protocol.
Why did they approach the vehicle with guns drawn, Dunn asked, rather than announce their presence through the squad cars PA system? Why, Dunn said, did they keep firing on the car after it had come to a complete stop on the other side of the parking lot? The LA Sheriff’s Dept has a policy of refraining from firing on moving vehicles except in rare instances.
“By the time this sheriff deputy is no longer in the path of the vehicle there is absolutely no justification whatsoever to continue using deadly force, said Dunn. “They are completely out of harm’s way. But they kept shooting. 34 rounds folks” (Weinberg 1-2)
Los Angeles has consistently ranked as one of America’s deadliest regions for police violence, with one analysis finding that police shoot, on average, one person every five days. The county sheriff’s department (LASD) – which killed Twyman and polices millions of people in the LA area outside of city limits – has a troubled record of brutality claims.
Leading the department is Alex Villanueva, the elected sheriff sworn in last year and now mired in scandals, including over his reinstatement of a deputy previously fired for domestic violence and his collaboration with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).
The FBI is also investigating a secret society of tattooed officers and other “gang-like groups” inside LASD – and whether deputies planted evidence and falsified reports.
“LA county sheriff’s deputies are emboldened by who the sheriff is,” said Melina Abdullah, a Black Lives Matter organizer who helps track killings and works with families. “There are gangs within the sheriff’s department.”
On the streets of black and brown neighborhoods, this culture plays out in the form of harassment, racial profiling and abusive patrolling, critics said. LASD is known for having a “warrior mindset” instead of a “service or guardian mindset” in its treatment of citizens, said Alex Vitale, a Brooklyn College sociology professor.
Twyman was a frequent victim of this mentality, his family said.
“We call them the ‘jump out boys’,” said Chiquita Twyman, Ryan’s older sister. In Compton, a south LA city where Ryan lived, residents have grown accustomed to sheriff’s deputies driving around with their doors partially open – so they can jump out at any moment to confront, detain and arrest people on the street, she said.
“I never knew how much a black man could get pulled over until my son became a teenager,” said [Ryan’s mother] Tommy. “It never stopped.”
Charles Twyman, Ryan’s father, said the police harassment “becomes a way of life”, adding: “We’re used to it. They talk about gangs in the inner city. Who is the bigger gang?”
Police even treated Ryan like a criminal when he was once suffering from a seizure, suggesting he was on drugs instead of helping him, she [Tommy] said.
Sometimes, police would stop Ryan and eventually let him go, his mother said, after it became clear they had no reason to arrest him.
But his final encounter with law enforcement was different. It escalated so quickly he had no time for a conversation (Levin 2-3).
The sheriff’s department released the footage with lengthy narration that presented Twyman as a criminal and a threat.
“The vehicle was used as a weapon,” said the commander April Tardy, claiming one of the deputies was “struck” by the car door as Twyman “accelerated” the car in reverse, though in the video, the officer does not appear to be hit or lose his balance. He began firing, the captain continued, to “avoid being knocked down and run over”.
Twyman, who was shot in the upper torso and pronounced dead on the scene, was “under investigation” for illegal possession of weapons, and on probation after a gun possession conviction, Tardy said, adding that the department had been seeking to arrest him. She did not accuse him of any acts of violence. After the deputies finished shooting, they found no weapons in his car.
Letitia Lynex, Twyman’s aunt who lives nearby, rushed to the scene when she got word that something had happened. She said one officer initially told her a “deputy was down” and refused to provide more information, saying: “Google it.” Eventually, a crowd formed, demanding answers, prompting some officers to “draw their guns down on us as if we were criminals”, she said.
Twyman remained lifeless in his car for hours as his relatives showed up trying to figure out what happened. Police have continued to mistreat the family by driving past their house in Compton, stationing themselves outside during a family gathering, and showing up at the funeral, the relatives said.
They were also blindsided by the public release of the video, waking up to the horrifying footage on the news and their social media feeds. Tommy rushed to the bathroom to avoid seeing it as others viewed the final moments of his life.
She still can’t bring herself to watch it (Levin 5-6).
Twyman leaves behind three young children, ages one, two and three. Ryan Jr, the three-year-old, has struggled to process his father’s absence, repeatedly asking: “Where’s my dad?”
Sometimes, he stares at men’s faces around him, wondering if they might be his father. Other times, the toddler asks to go home to “see daddy” in case he’s waiting.
The family designed Twyman’s funeral program to look like a Time magazine cover celebrating him, filled with photos of him with his mother and his children.
“In every picture, you can see how much of a family man he was,” said Charles. “He protected everybody.”
Tommy has an alarm set on her phone that goes off every day at 8pm. It was her reminder to call her son to make sure he had taken his seizure medication. But they also both loved their daily catch-ups on the phone, she said, which sometimes would last an hour.
“If anyone knows Ryan Twyman, they know what 8 o’clock means,” she said, with a smile.
Tommy always worried about losing her son as he got older, afraid they wouldn’t be as close after he moved out of the house, she recalled: “When he turned 21, I told him, ‘I don’t know how to let you go,’ and he told me, ‘You don’t have to let me go. I’m gonna always be your baby.’”
Since his death, she said, she can’t bear to turn off her 8pm alarm (Levin 8-9).
Adocates hope a new landmark law in California, which dictates that police should only use deadly force when “necessary”, will prevent this kind of death in the future.
Current standards allow police to use deadly force whenever it’s “reasonable”. The footage suggests the killing was unnecessary, said Joanna Schwartz, a University of California, Los Angeles, law professor. “Could it have been avoided? It seems like the answer is yes, in about 50 different ways.”
Departments need to enforce their policies restricting officers from firing at fleeing people, so that they face serious consequences when they violate the rules, added the sociology professor Alex Vitale.
Otherwise, he said, officers would keep killing with impunity – and return to the streets (Levin 7).
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted today to approve a $3.9 million settlement of a federal lawsuit brought by the family of Ryan Twyman, an unarmed 24-year-old Compton man shot to death in his car by sheriff’s deputies in Willowbrook.
The deputies alleged that Twyman tried to use the Kia Forte as a weapon. …
...
The plaintiffs — who included Twyman’s three minor sons, his parents and Daimeon Leffall, a passenger in the car — alleged civil rights violations, battery and negligence.
According to the plaintiffs’ court papers, the deputies “violently” confronted Twyman even though he and Leffall were unarmed and not a threat to them. The deputies then opened fire, killing Twyman and injuring Leffall, according to the court papers filed in January.
The plaintiffs alleged the deputies violated an LASD policy that forbids using deadly force against people in a vehicle. That policy states, “Firearms should not be discharged at a stationary or moving vehicle, the occupants of a vehicle, or the tires of a vehicle unless a person in the vehicle is imminently threatening a department member or another person present with deadly force by means other than the moving vehicle. The moving vehicle itself shall not presumptively constitute a threat that justifies the use of deadly force,” according to a policy manual posted on the LASD website (Marcellino 1).
Thousands gathered in front of the Hall of Justice on Wednesday for Black Lives Matter Los Angeles’s weekly protest demanding the removal of L.A. County District Attorney Jackie Lacey, who the group says has failed to prosecute “killer cops.”
Several family members of people who died at the hands of police spoke at Wednesday’s protest. One of them was Tommy Twyman, the mother of Ryan Twyman — a Black man who died last year when L.A. County Sheriff deputies fired 34 rounds into his vehicle.
“A year later, you see officers beating up people and getting arrested and all of that, but she isn’t doing anything about them murdering people,” Twyman said, likely referring to charges Lacey filed last week against an LAPD officer who was filmed beating a homeless man last month.
Lacey has not filed charges against the two deputies who shot and killed Ryan Twyman.
Black Lives Matter-L.A., led by co-founder Melina Abdullah, has appeared on the Hall of Justice’s front steps to demand Lacey’s resignation since October 2017, but the nationwide protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd have propelled the campaign’s momentum to remove Lacey.
…
Abdullah and other organizers presented the People’s Budget, Black Lives Matter-L.A.’s proposed city budget, to the city council on Monday. The budget proposes reducing LAPD’s portion of the budget to less than 2%.
The push to defund the police scored a couple of victories on Tuesday, as the L.A. City Council voted 11-3 to cut $150 million from the LAPD’s budget and six council members introduced a motion that would dispatch social workers instead of police to respond to non-violent emergency calls (Torres and Mayorquin 1).
[Paste the following on Google to see the video of the shooting] Video Shows Deputy-Involved-Shooting of Ryan Twyman ...
Works cited:
Levin, Sam T. “Los Angeles Officers Shot at Ryan Twyman 34 Times. He Was One of Four They Killed That Day.” The Guardian, August 15, 2019. Net. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...
Marcellino, Elizabeth. “L.A. County Votes To Settle Ryan Twyman DIS Shooting for $3.9 Million.” Los Angeles Sentinel, November 12, 2020. Net. https://lasentinel.net/l-a-county-vot...
Torres, Chris and Mayorquin, Orlando. “Protests against District Attorney Jackie Lacey Continue; Defund Police Movement Makes Strides.” Daily Sundial, June 17, 2020. Net. https://sundial.csun.edu/158969/black...
Walker, Taylor. “LA County Supes Approve $3.9 Million Settlement for the Family of Ryan Twyman, after Deputies Shot 34 Bullets into his Car.” Witness LA, November 11, 2020. Net. https://witnessla.com/la-county-supes...
Weinberg, David. “Ryan Twyman’s Family Speaks after He Is Killed by LA Sheriff’s Deputies.” KCRW, June 21, 2019. Net. https://www.kcrw.com/news/shows/kcrw-...
As the men approached on either side of the vehicle and opened one of the doors, the car appeared to reverse. Both deputies opened fire and continued shooting from a distance as the car rolled. One deputy returned to his vehicle, opened the trunk, grabbed a larger rifle – and continued shooting at the unmoving car in the distance.
Within roughly 30 seconds, the men had fired a total of about 34 rounds at Twyman in the driver’s seat, and a 22-year-old man in the passenger seat.
“They came to assassinate and kill,” said Chiquita, Ryan’s sister, saying she was particularly disturbed by the first five seconds of the video: “Watch the demeanor when they get out the car … They came there with intention to kill. They came there hunting for my brother” (Levin 4-5).
Ryan Twyman was unarmed inside a parked car when two Los Angeles sheriff deputies approached and fired 34 rounds.
Video of the entire incident, which happened in roughly 50 seconds, was as shocking as many police brutality cases that have gone viral in the US. But the killing of the 24-year-old father of three barely made the news.
On that day, his death was far from unique: officers across LA shot five people in five separate incidents in just over 24 hours. Only one person survived. Families and activists said the bloodshed on 6 June provided a terrifying illustration of the culture of police violence and a system that trains officers to kill – while ensuring they won’t face consequences.
“Nobody deserves to be treated like that,” Tommy Twyman, Ryan’s mother, said on a recent afternoon, recounting how her son liked to talk to her on the phone once a day, always a true “mama’s boy”. He loved sheltering dogs and dreamed of becoming a veterinarian, she said. “You took something that I’m not gonna ever get back. You robbed me.”
Twyman was one of the more than 500 people who have been killed by on-duty officers in LA county or died in custody since 2013. That’s according to Black Lives Matter LA, which maintains detailed spreadsheets tracking deaths at the hands of local law enforcement (Levin 1).
A summary of the shooting provided to the board by the sheriff’s department indicated that the deputies got a cell phone call June 6, 2019, from a detective who was looking for a suspect in possession of illegal firearms. He gave them Twyman’s name and the car’s license plate number, along with descriptions of both.
Guns had been found at Twyman’s home in April, when he was not at the address, sheriff’s officials told the Los Angeles Times.
On June 6, the deputies went to an apartment complex in the 13100 block of South San Pedro Street about 7:30 p.m. and found Twyman in the driver’s seat of the Kia.
Another man was in the passenger seat of the car, which had heavily tinted windows, according to the deputies.
Security video footage released by the department showed the deputies approaching the car with weapons drawn, and one of them opening the rear passenger side door in an attempt to talk with Twyman, who started the car’s engine and put it in reverse.
The other deputy moved in and tried to open the driver’s side door, but the video showed the Kia moving in reverse, knocking the deputy on the passenger side of the car off balance.
“The first deputy feared he would get caught underneath (Twyman’s) moving vehicle and (Twyman) would run him over and kill him, (and) fired his duty weapon five times at (Twyman),” according to the summary.
The second deputy immediately saw a muzzle flash from inside the back seat of the car and yelled, “gun, gun, gun!” before firing 15 shots from his weapon to protect the other deputy, according to the deputies’ account.
The Kia continued in reverse in a looping turn as deputies fired in the direction of Twyman.
One deputy then ran back to the patrol vehicle and retrieved an AR-15 duty rifle from the trunk, according to the sheriff’s department.
The video showed both deputies firing additional shots in the direction of the car, which continued in reverse until it hit a metal post in the parking lot.
A total of 34 shots were fired, according to the sheriff’s department.
Ultimately, one of the two deputies reported hearing someone inside the car saying, “He’s dead, he’s dead, I don’t have a gun.”
Twyman was struck by bullets in the neck and upper body and pronounced dead at the scene. [Daimeon] Leffall [the passenger] was not struck by gunfire, but had fragments of glass in his hair and was taken to Harbor-UCLA Medical Center for evaluation.
The summary faulted the deputy for opening the car’s rear door while trying to detain Twyman and both deputies for not calling for backup, but said Twyman failed to follow the deputies’ commands.
The department submitted its investigation to the District Attorney’s Office to determine whether the use of deadly force was legally justified, and investigations remain underway (Marcellino 2-4).
The department’s incident video narrator said that the deputy was trying to maintain his balance and not get “knocked down and run over” when he and his partner began firing into the car. The deputy — who remained standing throughout — and his partner continued to fire, even after the first officer had gotten out of the way of the car, which continued to slowly reverse until it hit a carport support beam. At this point, the second deputy retrieved a rifle from the trunk of the patrol car and both deputies appeared to fire more rounds at Twyman and Leffall in the Kia.
According to the LASD, Twyman was on probation and was under investigation for possessing guns with a felony on his record.
The department had been looking for Twyman to arrest him on the weapons charge after a search of the young man’s house turned up firearms. Twyman wasn’t home at the time of the search.
“At no time during the course of these events” did Twyman or Leffall “pose any reasonable or credible threat of violence” to the deputies, “nor did they do anything to justify the force used against them.” according to the complaint filed by the family’s lawyer, Brian Dunn, of the Cochran Firm California.
That force, the complaint alleged, was not only deadly, but also “excessive, unnecessary, and unlawful,” and in violation of the LASD’s policy against shooting into vehicles.
The Twyman family’s legal team also accused the deputies of “deliberate indifference,” by failing to render medical aid to the dying man, writing that “after a significant and appreciable period of time had passed following the shooting, Ryan Twyman died as a direct and proximate result of the gunshot wounds inflicted upon his person” by the defendants.
Twyman’s loved ones were also among a handful of grieving families who, speaking before the board of supervisors last year, reported taunting and intimidation from East LA and Century Station deputies at funerals and public memorials honoring people killed by members of the LASD (Walker 1-2).
“… both deputies fired their service pistols at Mr. Wyman in order to stop the vehicle form seriously injuring the passenger deputy,” said commander April Tardy who narrates the Sheriff Department’s critical incident briefing in a video that includes surveillance footage of the shooting.
...
Just hours after the video’s release Ryan Tyman’s family held a press conference at the offices of the Chochran law firm in Hancock Park. They stood at a podium covered in microphones. Members of Tyman’s family spoke along with Daimein Lafell, the passenger who was inside the car when Twyman was killed.
Twyman’s father was one of the first to speak. He said that after watching the critical incident report he believed his son was murdered. Twyman’s older sister Chiquita Twyman also took the podium. “My brother was my brother. He was human. He had a big family and a big support system and a community that loved him regardless of what the media is showing of him,” she said, trying to hold back tears.
Next to speak was Brian Dunn, an attorney who has represented over 200 families in wrongful death suits including some of LA’s most high profile police misconduct cases.
Dunn held up a laptop and played the sheriff department’s critical incident report, pausing it at times to explain why he believed the officers had failed to follow proper protocol.
Why did they approach the vehicle with guns drawn, Dunn asked, rather than announce their presence through the squad cars PA system? Why, Dunn said, did they keep firing on the car after it had come to a complete stop on the other side of the parking lot? The LA Sheriff’s Dept has a policy of refraining from firing on moving vehicles except in rare instances.
“By the time this sheriff deputy is no longer in the path of the vehicle there is absolutely no justification whatsoever to continue using deadly force, said Dunn. “They are completely out of harm’s way. But they kept shooting. 34 rounds folks” (Weinberg 1-2)
Los Angeles has consistently ranked as one of America’s deadliest regions for police violence, with one analysis finding that police shoot, on average, one person every five days. The county sheriff’s department (LASD) – which killed Twyman and polices millions of people in the LA area outside of city limits – has a troubled record of brutality claims.
Leading the department is Alex Villanueva, the elected sheriff sworn in last year and now mired in scandals, including over his reinstatement of a deputy previously fired for domestic violence and his collaboration with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).
The FBI is also investigating a secret society of tattooed officers and other “gang-like groups” inside LASD – and whether deputies planted evidence and falsified reports.
“LA county sheriff’s deputies are emboldened by who the sheriff is,” said Melina Abdullah, a Black Lives Matter organizer who helps track killings and works with families. “There are gangs within the sheriff’s department.”
On the streets of black and brown neighborhoods, this culture plays out in the form of harassment, racial profiling and abusive patrolling, critics said. LASD is known for having a “warrior mindset” instead of a “service or guardian mindset” in its treatment of citizens, said Alex Vitale, a Brooklyn College sociology professor.
Twyman was a frequent victim of this mentality, his family said.
“We call them the ‘jump out boys’,” said Chiquita Twyman, Ryan’s older sister. In Compton, a south LA city where Ryan lived, residents have grown accustomed to sheriff’s deputies driving around with their doors partially open – so they can jump out at any moment to confront, detain and arrest people on the street, she said.
“I never knew how much a black man could get pulled over until my son became a teenager,” said [Ryan’s mother] Tommy. “It never stopped.”
Charles Twyman, Ryan’s father, said the police harassment “becomes a way of life”, adding: “We’re used to it. They talk about gangs in the inner city. Who is the bigger gang?”
Police even treated Ryan like a criminal when he was once suffering from a seizure, suggesting he was on drugs instead of helping him, she [Tommy] said.
Sometimes, police would stop Ryan and eventually let him go, his mother said, after it became clear they had no reason to arrest him.
But his final encounter with law enforcement was different. It escalated so quickly he had no time for a conversation (Levin 2-3).
The sheriff’s department released the footage with lengthy narration that presented Twyman as a criminal and a threat.
“The vehicle was used as a weapon,” said the commander April Tardy, claiming one of the deputies was “struck” by the car door as Twyman “accelerated” the car in reverse, though in the video, the officer does not appear to be hit or lose his balance. He began firing, the captain continued, to “avoid being knocked down and run over”.
Twyman, who was shot in the upper torso and pronounced dead on the scene, was “under investigation” for illegal possession of weapons, and on probation after a gun possession conviction, Tardy said, adding that the department had been seeking to arrest him. She did not accuse him of any acts of violence. After the deputies finished shooting, they found no weapons in his car.
Letitia Lynex, Twyman’s aunt who lives nearby, rushed to the scene when she got word that something had happened. She said one officer initially told her a “deputy was down” and refused to provide more information, saying: “Google it.” Eventually, a crowd formed, demanding answers, prompting some officers to “draw their guns down on us as if we were criminals”, she said.
Twyman remained lifeless in his car for hours as his relatives showed up trying to figure out what happened. Police have continued to mistreat the family by driving past their house in Compton, stationing themselves outside during a family gathering, and showing up at the funeral, the relatives said.
They were also blindsided by the public release of the video, waking up to the horrifying footage on the news and their social media feeds. Tommy rushed to the bathroom to avoid seeing it as others viewed the final moments of his life.
She still can’t bring herself to watch it (Levin 5-6).
Twyman leaves behind three young children, ages one, two and three. Ryan Jr, the three-year-old, has struggled to process his father’s absence, repeatedly asking: “Where’s my dad?”
Sometimes, he stares at men’s faces around him, wondering if they might be his father. Other times, the toddler asks to go home to “see daddy” in case he’s waiting.
The family designed Twyman’s funeral program to look like a Time magazine cover celebrating him, filled with photos of him with his mother and his children.
“In every picture, you can see how much of a family man he was,” said Charles. “He protected everybody.”
Tommy has an alarm set on her phone that goes off every day at 8pm. It was her reminder to call her son to make sure he had taken his seizure medication. But they also both loved their daily catch-ups on the phone, she said, which sometimes would last an hour.
“If anyone knows Ryan Twyman, they know what 8 o’clock means,” she said, with a smile.
Tommy always worried about losing her son as he got older, afraid they wouldn’t be as close after he moved out of the house, she recalled: “When he turned 21, I told him, ‘I don’t know how to let you go,’ and he told me, ‘You don’t have to let me go. I’m gonna always be your baby.’”
Since his death, she said, she can’t bear to turn off her 8pm alarm (Levin 8-9).
Adocates hope a new landmark law in California, which dictates that police should only use deadly force when “necessary”, will prevent this kind of death in the future.
Current standards allow police to use deadly force whenever it’s “reasonable”. The footage suggests the killing was unnecessary, said Joanna Schwartz, a University of California, Los Angeles, law professor. “Could it have been avoided? It seems like the answer is yes, in about 50 different ways.”
Departments need to enforce their policies restricting officers from firing at fleeing people, so that they face serious consequences when they violate the rules, added the sociology professor Alex Vitale.
Otherwise, he said, officers would keep killing with impunity – and return to the streets (Levin 7).
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted today to approve a $3.9 million settlement of a federal lawsuit brought by the family of Ryan Twyman, an unarmed 24-year-old Compton man shot to death in his car by sheriff’s deputies in Willowbrook.
The deputies alleged that Twyman tried to use the Kia Forte as a weapon. …
...
The plaintiffs — who included Twyman’s three minor sons, his parents and Daimeon Leffall, a passenger in the car — alleged civil rights violations, battery and negligence.
According to the plaintiffs’ court papers, the deputies “violently” confronted Twyman even though he and Leffall were unarmed and not a threat to them. The deputies then opened fire, killing Twyman and injuring Leffall, according to the court papers filed in January.
The plaintiffs alleged the deputies violated an LASD policy that forbids using deadly force against people in a vehicle. That policy states, “Firearms should not be discharged at a stationary or moving vehicle, the occupants of a vehicle, or the tires of a vehicle unless a person in the vehicle is imminently threatening a department member or another person present with deadly force by means other than the moving vehicle. The moving vehicle itself shall not presumptively constitute a threat that justifies the use of deadly force,” according to a policy manual posted on the LASD website (Marcellino 1).
Thousands gathered in front of the Hall of Justice on Wednesday for Black Lives Matter Los Angeles’s weekly protest demanding the removal of L.A. County District Attorney Jackie Lacey, who the group says has failed to prosecute “killer cops.”
Several family members of people who died at the hands of police spoke at Wednesday’s protest. One of them was Tommy Twyman, the mother of Ryan Twyman — a Black man who died last year when L.A. County Sheriff deputies fired 34 rounds into his vehicle.
“A year later, you see officers beating up people and getting arrested and all of that, but she isn’t doing anything about them murdering people,” Twyman said, likely referring to charges Lacey filed last week against an LAPD officer who was filmed beating a homeless man last month.
Lacey has not filed charges against the two deputies who shot and killed Ryan Twyman.
Black Lives Matter-L.A., led by co-founder Melina Abdullah, has appeared on the Hall of Justice’s front steps to demand Lacey’s resignation since October 2017, but the nationwide protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd have propelled the campaign’s momentum to remove Lacey.
…
Abdullah and other organizers presented the People’s Budget, Black Lives Matter-L.A.’s proposed city budget, to the city council on Monday. The budget proposes reducing LAPD’s portion of the budget to less than 2%.
The push to defund the police scored a couple of victories on Tuesday, as the L.A. City Council voted 11-3 to cut $150 million from the LAPD’s budget and six council members introduced a motion that would dispatch social workers instead of police to respond to non-violent emergency calls (Torres and Mayorquin 1).
[Paste the following on Google to see the video of the shooting] Video Shows Deputy-Involved-Shooting of Ryan Twyman ...
Works cited:
Levin, Sam T. “Los Angeles Officers Shot at Ryan Twyman 34 Times. He Was One of Four They Killed That Day.” The Guardian, August 15, 2019. Net. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...
Marcellino, Elizabeth. “L.A. County Votes To Settle Ryan Twyman DIS Shooting for $3.9 Million.” Los Angeles Sentinel, November 12, 2020. Net. https://lasentinel.net/l-a-county-vot...
Torres, Chris and Mayorquin, Orlando. “Protests against District Attorney Jackie Lacey Continue; Defund Police Movement Makes Strides.” Daily Sundial, June 17, 2020. Net. https://sundial.csun.edu/158969/black...
Walker, Taylor. “LA County Supes Approve $3.9 Million Settlement for the Family of Ryan Twyman, after Deputies Shot 34 Bullets into his Car.” Witness LA, November 11, 2020. Net. https://witnessla.com/la-county-supes...
Weinberg, David. “Ryan Twyman’s Family Speaks after He Is Killed by LA Sheriff’s Deputies.” KCRW, June 21, 2019. Net. https://www.kcrw.com/news/shows/kcrw-...
June 3, 2021
Bad Apples -- 05--10--2019, Ronald Greene
In their lawsuit, Mr. Greene’s relatives said that the State Police told them that Mr. Greene died after his car struck a tree [and he had been flung through the windshield], but that the police did not mention a struggle with troopers.
The front of Mr. Greene’s car did not strike anything and his airbag did not deploy, the lawsuit said. Mr. Greene got out of the car uninjured and could “walk, speak and otherwise function in a healthy manner” after the crash, according to the lawsuit.
As more troopers arrived at the scene, Mr. Greene apologized for leading the chase, according to the lawsuit. Two troopers pinned him down and “individually and in concert used lethal force against Greene,” including shocking him three times with a Taser as he begged them to stop (Fazio 3).
CNN previously reported that Greene died after struggling with law enforcement following a pursuit that ended in a crash on May 10, 2019, according to a preliminary report from the criminal investigations division of the Louisiana State Patrol (LSP).
In the video, an officer approaches Greene's vehicle with a weapon drawn and says, "Let me see your f**king hands m*therf**ker."
Greene's car door is opened and you can hear a Taser going off. Greene can be heard saying, "OK, OK. I'm sorry. I'm scared. Officer, I'm scared, I'm your brother, I'm scared," as it appears he is being taken out of the vehicle.
Another video clip, obtained by the AP, shows officers forcing Greene onto the ground. An officer says, "Taser, Taser," and Greene can be heard screaming.
After being tased, Greene can be heard moaning while still on the ground and being put in handcuffs by one officer, while another officer kicks him several times. An officer can be heard saying, "I've got blood all over me, I hope this guy ain't got f**king AIDS," as Greene continues to moan.
The Associated Press reports that Greene is left lying face down moaning for more than nine minutes while officers used sanitizer wipes to wash blood off their hands and faces. This is not in any of the video segments the AP has posted online (Lynch 1).
Four Louisiana state troopers were arrested on Monday on charges that they used excessive force and deactivated their body cameras during arrests, the authorities said.
Louisiana State Police investigators filed the charges on Monday against the troopers, who patrol Monroe, a city in the northern part of the state, as well as surrounding parishes. The troopers — identified as Dakota DeMoss, 28; George Harper, 26; Randall Dickerson, 34; and Jacob Brown, 30 — will remain on administrative leave, the agency said in a statement.
The charges arose from encounters in July 2019 and May 2020, the statement said.
…
The four men belonged to Troop F, which has had some of its members placed under scrutiny in a separate federal civil rights investigation involving the death of Ronald Greene, a 49-year-old Black man, after a high-speed police chase on May 10, 2019.
…
John F.K. Belton, the district attorney for the Third Judicial District in Louisiana, which covers Lincoln and Union Parishes, said in an interview on Tuesday that Trooper DeMoss was one of the officers involved in the Greene case, but that he could not specify to what extent. “There were two involved, and several on the scene thereafter,” he said.
On Monday, after the announcement that the four members of Troop F had been arrested, the N.A.A.C.P. said that leaked body-camera audio from the Greene encounter captured one of the troopers from Troop F saying he beat and choked Mr. Greene after the pursuit (Hauser 2).
Greene, a barber, failed to pull over for an unspecified traffic violation shortly after midnight on May 10, 2019, about 30 miles south of the Arkansas state line. That’s where the video obtained by AP begins, with Trooper Dakota DeMoss chasing Greene’s SUV on rural highways at over 115 mph.
Seconds before the chase ended, DeMoss warned on his radio: “We got to do something. He’s going to kill somebody.”
As DeMoss and Master Trooper Chris Hollingsworth rush Greene’s SUV, he can be seen appearing to raise his hands and saying over and over, “OK, OK. I’m sorry."
Hollingsworth shocks Greene with a stun gun within seconds through the driver’s side window as both troopers demand he get out of the vehicle.
Greene exits through the passenger side as the troopers wrestle him to the ground. One trooper can be heard saying “He’s grabbing me” as they try to handcuff him. “Put your hands behind your back, bitch,” one trooper says.
Hollingsworth strikes Greene multiple times and appears to lie on one of his arms before he is finally handcuffed.
At one point, Trooper Kory York yanks Greene’s leg shackles and briefly drags the man on his stomach even though he isn’t resisting.
York was suspended without pay for 50 hours for the dragging and for improperly deactivating his body camera. York told investigators the device was beeping loudly and his “mind was on other things.”
Hollingsworth, in a separate recording obtained by AP, can be heard telling a colleague at the office that “he beat the ever-living f--- out of” Greene.
“Choked him and everything else trying to get him under control,” Hollingsworth is heard saying. “He was spitting blood everywhere, and all of a sudden he just went limp.”
Hollingsworth later died in a single-vehicle highway crash that happened hours after he learned he would be fired for his role in the Greene case.
DeMoss, meanwhile, was arrested in connection with a separate police pursuit last year in which he and two other troopers allegedly used excessive force while handcuffing a motorist.
Exactly what caused Greene’s death remains unclear. Union Parish Coroner Renee Smith told AP last year his death was ruled accidental and attributed to cardiac arrest.
Smith, who was not in office when that determination was made, said her office’s file on Greene attributed his death to a car crash and made no mention of a struggle with State Police.
The AP last year also obtained a medical report showing an emergency room doctor noted Greene arrived dead at the hospital, bruised and bloodied with two stun-gun prongs in his back. That led the doctor to question troopers’ initial account that Greene had “died on impact” after crashing into a tree.
“Does not add up,” the doctor wrote (Mustian “Scared” 1-2).
A State Police crash report obtained by AP omits any reference to troopers using force — or even arresting Greene — but notes that he was not wearing a seat belt in the crash. State Police later acknowledged there was a “struggle” with troopers who were trying to arrest him.
Greene’s family has a filed a federal wrongful-death suit alleging troopers “brutalized” him, shocked him three times with a stun gun and left him “beaten, bloodied and in cardiac arrest.”
Last month, they disputed the car crash narrative by releasing graphic photos of Greene’s body that appeared to show deep bruises on his face and cuts on his scalp, as well as photos of the SUV he was driving showing it with only minor damage.
Greene, a barber who had lived for years in central Florida, was not known to be wanted on any charges at the time of the police chase. He had a criminal record in Florida that included arrests ranging from theft to drug possession. Court records show he served more than a year in prison following a 2015 conviction for burglary and grand theft (Mustian “Beat” 2).
[The ACLU released this statement after the body cam footage was posted]
“Nearly two years after Ronald Greene’s death, we now know what Louisiana State Police were trying to hide: Ronald Greene was tortured to death by officers who denied him life-saving aide for more than nine minutes. What we are witnessing on this video is a brutal killing - a killing that was committed by cops but also condoned by our laws, perpetuated by white supremacy, and encouraged by a culture of impunity and violence.
Mona Hardin, Ronald Greene’s mother urges, ‘This was a premeditated taking of Ronnie’s life.’ Moreover, ‘what state police leadership have referred to as ‘awful but lawful’ is nothing more than corruption and an unjustifiable murder.’
Once again, we have proof that another unarmed Black man has been brutally killed by cops – we are deeply sympathetic to his family who have to watch this horrific video and grieve their loved one because of the actions of police officers who still have not been held accountable. The fact that Ronald Greene’s family had to wait two years after his death for this footage to be released to the public is an unacceptable miscarriage of justice that needs to be addressed now.
Louisiana State Police, despite having a long history of excessive force and civil rights violations, are often charged with investigating allegations of excessive force and misconduct by local police departments.
These interactions are not new. The systemic targeting of and use of excessive force against people of color is woven into the fabric of our law enforcement institutions and stems from the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow in this country. Nothing will change about policing until everything changes about policing. Not only must the officers responsible for this atrocity be held accountable, but our entire system of policing also needs to be reimagined. A system that produces such extreme levels of violence and brutality cannot be reformed – it must be dismantled and rebuilt from the ground up.
There is no alternate path toward justice” (Hunter 2).
[Paste the following on Google to watch the You Tube WWLTV produced video of Greene’s arrest and brutalization]
Deadly arrest of Ronald Greene by Louisiana State Police
Works cited:
Fazio, Marie. “F.B.I. Investigates Louisiana Man’s Death after Police Chase.” The New York Times, updated May 19, 2021. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/21/us...
Hauser, Christine. “4 Louisiana Troopers Arrested on Charges of Using Excessive Force.” The New York Times, updated May 19, 2021. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/09/us...
Hunter, Scottie. “THE INVESTIGATORS: LSP Calls Release of Body Camera Video in Ronald Greene ase ‘Premature’.” WAFB9, May 19, 2021. Net. https://www.wafb.com/2021/05/19/inves...
Lynch, Jamiel. “Body Camera Shows Black Man Being tased, Kicked and Dragged by Louisiana Troopers before His Death.” CNN, updated May 19, 2021. Net. https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/19/us/ron...
Mustian, Jim. “'I Beat the Ever-Living F--- Out of Him' - Trooper's Mic Records Talk of Beating, Choking Black Man.” 4WWL, October 1, 2020. Net. https://www.wwltv.com/article/news/lo...
Mustian, Jim.”'I'm Scared': Video Shows Deadly Arrest by Louisiana State Police.” 4WWL, May 19, 2021. Net. https://www.wwltv.com/article/news/cr...
The front of Mr. Greene’s car did not strike anything and his airbag did not deploy, the lawsuit said. Mr. Greene got out of the car uninjured and could “walk, speak and otherwise function in a healthy manner” after the crash, according to the lawsuit.
As more troopers arrived at the scene, Mr. Greene apologized for leading the chase, according to the lawsuit. Two troopers pinned him down and “individually and in concert used lethal force against Greene,” including shocking him three times with a Taser as he begged them to stop (Fazio 3).
CNN previously reported that Greene died after struggling with law enforcement following a pursuit that ended in a crash on May 10, 2019, according to a preliminary report from the criminal investigations division of the Louisiana State Patrol (LSP).
In the video, an officer approaches Greene's vehicle with a weapon drawn and says, "Let me see your f**king hands m*therf**ker."
Greene's car door is opened and you can hear a Taser going off. Greene can be heard saying, "OK, OK. I'm sorry. I'm scared. Officer, I'm scared, I'm your brother, I'm scared," as it appears he is being taken out of the vehicle.
Another video clip, obtained by the AP, shows officers forcing Greene onto the ground. An officer says, "Taser, Taser," and Greene can be heard screaming.
After being tased, Greene can be heard moaning while still on the ground and being put in handcuffs by one officer, while another officer kicks him several times. An officer can be heard saying, "I've got blood all over me, I hope this guy ain't got f**king AIDS," as Greene continues to moan.
The Associated Press reports that Greene is left lying face down moaning for more than nine minutes while officers used sanitizer wipes to wash blood off their hands and faces. This is not in any of the video segments the AP has posted online (Lynch 1).
Four Louisiana state troopers were arrested on Monday on charges that they used excessive force and deactivated their body cameras during arrests, the authorities said.
Louisiana State Police investigators filed the charges on Monday against the troopers, who patrol Monroe, a city in the northern part of the state, as well as surrounding parishes. The troopers — identified as Dakota DeMoss, 28; George Harper, 26; Randall Dickerson, 34; and Jacob Brown, 30 — will remain on administrative leave, the agency said in a statement.
The charges arose from encounters in July 2019 and May 2020, the statement said.
…
The four men belonged to Troop F, which has had some of its members placed under scrutiny in a separate federal civil rights investigation involving the death of Ronald Greene, a 49-year-old Black man, after a high-speed police chase on May 10, 2019.
…
John F.K. Belton, the district attorney for the Third Judicial District in Louisiana, which covers Lincoln and Union Parishes, said in an interview on Tuesday that Trooper DeMoss was one of the officers involved in the Greene case, but that he could not specify to what extent. “There were two involved, and several on the scene thereafter,” he said.
On Monday, after the announcement that the four members of Troop F had been arrested, the N.A.A.C.P. said that leaked body-camera audio from the Greene encounter captured one of the troopers from Troop F saying he beat and choked Mr. Greene after the pursuit (Hauser 2).
Greene, a barber, failed to pull over for an unspecified traffic violation shortly after midnight on May 10, 2019, about 30 miles south of the Arkansas state line. That’s where the video obtained by AP begins, with Trooper Dakota DeMoss chasing Greene’s SUV on rural highways at over 115 mph.
Seconds before the chase ended, DeMoss warned on his radio: “We got to do something. He’s going to kill somebody.”
As DeMoss and Master Trooper Chris Hollingsworth rush Greene’s SUV, he can be seen appearing to raise his hands and saying over and over, “OK, OK. I’m sorry."
Hollingsworth shocks Greene with a stun gun within seconds through the driver’s side window as both troopers demand he get out of the vehicle.
Greene exits through the passenger side as the troopers wrestle him to the ground. One trooper can be heard saying “He’s grabbing me” as they try to handcuff him. “Put your hands behind your back, bitch,” one trooper says.
Hollingsworth strikes Greene multiple times and appears to lie on one of his arms before he is finally handcuffed.
At one point, Trooper Kory York yanks Greene’s leg shackles and briefly drags the man on his stomach even though he isn’t resisting.
York was suspended without pay for 50 hours for the dragging and for improperly deactivating his body camera. York told investigators the device was beeping loudly and his “mind was on other things.”
Hollingsworth, in a separate recording obtained by AP, can be heard telling a colleague at the office that “he beat the ever-living f--- out of” Greene.
“Choked him and everything else trying to get him under control,” Hollingsworth is heard saying. “He was spitting blood everywhere, and all of a sudden he just went limp.”
Hollingsworth later died in a single-vehicle highway crash that happened hours after he learned he would be fired for his role in the Greene case.
DeMoss, meanwhile, was arrested in connection with a separate police pursuit last year in which he and two other troopers allegedly used excessive force while handcuffing a motorist.
Exactly what caused Greene’s death remains unclear. Union Parish Coroner Renee Smith told AP last year his death was ruled accidental and attributed to cardiac arrest.
Smith, who was not in office when that determination was made, said her office’s file on Greene attributed his death to a car crash and made no mention of a struggle with State Police.
The AP last year also obtained a medical report showing an emergency room doctor noted Greene arrived dead at the hospital, bruised and bloodied with two stun-gun prongs in his back. That led the doctor to question troopers’ initial account that Greene had “died on impact” after crashing into a tree.
“Does not add up,” the doctor wrote (Mustian “Scared” 1-2).
A State Police crash report obtained by AP omits any reference to troopers using force — or even arresting Greene — but notes that he was not wearing a seat belt in the crash. State Police later acknowledged there was a “struggle” with troopers who were trying to arrest him.
Greene’s family has a filed a federal wrongful-death suit alleging troopers “brutalized” him, shocked him three times with a stun gun and left him “beaten, bloodied and in cardiac arrest.”
Last month, they disputed the car crash narrative by releasing graphic photos of Greene’s body that appeared to show deep bruises on his face and cuts on his scalp, as well as photos of the SUV he was driving showing it with only minor damage.
Greene, a barber who had lived for years in central Florida, was not known to be wanted on any charges at the time of the police chase. He had a criminal record in Florida that included arrests ranging from theft to drug possession. Court records show he served more than a year in prison following a 2015 conviction for burglary and grand theft (Mustian “Beat” 2).
[The ACLU released this statement after the body cam footage was posted]
“Nearly two years after Ronald Greene’s death, we now know what Louisiana State Police were trying to hide: Ronald Greene was tortured to death by officers who denied him life-saving aide for more than nine minutes. What we are witnessing on this video is a brutal killing - a killing that was committed by cops but also condoned by our laws, perpetuated by white supremacy, and encouraged by a culture of impunity and violence.
Mona Hardin, Ronald Greene’s mother urges, ‘This was a premeditated taking of Ronnie’s life.’ Moreover, ‘what state police leadership have referred to as ‘awful but lawful’ is nothing more than corruption and an unjustifiable murder.’
Once again, we have proof that another unarmed Black man has been brutally killed by cops – we are deeply sympathetic to his family who have to watch this horrific video and grieve their loved one because of the actions of police officers who still have not been held accountable. The fact that Ronald Greene’s family had to wait two years after his death for this footage to be released to the public is an unacceptable miscarriage of justice that needs to be addressed now.
Louisiana State Police, despite having a long history of excessive force and civil rights violations, are often charged with investigating allegations of excessive force and misconduct by local police departments.
These interactions are not new. The systemic targeting of and use of excessive force against people of color is woven into the fabric of our law enforcement institutions and stems from the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow in this country. Nothing will change about policing until everything changes about policing. Not only must the officers responsible for this atrocity be held accountable, but our entire system of policing also needs to be reimagined. A system that produces such extreme levels of violence and brutality cannot be reformed – it must be dismantled and rebuilt from the ground up.
There is no alternate path toward justice” (Hunter 2).
[Paste the following on Google to watch the You Tube WWLTV produced video of Greene’s arrest and brutalization]
Deadly arrest of Ronald Greene by Louisiana State Police
Works cited:
Fazio, Marie. “F.B.I. Investigates Louisiana Man’s Death after Police Chase.” The New York Times, updated May 19, 2021. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/21/us...
Hauser, Christine. “4 Louisiana Troopers Arrested on Charges of Using Excessive Force.” The New York Times, updated May 19, 2021. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/09/us...
Hunter, Scottie. “THE INVESTIGATORS: LSP Calls Release of Body Camera Video in Ronald Greene ase ‘Premature’.” WAFB9, May 19, 2021. Net. https://www.wafb.com/2021/05/19/inves...
Lynch, Jamiel. “Body Camera Shows Black Man Being tased, Kicked and Dragged by Louisiana Troopers before His Death.” CNN, updated May 19, 2021. Net. https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/19/us/ron...
Mustian, Jim. “'I Beat the Ever-Living F--- Out of Him' - Trooper's Mic Records Talk of Beating, Choking Black Man.” 4WWL, October 1, 2020. Net. https://www.wwltv.com/article/news/lo...
Mustian, Jim.”'I'm Scared': Video Shows Deadly Arrest by Louisiana State Police.” 4WWL, May 19, 2021. Net. https://www.wwltv.com/article/news/cr...
