Harold Titus's Blog, page 11
May 30, 2021
Bad Apples -- June 19, 2018, Antwon Rose
Antwon Rose Jr. was a 17-year old honor student who was shot and killed by a police officer in East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as he was running from a traffic stop following a separate shooting.
Antwon Rose Jr. was born on July 12, 2000, to Michelle Kenney and Antwon Rose Sr. He was an honor student at Woodland Hills High School where he played basketball and the saxophone. The superintendent described Rose as an “excellent student” who took Advance Placement classes. He coached children in after-school classes at the Pittsburgh Gymnastics Club, and at age 14 he began volunteering at the Free Store, which provides surplus and donated items to those in need.
On the night of June 19, 2018, officers from the East Pittsburgh Police Department responded to several 911 calls of a drive-by shooting in North Braddock, a borough in Allegheny County east of Pittsburgh. Multiple shots had been fired from a passing vehicle witnesses described as a silver Chevy Cruz. A 22-year old man named William Ross sustained a nonfatal gunshot wound in the abdomen and fired back at the vehicle, resulting in a shattered window. A short time later, officers spotted and pulled over a vehicle matching that description. While they arrested the driver, Rose and Zaijuan Hester exited the vehicle and began fleeing the scene. Officer Michael Rosfeld fired his service weapon three times, striking Rose in the back, face, and elbow. Rose was transported to a hospital where he died.
Rose was unarmed at the time he was shot, though investigators later determined there were two guns in the vehicle. Hester later pleaded guilty to shooting Ross and was sentenced to up to twenty-two years in prison (Coen 1-2)
The trial of former East Pittsburgh Police Officer Michael Rosfeld continued into a second day Wednesday in a Pittsburgh courtroom where three witnesses were called during morning testimony.
John Leach, a neighbor who lives a few houses away from where the June shooting took place, said he was on the front porch when Rosfeld fired three bullets into 17-year-old Anton Rose II after pulling over an unlicensed taxicab suspected to have been used in a drive-by shooting minutes earlier.
Rose was a front-seat passenger in the cab and was shot as he fled.
Rosfeld, 30, faces a charge of criminal homicide.
Leach, the second witness to testify Wednesday, said after the shooting, he was standing by Rose’s body, watching Rosfeld on the sidewalk nearby saying repeatedly, “I don’t know why I shot him. I don’t know why I fired.”
He said later, he saw other officers consoling Rosfeld as he was crying, bent over, and hyperventilating. He said Rosfeld looked like he was about to pass out.
Leach said he saw Rosfeld pointing a gun at Rose while at least one of Rose’s hands was in the air. Then, Rose turned and ran, he said (Santanam 1-2).
One of the victims of a drive-by shooting that occurred minutes before an East Pittsburgh police officer shot 17-year-old Antwon Rose II told police in January that it was Antwon who shot him, and it was Antwon who had a “beef” with him.
“The beef was between me and him, that car came by, he shot me, I ran to the store,”
William Ross told a Pennsylvania State Police trooper Jan. 16, according to a police report. “I didn’t report it. Five minutes later, he was dead.”
That statement was included in a defense motion filed Friday on behalf of former East Pittsburgh police officer Michael Rosfeld, who is charged with homicide for Antwon’s death.
It contradicts what investigators say — a man with Antwon was the shooter.
…
Investigators said video from the scene shows the shots were fired from the passenger-side back seat of the gold Chevy Cruz used in the drive-by. Hester, they said, was in the back seat, while Antwon was in the front passenger seat.
The video shows that the front passenger window was closed at the time of the drive-by.
But there is evidence that Antwon had gunshot residue on his hands, and that a stolen gun was found beneath the front passenger seat of the car. He also had an empty magazine in his pocket.
Defense attorney Patrick Thomassey, who represents Mr. Rosfeld, has been trying throughout the pre-trial process to portray Antwon as a criminal, arguing that he has the right to tell the jury about the evidence found on Antwon and in the car that is damaging to the teen’s reputation.
The prosecution, however, has argued that those details are irrelevant as to whether Mr. Rosfeld was justified in shooting an unarmed, fleeing teenager in the back three times.
…
Ross told detectives that he was at Fa’s Market that evening and saw a gold car pull up.
“Ross stated that he heard someone say, ‘Is that him?’ and he noticed that [Antwon] was in the front passenger seat, and [another man] was driving. He said that he knows both from playing football. Ross stated that [Antwon] was just in the store two days prior to the shooting. Ross also stated that just that day he saw [Antwon] down at the hoop court playing basketball,” the report said.
“Ross said that after hearing, ‘Is that him?’ he observed a black gun come out of the back passenger window, Ross stated a black male wearing a black hoodie over his head was holding the gun.”
The rear passenger started firing, the interview continues, and Ross ran back inside the store, with his right leg burning.
“He said that he ran to the back of [the store] because he wanted to get to the basement because he felt ‘they’ were coming into the store to kill him.”
Ross then told Allegheny County police Detective Kevin McCue that he believed there was a beef between them because Ross is from Braddock, and the people in the car — including Antwon — were from Rankin.
“Ross stated that Rankin boys shot Braddock boys, and then Braddock Boys go [shoot] Rankin Boys. That’s the beef,” the detective wrote.
But in the interview with the state trooper in January, Ross did not repeat that information — saying only that the beef was with Antwon (Ward 1-2).
The incident was filmed by a bystander and the video was posted to social media. “Why are they shooting?” the person recording the video says. “All they did was run and they’re shooting at them!” The shooting of Rose resulted in demonstrations over the next few days. Protesters blocked an interstate highway for several hours and gathered outside the East Pittsburgh Police Department and Allegheny County Courthouse where they demanded the officer be held to account (Coen 2).
Prosecutors charged Mr. Rosfeld with an open count of homicide, meaning the jury could have convicted him of murder or manslaughter.
Antwon, who was unarmed, ran after Mr. Rosfeld pulled over the car he was riding in with another teenager. The car, a Chevrolet Cruz, matched the description of one involved in a nearby drive-by shooting about 10 minutes earlier.
Mr. Rosfeld shot Antwon, a passenger, three times — in his back, face and elbow.
Prosecutors say Mr. Rosfeld, 30, gave inconsistent statements about the shooting, including whether he thought Antwon had a gun.
On Thursday, Mr. Rosfeld testified in his own defense for 90 minutes. “It happened very quickly,” he said. “My intent was to end the threat that was made against me.”
He said on the stand that he thought he saw one of the two teenagers who ran from the car point a gun at him. He said he did not know which teenager made the motion.
“This case had nothing to do with race, absolutely nothing to do with race,” Patrick Thomassey, Mr. Rosfeld’s lawyer, said after the verdict. “And some people in this city have made it that way and it’s sad. Mike Rosfeld was doing his job. He did his job. And it had nothing to do with the color of anyone he was arresting.”
…
The jury consisted of six men and six women, nine of whom were white and three of whom were African-American.
On Friday morning, one of the white female jurors was dismissed by the judge and was replaced by an alternate juror, a white man. A reason was not given.
Mr. Rosfeld had been on the East Pittsburgh police force for about three weeks and had been officially sworn in just hours before the shooting.
Previously, he had been a member of the University of Pittsburgh police force, but he left the job after discrepancies were found between one of his sworn statements and evidence in an arrest, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has reported (Hassan 1-2).
Rosfeld, who is white, had parted ways from the university after an incident in which he became violent with a black student—whose parent happened to be the school’s vice chancellor (Patterson 3).
Rose’s family on Friday condemned the [acquittal] verdict. “I hope that man never sleeps at night,” the teen’s mother, Michelle Kenney, said according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “I hope he gets as much sleep as I do, which is none.”
…
“Antwon Rose was shot in his back. ... He was unarmed, and he did not pose a threat to the officer or to the community, and the verdict today says that is okay, that is acceptable behavior from a police officer,” [the Rose family’s attorney S. Lee] Merritt said. (Sakuma 2).
In August 2018 Rose’s family filed a civil rights lawsuit against Rosfeld and the borough of East Pittsburgh. The family alleged racial bias, lack of training, and use of excessive force. The suit was settled in October 2019 for $2 million (Coen 2).
[Antwon’s mother, interviewed, recollects:]
My daughter and I are close, but we're a lot alike. We're outgoing, we're boisterous, we're loud. Antwon was none of that. He was just so different. He was so kind, so gentle, so understanding.
When he was little, my daughter and I would laugh because Antwon would give popsicles to the kids up and down the street. He didn't care if he wasn't playing with you. He gave them out anyway.
He was funny. His facial expressions were always unbelievable. If you wanted to know what Antwon was thinking, all you had to do was look at his face. He had jokes for days.
Antwon's talents were endless. Antwon could ski, snowboard--as a matter of fact, one of his friends said at his funeral that he was the best snowboarder he ever met. Antwon played the saxophone and the guitar and loved basketball, but he wanted to work rather than playing high school ball.
Antwon was great at math and he liked science. Antwon, when he was little, he always told us he wanted to be a lawyer. Then when he was in high school, he decided he wanted to be a chemical engineer.
When Antwon was in the fourth grade, I got a call from the principal. She asked me to come in. I was worried because he had never gotten in trouble. She ended up calling because she could not believe that Antwon wasn't in the gifted program. And back then, there weren't any Black kids in the gifted program. She pushed for him to be in that program because she knew that's where he belonged.
About two days before Antwon was murdered, we had a family meeting. The family meeting was about staying out of the way. We didn't live in the greatest neighborhood, so I worried about him coming home and back. I sat on my porch every day and waited for him to come home, whether it was from school, work, I would look up the street, make sure he was coming and make sure no one interfered with him making it home.
At the family meeting I was talking to him and he just kept saying, “I know, Mom. I know, Mom. I know, Mom. I know, Mom.” I was upset and I was just like, “I don't think you understand.” Then, the day after Antwon was killed, his teacher gave me a poem he wrote titled, "I AM NOT WHAT YOU THINK.”
I am confused and afraid
I wonder what path I will take
I hear that there’s only two ways out
I see mothers bury their sons
I want my mom to never feel that pain
I am confused and afraid
I realized he heard me all those years, and all those family meetings because that poem is exactly what we talked about. Had I known about it I probably would have stopped asking him, "Do you hear me?"
I'm biracial and Antwon was raised to hang out with white kids. Antwon knew he was Black as far as common sense, but based on the people he hung out with, he didn't understand what that meant. I felt that if anything was to ever happen or the police were called, even if he was at a party, they would automatically blame Antwon. The blame would be put upon him before they would be put upon the kids he hung out with.
That's the harsh reality, but it's our truth.
I worked at a police department for over a decade. I was the administrative assistant to the chief of police and the mayor. I saw a lot of things that I didn't think were right.
I got fed up with the idea of there not being any accountability. I’d see people come in to file civilian complaints, and say they were harassed or their civil rights had been violated and nothing happened.
As much as I tried to encourage people to take their complaints elsewhere and take other actions, I felt like it was useless. I felt like I was beat down by a system that was designed only for police.
Don’t get me wrong. I worked with a lot of great people, but it’s amazing, the stuff the bad ones get away with. To get a call and hear an officer got fired from somewhere else and that’s why they ended up here, it's just unbelievable. And when you're responsible for the paperwork when they’re getting hired, it's hard to handle.
…
As I was driving to the place where Antwon was killed, I ran into a bunch of police officers at the first location. They all gave me the run-around. It all showed up that day -- disrespectful, arrogant, and unbelievably ignorant. Luckily there was a cop there who knew me. He said, "Michelle, Antwon’s not that type of kid but if you believe it's him, go to McKeesport Hospital.”
On my way to the hospital my daughter called me and said, "Mom, you need to call granddaddy before you go."
My dad is a police officer in another jurisdiction. If I needed to call him before I got to the hospital, I knew what that meant.
Allegheny County Police never told me Antwon was killed by a cop. Instead, they wanted more information about what Antwon did that day. I told them, "I just need to know if my son is dead."
The cop told me, "I'm not telling you anything."
My 17-year-old is laying there and the cop is telling me that if I don't answer his questions, he can't tell me anything. Instead of telling me if my son was dead, the cop told me that they found $300 in Antwon’s pocket as well as a clip from a gun. The officer wanted to know where the money came from.
An officer who is also an EMT showed up on the scene. He could not believe that they didn't try to save Antwon’s life. At the trial, he testified that Antwon had nothing in his pocket. When he made that statement, they came back and said that clip did not have Antwon's fingerprints on it. How could a clip end up in a pocket in the skinny jeans he had on and not have his fingerprints on it?
…
I've talked to Tamir Rice’s. She gives me the best advice, even when I don't want to hear it. I've spoken to Botham Jean’s mom. I check on her, she checks on me. DJ Henry’s mom is unbelievably amazing. That's just a beautiful soul. And my closest relationships are here with the mothers in Pittsburgh. We’ve had four police shootings since Antwon’s murder and none of them have received the attention that Antwon did. Those are the moms I check on because they’re right here in my city.
If I could speak to Antwon I’d tell him that I love him and that I'm sorry--so sorry. ...(Kenney 1-3).
Rose's mother, Michelle Kenney, is calling for police reforms including legislation to create a database of complaints against officers for future hiring.
...
“I just don’t think people understand how many officers are actually transferred to other departments with bad reputations that they take with them from their previous employment.”
… “If you’re a good cop, this list will not affect you at all, other than the fact that you won’t be put in a predicament that you end up working with a bad cop” (Gavin 1).
In June 2018, a police officer shot and killed Antwon Rose II, an unarmed black teenager, in a small borough outside Pittsburgh.
Rose’s death led to emotional protests, the arrest of the officer, and a package of police reform bills introduced by Democrats — legislation that went nowhere in the Republican-controlled state legislature.
Now, two years later, protests have once again erupted across Pennsylvania and the nation demanding justice for George Floyd, a black man from Minnesota who died after an officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.
Floyd’s death has also reignited calls by Pennsylvania legislators to change the state’s deadly force law and ramp up police oversight. But without GOP support, many of these measures have no chance of reaching Gov. Tom Wolf.
…
In the aftermath of Rose’s death, [Senate Minority Leader Jay] Costa proposed a bill that would create a disciplinary database and require additional training and mental-health screenings for officers. A version of the measure introduced at the beginning of this legislative session has been sitting in committee without a hearing since March 2019.
…
The reform package unveiled Tuesday also calls on the legislature to “eliminate effectuating an arrest as a justification for the use of deadly force.”
State law gives police officers wide discretion to use deadly force, including when they believe a suspect attempted or successfully committed a forcible felony, and the force was necessary to complete an arrest. Rosfeld was acquitted in Rose’s death after a defense expert testified that the officer’s actions were justified, even though the teen was unarmed.
While state law lays out the circumstances under which an officer may use deadly force, not every State law department has a written policy on how it should be used — including the one that employed Rosfeld when he fatally shot Rose.
“One of the shocking realizations after recent police-involved shootings at the local level is that municipalities and their law enforcement departments have little-to-no policies guiding the decisions that police have to make in their line of work,” Costa wrote in a memo seeking support from his colleagues for a measure that would compel law enforcement agencies to adopt a use-of-force policy (Fernandez 1-2).
The East Pittsburgh Police … apparently had nothing in place to dictate how Rosfeld should have behaved. “When they first came on scene,” [Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen] Zappala said, the major crimes investigators asked, “‘Well how do you handle these situations? What’s your policy?’ And they said, ‘We don’t have a policy.'”
…
The East Pittsburgh force is tiny—just eight officers … departments that small often don’t have resources or expertise to develop and maintain their own policy manuals (Patterson 3).
But like his database bill, Costa’s use-of-force legislation has been sitting in committee for more than a year. And like any piece of legislation that reaches Wolf’s desk, these reform measures need Republican support to advance.
…
Costa is used to seeing reform bills wither in committee, though he’s hopeful the recent protests will draw new attention “to the need for this legislation.”
“These incidents occur and then we protest. Then we talk about it, and then time passes and it is ignored,” he said. “We need to break that cycle and we need to make sure these conversations take place” (Fernandez 2-3).
[Paste the following links on Google to see two videos]
Surveillance video: Drive-by shooting in North Braddock ...
Black unarmed teen Antwon Rose shot in Pittsburgh - YouTube
Works cited:
Coen, Ross. “Antwon Rose Jr. (2000-2018).” BlackPast, August 13, 2020. Net. https://www.blackpast.org/african-ame...
Fernandez, Cynthia. “Police Reforms in Pa. Languished after Antwon Rose’s kKlling. Will Now Be Any Different?” Spotlight, June 3, 2020. Net. https://www.spotlightpa.org/news/2020...
Gavin, Kevin. “Two Years after Antwon Rose Killing, His Mother Continues Call for Police Reform.” The Confluence, June 18, 2020. Net. https://www.wesa.fm/show/the-confluen...
Hassan, Adeel. “Antwon Rose Shooting: White Police Officer Acquitted in Death of Black Teenager.” The New York Times, March 22, 2019. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/22/us...
Kenney, Michelle. “I’m Antwon Rose’s Mother. My Son Had To Be Killed by Police in Order for Him To Change the World.” ABC News, July 13, 2020. Net. https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/News/im-an...
Patterson, Brandon E. “Cop Who Killed This Unarmed Teen Wasn’t Following Department Policy—Because There Wasn’t One.” Mother Jones, June 28, 2018. Net. https://www.motherjones.com/crime-jus...
Sakuma, Amanda. “East Pittsburgh Police Officer Acquitted in Shooting Death of 17-Year-Old Antwon Rose.” Vox, March 23, 2019. Net. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politi...
Santanam, Ramesh. “Witness: White Officer Michael Rosfeld Panicked after Shooting Unarmed Black Teen Antwon Rose II.” The Florida Times-Union, March 20, 2019. Net. https://www.jacksonville.com/news/201...
Ward, Paula Reed. “Court Filing: Drive-By Victim Told Police that Antwon Rose II Shot Him.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 1, 2019. Net. https://www.post-gazette.com/news/cri...
Antwon Rose Jr. was born on July 12, 2000, to Michelle Kenney and Antwon Rose Sr. He was an honor student at Woodland Hills High School where he played basketball and the saxophone. The superintendent described Rose as an “excellent student” who took Advance Placement classes. He coached children in after-school classes at the Pittsburgh Gymnastics Club, and at age 14 he began volunteering at the Free Store, which provides surplus and donated items to those in need.
On the night of June 19, 2018, officers from the East Pittsburgh Police Department responded to several 911 calls of a drive-by shooting in North Braddock, a borough in Allegheny County east of Pittsburgh. Multiple shots had been fired from a passing vehicle witnesses described as a silver Chevy Cruz. A 22-year old man named William Ross sustained a nonfatal gunshot wound in the abdomen and fired back at the vehicle, resulting in a shattered window. A short time later, officers spotted and pulled over a vehicle matching that description. While they arrested the driver, Rose and Zaijuan Hester exited the vehicle and began fleeing the scene. Officer Michael Rosfeld fired his service weapon three times, striking Rose in the back, face, and elbow. Rose was transported to a hospital where he died.
Rose was unarmed at the time he was shot, though investigators later determined there were two guns in the vehicle. Hester later pleaded guilty to shooting Ross and was sentenced to up to twenty-two years in prison (Coen 1-2)
The trial of former East Pittsburgh Police Officer Michael Rosfeld continued into a second day Wednesday in a Pittsburgh courtroom where three witnesses were called during morning testimony.
John Leach, a neighbor who lives a few houses away from where the June shooting took place, said he was on the front porch when Rosfeld fired three bullets into 17-year-old Anton Rose II after pulling over an unlicensed taxicab suspected to have been used in a drive-by shooting minutes earlier.
Rose was a front-seat passenger in the cab and was shot as he fled.
Rosfeld, 30, faces a charge of criminal homicide.
Leach, the second witness to testify Wednesday, said after the shooting, he was standing by Rose’s body, watching Rosfeld on the sidewalk nearby saying repeatedly, “I don’t know why I shot him. I don’t know why I fired.”
He said later, he saw other officers consoling Rosfeld as he was crying, bent over, and hyperventilating. He said Rosfeld looked like he was about to pass out.
Leach said he saw Rosfeld pointing a gun at Rose while at least one of Rose’s hands was in the air. Then, Rose turned and ran, he said (Santanam 1-2).
One of the victims of a drive-by shooting that occurred minutes before an East Pittsburgh police officer shot 17-year-old Antwon Rose II told police in January that it was Antwon who shot him, and it was Antwon who had a “beef” with him.
“The beef was between me and him, that car came by, he shot me, I ran to the store,”
William Ross told a Pennsylvania State Police trooper Jan. 16, according to a police report. “I didn’t report it. Five minutes later, he was dead.”
That statement was included in a defense motion filed Friday on behalf of former East Pittsburgh police officer Michael Rosfeld, who is charged with homicide for Antwon’s death.
It contradicts what investigators say — a man with Antwon was the shooter.
…
Investigators said video from the scene shows the shots were fired from the passenger-side back seat of the gold Chevy Cruz used in the drive-by. Hester, they said, was in the back seat, while Antwon was in the front passenger seat.
The video shows that the front passenger window was closed at the time of the drive-by.
But there is evidence that Antwon had gunshot residue on his hands, and that a stolen gun was found beneath the front passenger seat of the car. He also had an empty magazine in his pocket.
Defense attorney Patrick Thomassey, who represents Mr. Rosfeld, has been trying throughout the pre-trial process to portray Antwon as a criminal, arguing that he has the right to tell the jury about the evidence found on Antwon and in the car that is damaging to the teen’s reputation.
The prosecution, however, has argued that those details are irrelevant as to whether Mr. Rosfeld was justified in shooting an unarmed, fleeing teenager in the back three times.
…
Ross told detectives that he was at Fa’s Market that evening and saw a gold car pull up.
“Ross stated that he heard someone say, ‘Is that him?’ and he noticed that [Antwon] was in the front passenger seat, and [another man] was driving. He said that he knows both from playing football. Ross stated that [Antwon] was just in the store two days prior to the shooting. Ross also stated that just that day he saw [Antwon] down at the hoop court playing basketball,” the report said.
“Ross said that after hearing, ‘Is that him?’ he observed a black gun come out of the back passenger window, Ross stated a black male wearing a black hoodie over his head was holding the gun.”
The rear passenger started firing, the interview continues, and Ross ran back inside the store, with his right leg burning.
“He said that he ran to the back of [the store] because he wanted to get to the basement because he felt ‘they’ were coming into the store to kill him.”
Ross then told Allegheny County police Detective Kevin McCue that he believed there was a beef between them because Ross is from Braddock, and the people in the car — including Antwon — were from Rankin.
“Ross stated that Rankin boys shot Braddock boys, and then Braddock Boys go [shoot] Rankin Boys. That’s the beef,” the detective wrote.
But in the interview with the state trooper in January, Ross did not repeat that information — saying only that the beef was with Antwon (Ward 1-2).
The incident was filmed by a bystander and the video was posted to social media. “Why are they shooting?” the person recording the video says. “All they did was run and they’re shooting at them!” The shooting of Rose resulted in demonstrations over the next few days. Protesters blocked an interstate highway for several hours and gathered outside the East Pittsburgh Police Department and Allegheny County Courthouse where they demanded the officer be held to account (Coen 2).
Prosecutors charged Mr. Rosfeld with an open count of homicide, meaning the jury could have convicted him of murder or manslaughter.
Antwon, who was unarmed, ran after Mr. Rosfeld pulled over the car he was riding in with another teenager. The car, a Chevrolet Cruz, matched the description of one involved in a nearby drive-by shooting about 10 minutes earlier.
Mr. Rosfeld shot Antwon, a passenger, three times — in his back, face and elbow.
Prosecutors say Mr. Rosfeld, 30, gave inconsistent statements about the shooting, including whether he thought Antwon had a gun.
On Thursday, Mr. Rosfeld testified in his own defense for 90 minutes. “It happened very quickly,” he said. “My intent was to end the threat that was made against me.”
He said on the stand that he thought he saw one of the two teenagers who ran from the car point a gun at him. He said he did not know which teenager made the motion.
“This case had nothing to do with race, absolutely nothing to do with race,” Patrick Thomassey, Mr. Rosfeld’s lawyer, said after the verdict. “And some people in this city have made it that way and it’s sad. Mike Rosfeld was doing his job. He did his job. And it had nothing to do with the color of anyone he was arresting.”
…
The jury consisted of six men and six women, nine of whom were white and three of whom were African-American.
On Friday morning, one of the white female jurors was dismissed by the judge and was replaced by an alternate juror, a white man. A reason was not given.
Mr. Rosfeld had been on the East Pittsburgh police force for about three weeks and had been officially sworn in just hours before the shooting.
Previously, he had been a member of the University of Pittsburgh police force, but he left the job after discrepancies were found between one of his sworn statements and evidence in an arrest, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has reported (Hassan 1-2).
Rosfeld, who is white, had parted ways from the university after an incident in which he became violent with a black student—whose parent happened to be the school’s vice chancellor (Patterson 3).
Rose’s family on Friday condemned the [acquittal] verdict. “I hope that man never sleeps at night,” the teen’s mother, Michelle Kenney, said according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “I hope he gets as much sleep as I do, which is none.”
…
“Antwon Rose was shot in his back. ... He was unarmed, and he did not pose a threat to the officer or to the community, and the verdict today says that is okay, that is acceptable behavior from a police officer,” [the Rose family’s attorney S. Lee] Merritt said. (Sakuma 2).
In August 2018 Rose’s family filed a civil rights lawsuit against Rosfeld and the borough of East Pittsburgh. The family alleged racial bias, lack of training, and use of excessive force. The suit was settled in October 2019 for $2 million (Coen 2).
[Antwon’s mother, interviewed, recollects:]
My daughter and I are close, but we're a lot alike. We're outgoing, we're boisterous, we're loud. Antwon was none of that. He was just so different. He was so kind, so gentle, so understanding.
When he was little, my daughter and I would laugh because Antwon would give popsicles to the kids up and down the street. He didn't care if he wasn't playing with you. He gave them out anyway.
He was funny. His facial expressions were always unbelievable. If you wanted to know what Antwon was thinking, all you had to do was look at his face. He had jokes for days.
Antwon's talents were endless. Antwon could ski, snowboard--as a matter of fact, one of his friends said at his funeral that he was the best snowboarder he ever met. Antwon played the saxophone and the guitar and loved basketball, but he wanted to work rather than playing high school ball.
Antwon was great at math and he liked science. Antwon, when he was little, he always told us he wanted to be a lawyer. Then when he was in high school, he decided he wanted to be a chemical engineer.
When Antwon was in the fourth grade, I got a call from the principal. She asked me to come in. I was worried because he had never gotten in trouble. She ended up calling because she could not believe that Antwon wasn't in the gifted program. And back then, there weren't any Black kids in the gifted program. She pushed for him to be in that program because she knew that's where he belonged.
About two days before Antwon was murdered, we had a family meeting. The family meeting was about staying out of the way. We didn't live in the greatest neighborhood, so I worried about him coming home and back. I sat on my porch every day and waited for him to come home, whether it was from school, work, I would look up the street, make sure he was coming and make sure no one interfered with him making it home.
At the family meeting I was talking to him and he just kept saying, “I know, Mom. I know, Mom. I know, Mom. I know, Mom.” I was upset and I was just like, “I don't think you understand.” Then, the day after Antwon was killed, his teacher gave me a poem he wrote titled, "I AM NOT WHAT YOU THINK.”
I am confused and afraid
I wonder what path I will take
I hear that there’s only two ways out
I see mothers bury their sons
I want my mom to never feel that pain
I am confused and afraid
I realized he heard me all those years, and all those family meetings because that poem is exactly what we talked about. Had I known about it I probably would have stopped asking him, "Do you hear me?"
I'm biracial and Antwon was raised to hang out with white kids. Antwon knew he was Black as far as common sense, but based on the people he hung out with, he didn't understand what that meant. I felt that if anything was to ever happen or the police were called, even if he was at a party, they would automatically blame Antwon. The blame would be put upon him before they would be put upon the kids he hung out with.
That's the harsh reality, but it's our truth.
I worked at a police department for over a decade. I was the administrative assistant to the chief of police and the mayor. I saw a lot of things that I didn't think were right.
I got fed up with the idea of there not being any accountability. I’d see people come in to file civilian complaints, and say they were harassed or their civil rights had been violated and nothing happened.
As much as I tried to encourage people to take their complaints elsewhere and take other actions, I felt like it was useless. I felt like I was beat down by a system that was designed only for police.
Don’t get me wrong. I worked with a lot of great people, but it’s amazing, the stuff the bad ones get away with. To get a call and hear an officer got fired from somewhere else and that’s why they ended up here, it's just unbelievable. And when you're responsible for the paperwork when they’re getting hired, it's hard to handle.
…
As I was driving to the place where Antwon was killed, I ran into a bunch of police officers at the first location. They all gave me the run-around. It all showed up that day -- disrespectful, arrogant, and unbelievably ignorant. Luckily there was a cop there who knew me. He said, "Michelle, Antwon’s not that type of kid but if you believe it's him, go to McKeesport Hospital.”
On my way to the hospital my daughter called me and said, "Mom, you need to call granddaddy before you go."
My dad is a police officer in another jurisdiction. If I needed to call him before I got to the hospital, I knew what that meant.
Allegheny County Police never told me Antwon was killed by a cop. Instead, they wanted more information about what Antwon did that day. I told them, "I just need to know if my son is dead."
The cop told me, "I'm not telling you anything."
My 17-year-old is laying there and the cop is telling me that if I don't answer his questions, he can't tell me anything. Instead of telling me if my son was dead, the cop told me that they found $300 in Antwon’s pocket as well as a clip from a gun. The officer wanted to know where the money came from.
An officer who is also an EMT showed up on the scene. He could not believe that they didn't try to save Antwon’s life. At the trial, he testified that Antwon had nothing in his pocket. When he made that statement, they came back and said that clip did not have Antwon's fingerprints on it. How could a clip end up in a pocket in the skinny jeans he had on and not have his fingerprints on it?
…
I've talked to Tamir Rice’s. She gives me the best advice, even when I don't want to hear it. I've spoken to Botham Jean’s mom. I check on her, she checks on me. DJ Henry’s mom is unbelievably amazing. That's just a beautiful soul. And my closest relationships are here with the mothers in Pittsburgh. We’ve had four police shootings since Antwon’s murder and none of them have received the attention that Antwon did. Those are the moms I check on because they’re right here in my city.
If I could speak to Antwon I’d tell him that I love him and that I'm sorry--so sorry. ...(Kenney 1-3).
Rose's mother, Michelle Kenney, is calling for police reforms including legislation to create a database of complaints against officers for future hiring.
...
“I just don’t think people understand how many officers are actually transferred to other departments with bad reputations that they take with them from their previous employment.”
… “If you’re a good cop, this list will not affect you at all, other than the fact that you won’t be put in a predicament that you end up working with a bad cop” (Gavin 1).
In June 2018, a police officer shot and killed Antwon Rose II, an unarmed black teenager, in a small borough outside Pittsburgh.
Rose’s death led to emotional protests, the arrest of the officer, and a package of police reform bills introduced by Democrats — legislation that went nowhere in the Republican-controlled state legislature.
Now, two years later, protests have once again erupted across Pennsylvania and the nation demanding justice for George Floyd, a black man from Minnesota who died after an officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.
Floyd’s death has also reignited calls by Pennsylvania legislators to change the state’s deadly force law and ramp up police oversight. But without GOP support, many of these measures have no chance of reaching Gov. Tom Wolf.
…
In the aftermath of Rose’s death, [Senate Minority Leader Jay] Costa proposed a bill that would create a disciplinary database and require additional training and mental-health screenings for officers. A version of the measure introduced at the beginning of this legislative session has been sitting in committee without a hearing since March 2019.
…
The reform package unveiled Tuesday also calls on the legislature to “eliminate effectuating an arrest as a justification for the use of deadly force.”
State law gives police officers wide discretion to use deadly force, including when they believe a suspect attempted or successfully committed a forcible felony, and the force was necessary to complete an arrest. Rosfeld was acquitted in Rose’s death after a defense expert testified that the officer’s actions were justified, even though the teen was unarmed.
While state law lays out the circumstances under which an officer may use deadly force, not every State law department has a written policy on how it should be used — including the one that employed Rosfeld when he fatally shot Rose.
“One of the shocking realizations after recent police-involved shootings at the local level is that municipalities and their law enforcement departments have little-to-no policies guiding the decisions that police have to make in their line of work,” Costa wrote in a memo seeking support from his colleagues for a measure that would compel law enforcement agencies to adopt a use-of-force policy (Fernandez 1-2).
The East Pittsburgh Police … apparently had nothing in place to dictate how Rosfeld should have behaved. “When they first came on scene,” [Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen] Zappala said, the major crimes investigators asked, “‘Well how do you handle these situations? What’s your policy?’ And they said, ‘We don’t have a policy.'”
…
The East Pittsburgh force is tiny—just eight officers … departments that small often don’t have resources or expertise to develop and maintain their own policy manuals (Patterson 3).
But like his database bill, Costa’s use-of-force legislation has been sitting in committee for more than a year. And like any piece of legislation that reaches Wolf’s desk, these reform measures need Republican support to advance.
…
Costa is used to seeing reform bills wither in committee, though he’s hopeful the recent protests will draw new attention “to the need for this legislation.”
“These incidents occur and then we protest. Then we talk about it, and then time passes and it is ignored,” he said. “We need to break that cycle and we need to make sure these conversations take place” (Fernandez 2-3).
[Paste the following links on Google to see two videos]
Surveillance video: Drive-by shooting in North Braddock ...
Black unarmed teen Antwon Rose shot in Pittsburgh - YouTube
Works cited:
Coen, Ross. “Antwon Rose Jr. (2000-2018).” BlackPast, August 13, 2020. Net. https://www.blackpast.org/african-ame...
Fernandez, Cynthia. “Police Reforms in Pa. Languished after Antwon Rose’s kKlling. Will Now Be Any Different?” Spotlight, June 3, 2020. Net. https://www.spotlightpa.org/news/2020...
Gavin, Kevin. “Two Years after Antwon Rose Killing, His Mother Continues Call for Police Reform.” The Confluence, June 18, 2020. Net. https://www.wesa.fm/show/the-confluen...
Hassan, Adeel. “Antwon Rose Shooting: White Police Officer Acquitted in Death of Black Teenager.” The New York Times, March 22, 2019. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/22/us...
Kenney, Michelle. “I’m Antwon Rose’s Mother. My Son Had To Be Killed by Police in Order for Him To Change the World.” ABC News, July 13, 2020. Net. https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/News/im-an...
Patterson, Brandon E. “Cop Who Killed This Unarmed Teen Wasn’t Following Department Policy—Because There Wasn’t One.” Mother Jones, June 28, 2018. Net. https://www.motherjones.com/crime-jus...
Sakuma, Amanda. “East Pittsburgh Police Officer Acquitted in Shooting Death of 17-Year-Old Antwon Rose.” Vox, March 23, 2019. Net. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politi...
Santanam, Ramesh. “Witness: White Officer Michael Rosfeld Panicked after Shooting Unarmed Black Teen Antwon Rose II.” The Florida Times-Union, March 20, 2019. Net. https://www.jacksonville.com/news/201...
Ward, Paula Reed. “Court Filing: Drive-By Victim Told Police that Antwon Rose II Shot Him.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 1, 2019. Net. https://www.post-gazette.com/news/cri...
May 27, 2021
Bad Apples -- 03--18--2018, Stephon Clark
On Sunday, at 9:18 p.m., officers from the Sacramento Police Department arrived at a house on 29th Street, investigating reports that someone was breaking the windows of vehicles, a separate, earlier police statement said on Monday. The person who called the police said the suspect was wearing a black hoodie and dark pants and was “hiding in a backyard.”
Officers in a Sheriff’s Department helicopter overhead informed the police that they saw someone matching that description and helped to direct the police to him, saying he had just “picked up a toolbar and broke a window to a residence.” He was then seen running to the front of a house, the statement said.
When officers arrived at the house, they say, the man ran toward the back and they pursued. Then, “the suspect turned and advanced towards the officers while holding an object which was extended in front of him,” the police statement said. “The officers believed the suspect was pointing a firearm at them.”
“Fearing for their safety, the officers fired their duty weapons striking the suspect multiple times,” the statement said. Two officers fired 10 rounds each, the police told reporters, according to a report by KCRA.
...
Mr. Clark, who the local news media said had two children, was pronounced dead at the scene, the police said. Investigators found a cellphone near his body but no firearms, they said.
The officers who fired their weapons have been with the department for two and four years and also had several years of experience in other departments. They were placed on paid administrative leave while the shooting is investigated by district and city attorneys and the Office of Public Safety Accountability, the police said (Hauser 2).
The raw footage [of the shooting] was released in March, and was widely shared on social media. After publishing an initial report, we [New York Times] decided to take a closer look. The result is the most comprehensive analysis to date — a detailed spatial and moment-by-moment record of the shooting.
Protests broke out in Sacramento after the killing of Mr. Clark. His death was the latest in a series of caught-on-camera police shootings of black men, including Alton B. Sterling in 2016, Walter L. Scott in 2015 and Michael Brown in 2014.
In Mr. Clark’s case, the protesters demanded the city’s leadership fire the two officers involved. Mr. Clark’s family also accused the police department of trying to cover up misconduct by its officers. An investigation into the shooting by the Sacramento Police Department is ongoing. The two officers involved in the shooting are back on desk duty, but aren’t out on patrol.
For our analysis, we started by looking at every frame of the crucial 23 seconds. Then, we used Google Earth to map the officers’ and Clark’s movements, by matching up the videos with satellite imagery.
We reviewed more than 50 police videos of the aftermath, in addition to the official autopsy report and police audio recordings.
We also reviewed Sacramento Police Department policies and international guidelines, and talked to experts about police conduct.
Our goal was to shed new light on what happened during the encounter and to explain why it escalated so quickly.
It’s a detailed look at a person’s violent death and we can’t point to a single factor that explains why Stephon Clark was killed. Both officers had more than five years of experience in law enforcement, according to the Police Department.
This episode and other police killings of unarmed black people raise questions about structural racism, police training and use-of-force protocols. In Sacramento, officers can use deadly force not only as a last resort — but also if an officer “reasonably believes” there is a threat. And Sacramento isn’t the exception: Guidelines in many U.S. cities are generally less strict than international standards, which permit the use of force only in response to an “imminent threat,” and if all other means fail. Even when police officers in the U.S. are charged or indicted, they are rarely convicted. As of late last year, in 15 high-profile cases involving deaths of black people, only one officer faces prison time, according to research by The New York Times. The shooting of Mr. Clark is also complicated by the fact that one of the officers is white and the other is black, as the police videos show (Koetti 1-2).
[Paste the following on Google to watch the Times video]
23 Seconds, 5 Critical Moments: How Stephon Clark Was …
Part of the [police department] transcript [of the shooting] included Clark’s grandmother describing the gunshots and commotion she heard, unaware that her grandson was the victim.
“All of a sudden I heard shots like pow pow pow. I heard four of them,” she said, according to a witness statement on the police report. “I thought it might have been fireworks because I could see the flash and I do not know if gun shots do that. I grabbed my granddaughter and laid on the floor.”
When police asked her if anyone tried to break into her house, she said no. “If somebody tried to get in our house, it’s my … probably be my grandson ‘cause sometimes we can’t hear him.”
When police tell her that someone was shot dead in her backyard and it’s now a crime scene, she asked whether the victim was black.
“I hope it ain’t my grandson,” she said. “Please don’t tell me it’s my grandson. Please don’t. No.”
She looked out through the window and saw Clark.
“He was just comin’ home and y’all was comin’ through the back. … He don’t have no gun. He don’t carry no gun. Oh, my god. He got two children,” she said.
…
Frustrated residents decried the state attorney general’s decision not to bring charges against the officers who shot Clark.
The AG’s move continued a week of disappointment for Clark’s supporters after Sacramento County on Saturday also declined to bring charges.
Nearly a year ago, his death triggered days of protests with demonstrators demanding police accountability, part of the broader Black Lives Matter movement (Karimi 3, 4).
The police officers who shot and killed Stephon Clark will not be charged by the Sacramento county district attorney’s office.
According to the district attorney, Anne Marie Schubert, the officers were justified in using lethal force and did not commit a crime.
“When we look at all of these facts and circumstances,” she said on Saturday, “we ask ourselves, was a crime committed?
“The answer to that question is no.”
…
Schubert has investigated more than 30 police shootings since January 2015 and has never filed charges, according to the Sacramento Bee newspaper.
Clark’s killing sparked protests and heightened an ongoing national debate over police use of force.
…
In her press conference, Schubert spent nearly an hour going over video footage and images from the night of Clark’s killing. She also shared personal text messages, phone logs, internet searches and email drafts from Clark’s cellphone to show, she said, Clark’s state of mind in the days leading up to his death.
Dr Flojaune Cofer, senior director of policy at Public Health Advocates, a sponsor of the use of force bill, questioned why the district attorney shared such personal information from Clark and not the officers who killed him.
“I listened to an explanation for why this person deserved to die,” Cofer said. “And what was most troubling about that is that I didn’t hear similar investigation into the officers’ behavior, even though they were the ones who should have been under investigation for criminal negligence.”
…
“Stephon Clark was murdered twice,” said Saad Sweilem, the civil rights attorney for the Council on American-Islaimc Relations in Sacramento Valley, adding that Schubert “assassinated his character” (Kempa 1-3).
Two police officers in Sacramento, California, are back on duty after federal authorities cleared them of federal criminal civil rights charges in the shooting death of 22-year-old Stephon Clark.
U.S. Attorney McGregor W. Scott and Special Agent-in-Charge Sean Ragan of the FBI's Sacramento Division said there was insufficient evidence "to prove beyond a reasonable doubt" that officers Terrance Mercadal and Jared Robinet violated a federal statute.
Clark's death, which led to contentious protests throughout the California capital, should not result in charges, [Police Chief Daniel] Hahn said, because every investigation of the shooting turned up the same results.
"This incident has been thoroughly investigated by law enforcement agencies at the local, state and federal levels," Hahn told ABC Sacramento station KXTV. "Every one of these independent examinations has reached the same finding: The use of deadly force in this case was lawful."
"The officers involved in this case will return to full, active duty," Hahn said in a statement.
While authorities look to put the incident behind them, Clark's family said it doesn't make sense to already have the offices back on duty.
"My brother was killed, unarmed, in my grandmother's backyard, and the same cop who killed him is back on the streets patrolling other communities, running through other people's backyards," Clark's brother, Stevante told KXTV. "I'm uneasy with that. My heart is broken."
"Justice delayed is justice denied," Stevante wrote on his Facebook page (Mansell 1-2).
The family of Stephon Clark, an unarmed black man who was shot seven times by Sacramento police officers last year and whose death prompted California to change its use-of-force law, reached a $2.4 million settlement this week with the capital city, court filings show.
The money will go to Mr. Clark’s two sons, ages 2 and 5, in three lump sums starting when they turn 22, according to the settlement, which was approved on Tuesday by a Federal District Court judge in Sacramento. The sons will receive just under $900,000 each once lawyer fees are deducted from the settlement.
The settlement came after negotiations between Sacramento and Mr. Clark’s family, which had filed a $20 million wrongful-death lawsuit in January against the city and the two officers involved in the shooting, which occurred in the backyard of Mr. Clark’s grandparents.
…
Tanya Faison, a founder of Black Lives Matter Sacramento, said the settlement was revealing.
“I think it is a pretty clear sign of guilt when the City of Sacramento settles on a $2.4 million dollar lawsuit with Stephon Clark’s children,” Ms. Faison said in an email. “How many more Stephon Clarks do we have to have before our police department starts holding officers accountable instead of settling a lawsuit and calling it ‘justice’?”
…
Sacramento officials said they wanted to avoid protracted and costly litigation of defending the city in the Clark family’s wrongful-death lawsuit.
…
… the city passed an emergency order in April 2018 requiring police officers to keep their body cameras and audio recording equipment activated in all cases, except for narrowly defined circumstances.
In July 2018, the Police Department adopted a new policy that requires officers to assess both the danger to themselves and the public when pursuing a suspect on foot, as well as the importance of apprehending the suspect.
...
… a law was signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in August requiring that the police use deadly force only “when necessary in defense of human life.” The law previously allowed for the use of deadly force when “reasonable” (Vigdor 1-3).
Works cited:
Hauser, Christine. “Sacramento Man Fatally Shot by the Police in His Backyard.” The New York Times, March 21, 2018. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/21/us...
Karimi, Faith. “Officers Who Killed Stephon Clark Reveal New Details about the Night He Died.” CNN, updated March 9, 2019. Net. https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/07/us/sac...
Kempa, David. Stephon Clark: Police Officers Who Shot Man Eight Times Will Not Be Charged.” The Guardian, March 2, 2019. Net. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...
Koetti, Christoph. “What We Learned from the Videos of Stephon Clark Being Killed by Police.” The New York Times, June 7, 2018. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/07/us...
Mansell, William. “Officers Who Killed Stephon Clark Won't Face Federal Civil Rights Charges.” ABC News, September 27, 2019. Net. https://abcnews.go.com/US/officers-ki...
Vigdor, Neil. “Stephon Clark’s Sons Reach $2.4 Million Settlement over Police Killing.” The New York Times, October 10, 2019. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/10/us...
Officers in a Sheriff’s Department helicopter overhead informed the police that they saw someone matching that description and helped to direct the police to him, saying he had just “picked up a toolbar and broke a window to a residence.” He was then seen running to the front of a house, the statement said.
When officers arrived at the house, they say, the man ran toward the back and they pursued. Then, “the suspect turned and advanced towards the officers while holding an object which was extended in front of him,” the police statement said. “The officers believed the suspect was pointing a firearm at them.”
“Fearing for their safety, the officers fired their duty weapons striking the suspect multiple times,” the statement said. Two officers fired 10 rounds each, the police told reporters, according to a report by KCRA.
...
Mr. Clark, who the local news media said had two children, was pronounced dead at the scene, the police said. Investigators found a cellphone near his body but no firearms, they said.
The officers who fired their weapons have been with the department for two and four years and also had several years of experience in other departments. They were placed on paid administrative leave while the shooting is investigated by district and city attorneys and the Office of Public Safety Accountability, the police said (Hauser 2).
The raw footage [of the shooting] was released in March, and was widely shared on social media. After publishing an initial report, we [New York Times] decided to take a closer look. The result is the most comprehensive analysis to date — a detailed spatial and moment-by-moment record of the shooting.
Protests broke out in Sacramento after the killing of Mr. Clark. His death was the latest in a series of caught-on-camera police shootings of black men, including Alton B. Sterling in 2016, Walter L. Scott in 2015 and Michael Brown in 2014.
In Mr. Clark’s case, the protesters demanded the city’s leadership fire the two officers involved. Mr. Clark’s family also accused the police department of trying to cover up misconduct by its officers. An investigation into the shooting by the Sacramento Police Department is ongoing. The two officers involved in the shooting are back on desk duty, but aren’t out on patrol.
For our analysis, we started by looking at every frame of the crucial 23 seconds. Then, we used Google Earth to map the officers’ and Clark’s movements, by matching up the videos with satellite imagery.
We reviewed more than 50 police videos of the aftermath, in addition to the official autopsy report and police audio recordings.
We also reviewed Sacramento Police Department policies and international guidelines, and talked to experts about police conduct.
Our goal was to shed new light on what happened during the encounter and to explain why it escalated so quickly.
It’s a detailed look at a person’s violent death and we can’t point to a single factor that explains why Stephon Clark was killed. Both officers had more than five years of experience in law enforcement, according to the Police Department.
This episode and other police killings of unarmed black people raise questions about structural racism, police training and use-of-force protocols. In Sacramento, officers can use deadly force not only as a last resort — but also if an officer “reasonably believes” there is a threat. And Sacramento isn’t the exception: Guidelines in many U.S. cities are generally less strict than international standards, which permit the use of force only in response to an “imminent threat,” and if all other means fail. Even when police officers in the U.S. are charged or indicted, they are rarely convicted. As of late last year, in 15 high-profile cases involving deaths of black people, only one officer faces prison time, according to research by The New York Times. The shooting of Mr. Clark is also complicated by the fact that one of the officers is white and the other is black, as the police videos show (Koetti 1-2).
[Paste the following on Google to watch the Times video]
23 Seconds, 5 Critical Moments: How Stephon Clark Was …
Part of the [police department] transcript [of the shooting] included Clark’s grandmother describing the gunshots and commotion she heard, unaware that her grandson was the victim.
“All of a sudden I heard shots like pow pow pow. I heard four of them,” she said, according to a witness statement on the police report. “I thought it might have been fireworks because I could see the flash and I do not know if gun shots do that. I grabbed my granddaughter and laid on the floor.”
When police asked her if anyone tried to break into her house, she said no. “If somebody tried to get in our house, it’s my … probably be my grandson ‘cause sometimes we can’t hear him.”
When police tell her that someone was shot dead in her backyard and it’s now a crime scene, she asked whether the victim was black.
“I hope it ain’t my grandson,” she said. “Please don’t tell me it’s my grandson. Please don’t. No.”
She looked out through the window and saw Clark.
“He was just comin’ home and y’all was comin’ through the back. … He don’t have no gun. He don’t carry no gun. Oh, my god. He got two children,” she said.
…
Frustrated residents decried the state attorney general’s decision not to bring charges against the officers who shot Clark.
The AG’s move continued a week of disappointment for Clark’s supporters after Sacramento County on Saturday also declined to bring charges.
Nearly a year ago, his death triggered days of protests with demonstrators demanding police accountability, part of the broader Black Lives Matter movement (Karimi 3, 4).
The police officers who shot and killed Stephon Clark will not be charged by the Sacramento county district attorney’s office.
According to the district attorney, Anne Marie Schubert, the officers were justified in using lethal force and did not commit a crime.
“When we look at all of these facts and circumstances,” she said on Saturday, “we ask ourselves, was a crime committed?
“The answer to that question is no.”
…
Schubert has investigated more than 30 police shootings since January 2015 and has never filed charges, according to the Sacramento Bee newspaper.
Clark’s killing sparked protests and heightened an ongoing national debate over police use of force.
…
In her press conference, Schubert spent nearly an hour going over video footage and images from the night of Clark’s killing. She also shared personal text messages, phone logs, internet searches and email drafts from Clark’s cellphone to show, she said, Clark’s state of mind in the days leading up to his death.
Dr Flojaune Cofer, senior director of policy at Public Health Advocates, a sponsor of the use of force bill, questioned why the district attorney shared such personal information from Clark and not the officers who killed him.
“I listened to an explanation for why this person deserved to die,” Cofer said. “And what was most troubling about that is that I didn’t hear similar investigation into the officers’ behavior, even though they were the ones who should have been under investigation for criminal negligence.”
…
“Stephon Clark was murdered twice,” said Saad Sweilem, the civil rights attorney for the Council on American-Islaimc Relations in Sacramento Valley, adding that Schubert “assassinated his character” (Kempa 1-3).
Two police officers in Sacramento, California, are back on duty after federal authorities cleared them of federal criminal civil rights charges in the shooting death of 22-year-old Stephon Clark.
U.S. Attorney McGregor W. Scott and Special Agent-in-Charge Sean Ragan of the FBI's Sacramento Division said there was insufficient evidence "to prove beyond a reasonable doubt" that officers Terrance Mercadal and Jared Robinet violated a federal statute.
Clark's death, which led to contentious protests throughout the California capital, should not result in charges, [Police Chief Daniel] Hahn said, because every investigation of the shooting turned up the same results.
"This incident has been thoroughly investigated by law enforcement agencies at the local, state and federal levels," Hahn told ABC Sacramento station KXTV. "Every one of these independent examinations has reached the same finding: The use of deadly force in this case was lawful."
"The officers involved in this case will return to full, active duty," Hahn said in a statement.
While authorities look to put the incident behind them, Clark's family said it doesn't make sense to already have the offices back on duty.
"My brother was killed, unarmed, in my grandmother's backyard, and the same cop who killed him is back on the streets patrolling other communities, running through other people's backyards," Clark's brother, Stevante told KXTV. "I'm uneasy with that. My heart is broken."
"Justice delayed is justice denied," Stevante wrote on his Facebook page (Mansell 1-2).
The family of Stephon Clark, an unarmed black man who was shot seven times by Sacramento police officers last year and whose death prompted California to change its use-of-force law, reached a $2.4 million settlement this week with the capital city, court filings show.
The money will go to Mr. Clark’s two sons, ages 2 and 5, in three lump sums starting when they turn 22, according to the settlement, which was approved on Tuesday by a Federal District Court judge in Sacramento. The sons will receive just under $900,000 each once lawyer fees are deducted from the settlement.
The settlement came after negotiations between Sacramento and Mr. Clark’s family, which had filed a $20 million wrongful-death lawsuit in January against the city and the two officers involved in the shooting, which occurred in the backyard of Mr. Clark’s grandparents.
…
Tanya Faison, a founder of Black Lives Matter Sacramento, said the settlement was revealing.
“I think it is a pretty clear sign of guilt when the City of Sacramento settles on a $2.4 million dollar lawsuit with Stephon Clark’s children,” Ms. Faison said in an email. “How many more Stephon Clarks do we have to have before our police department starts holding officers accountable instead of settling a lawsuit and calling it ‘justice’?”
…
Sacramento officials said they wanted to avoid protracted and costly litigation of defending the city in the Clark family’s wrongful-death lawsuit.
…
… the city passed an emergency order in April 2018 requiring police officers to keep their body cameras and audio recording equipment activated in all cases, except for narrowly defined circumstances.
In July 2018, the Police Department adopted a new policy that requires officers to assess both the danger to themselves and the public when pursuing a suspect on foot, as well as the importance of apprehending the suspect.
...
… a law was signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in August requiring that the police use deadly force only “when necessary in defense of human life.” The law previously allowed for the use of deadly force when “reasonable” (Vigdor 1-3).
Works cited:
Hauser, Christine. “Sacramento Man Fatally Shot by the Police in His Backyard.” The New York Times, March 21, 2018. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/21/us...
Karimi, Faith. “Officers Who Killed Stephon Clark Reveal New Details about the Night He Died.” CNN, updated March 9, 2019. Net. https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/07/us/sac...
Kempa, David. Stephon Clark: Police Officers Who Shot Man Eight Times Will Not Be Charged.” The Guardian, March 2, 2019. Net. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...
Koetti, Christoph. “What We Learned from the Videos of Stephon Clark Being Killed by Police.” The New York Times, June 7, 2018. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/07/us...
Mansell, William. “Officers Who Killed Stephon Clark Won't Face Federal Civil Rights Charges.” ABC News, September 27, 2019. Net. https://abcnews.go.com/US/officers-ki...
Vigdor, Neil. “Stephon Clark’s Sons Reach $2.4 Million Settlement over Police Killing.” The New York Times, October 10, 2019. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/10/us...
May 23, 2021
Bad Apples -- June 18, 2017 -- Charleena Lyles
Seattle police shot and killed a mother of four inside her apartment in the presence of her young children after she called law enforcement to report a burglary.
The death of 30-year-old Charleena Lyles, who police say was carrying a knife, has sparked outrage across the country, with critics decrying the shooting as another example of US law enforcement using excessive force against black Americans.
Two officers fired at Lyles shortly after arriving to investigate a burglary on Sunday morning, and the mother was pronounced dead before she could be taken to a hospital, according to police. Law enforcement on Monday released a four-minute audio recording of the fatal encounter, which captures an officer saying, “We need help” and “Get back! Get back!” before they fired a stream of bullets.
…
Lyles’ relatives said she suffered from mental health challenges. The officers who fired at Lyles are now on paid administrative leave, which is standard protocol in a shooting.
It’s unclear how the burglary investigation escalated to a fatal shooting. Although the police department would typically only send one officer to investigate a burglary, police said that two officers investigated in this case “due to information pertaining to this address that presented an increased risk to officers”.
In the police recording, which came from the officers’ dashcam video systems, one officer implied that he is familiar with the home, saying, “Is this the one with the three kids?” The officers also briefly mentioned possible mental health issues.
The audio suggests that police fired their weapons very soon after first encountering Lyles. One officer asked about an Xbox being taken and whether the door had been unlocked before the police start shouting at the woman to get back. About 15 seconds after that first command, officers started firing.
“What is the reason to use such lethal force?” said Erneshia Jack, a 23-year-old cousin of Lyles. “There are many ways to subdue someone without shooting them. She’s not big. She’s not intimidating … She called you, and you went to her house and killed her.”
Studies have repeatedly suggested that people with mental illnesses and disabilities are killed by police at disproportionately high rates. One report suggested that the risk of being killed by police is 16 times greater for individuals with untreated mental illness compared to other civilians. Police also kill African Americans at rates significantly higher than the rest of the population. The officers who shot Lyles are white.
…
Lyles lived at a complex of apartments for formerly homeless people, called the Brettler Family Place, according to the Seattle Times. Roughly 400 people live in the apartments and about half of the residents are children.
Mike Buchman, spokesman for Solid Ground, the not-for-profit that operates the complex, told the Guardian that residents and staff were shaken by the shooting.
“It’s horrible. Regardless of what might have been going on with her and the call to police, it should not have ended this way. We all feel that deeply,” he said, adding, “This isn’t an incident in isolation ... The Seattle community has had a lot of scrutiny about police response in communities of color” (Levin “Woman” 1-2, 4).
Charleena Lyles … was shot seven times, including twice in the back, according to an autopsy released on Wednesday.
The medical examiner’s report … classified the death as a homicide and noted that the bullets cut through her uterus and hit her fetus, estimated to be 14 to 15 weeks old.
Lyles’ death sparked national outrage and reignited debates about law enforcement’s disproportionate killing of African Americans and officers’ treatment of people with mental illness.
The two police officers have claimed that Lyles was holding a knife when they killed her on 18 June, but her family has questioned law enforcement’s narrative and justification for using deadly force, noting that she was 100lb, 5ft 3in and not a threatening person.
…
“Did they shoot her as she fell to the ground? Was she running away?” said Katrina Johnson, Lyles’ cousin, in an interview on Wednesday. “How did she get shot in the back? I still don’t know that and understand that, but any which way, it was excessive force. Seven times for her little pregnant 100lb self was out of control.”
The 14-page King County medical examiner’s office report, released by a family attorney and published by the Seattle Times, raises fresh questions about why the officers, Jason Anderson and Steven McNew, used lethal force and fired a round of bullets at the woman at close range.
The officers had arrived at Lyles’ apartment door less than an hour after Lyles dialed 911 to report a burglary, when she discovered her Xbox was missing. After roughly two minutes and 30 seconds, police fired at her from about five feet away as her one-year-old and four-year-old children crawled nearby, police records revealed. Her 11-year-old son was in another room during the shooting.
It’s unclear how the encounter escalated, with police audio recordings capturing a conversation that was initially polite and cordial. In department interviews, the officers claimed that at some point she had a knife on her and that they feared for their safety. The officers didn’t have Tasers on them, even though one of them was supposed to be carrying one. [That officer explained later that the taser’s battery was dead and he had not replaced it]
…
One of the bullets entered her back near her spine and “extensively” lacerated her lungs, ribs and inferior vena cava, which carries blood to the heart, the report said. She was hit on the right and left sides of her back, and two of the bullets hit her uterus.
“How can someone be shot in the back if they are coming at you with knives?” said André Taylor, a local police reform activist assisting the Lyles family.
The toxicology report also found no drugs or alcohol in Lyles’ system when she was killed, the Seattle Times reported. An investigation into the shooting is continuing. Seattle police declined to comment on the autopsy.
Her father, Charles Lyles, told the paper that it was painful to learn of how her unborn child died in the shooting: “Hearing the details of the shooting just makes me feel more empty. I lost my daughter and my next grandson. I just don’t have the words.”
Lyles’ relatives spoke at length with the Guardian in July about police harassment and mistreatment of black communities, despite Seattle officials’ claims that it is one of the most progressive cities in the country for modern policing. Weeks before her death, Lyles had called police to report a domestic disturbance, and instead of being treated as a victim, she was arrested and jailed (Levin “Police” 1-3).
Charleena Lyles, 30, known by her loved ones as Leena, was about 15 weeks pregnant when she was killed. The day after the funeral, her siblings and cousins briefly laughed through their grief at the absurdity of two policemen feeling physically endangered by her.
She was feisty and outspoken, they said, but at 5ft 3in and 100lbs, she was not intimidating or menacing – and certainly not some kind of skilled knife-thrower as police seemed to fear.
“She’s not a threatening person at all,” said Monika Williams, her 37-year-old sister. “She was just one of those people who lit up the room.”
Her relatives said she was known as one of the most energetic people in the family and loved dancing, styling her cousins’ hair and writing poetry about her loved ones. Above all, they said, she was dedicated to her four children.
“I truly admired her as a mother and I just admired her drive,” said Shaneé Isabell, a cousin who grew up alongside her. “She was very courageous and dependable, and she was very loyal.”
Seattle officers saw something very different in Lyles. The day of her death was not the first time she had called police for help and was instead treated like a suspect.
On 5 June, Lyles called police after an ex-boyfriend showed up to her apartment unannounced, according to her family.
Officers arrived to investigate a “physical domestic disturbance”, but instead of approaching her like a potential domestic violence victim, the police quickly had their service pistols drawn, records show. They felt threatened, the officers later said, because Lyles was holding a pair of scissors.
They arrested her for “harassment”, alleging she “repeatedly used words and actions to create a substantial risk of assault”.
A police report on that day said that Lyles seemed “out of touch with reality” and had made statements about police being the devil. But any struggle Lyles was having with her mental health was only further exacerbated by spending the next eight days behind bars, away from her children, her family said.
Four days after her release, on 18 June, two different officers prepared to investigate her burglary call, reviewing Lyles’s previous incident which noted that they should approach her with caution.
“She started talking all crazy,” officer Jason Anderson told the other officer, Steven McNew, according to released audio recordings. “This gal, she was the one making all these weird statements.”
When they arrived at her door, Lyles answered a few questions and the officers, in later interviews with investigators, said that everything seemed normal to them, though they both said they noticed her home was messy.
Within a few minutes, they realized she had a knife in her hand, and said in their official account that they feared she could try and stab them or throw it at them. McNew, 6ft 2in and 250lbs, later noted that he is “a little larger” than Lyles, but said he feared for his life nonetheless.
Anderson and McNew screamed at her to get back, and at one point she complied. They briefly discussed tasering her, but they didn’t have one on them. Within about 12 seconds of them noticing the knife, they both fired multiple rounds at her.
Neither officer ever ordered her to drop the knife.
Deep distrust of police is embedded in the family, said Williams, Lyles’s sister. “I can honestly say I would fear the police, even before this, more than I would fear a gang member. At least a gang member, you’d have to do something to them for them to want to do something to you.”
When Williams’s four-year-old daughter sees an officer, she always asks: “Are you going to shoot my dad?”
Lyles’s relatives all had stories – unjustified tickets, unwarranted stops, threatening physical contact.
Nakeya Isabell, Lyles’s cousin, said this was standard police behavior in Seattle’s African American communities: “They train your mind to fear people, specifically black people.”
“It’s a system founded on racism ... All the training is to kill.”
…
The US Department of Justice (DoJ) validated these kinds of complaints in 2011 when it concluded that the Seattle police department was engaged in an unconstitutional pattern of excessive use of force. The investigation originated with the 2010 police killing of a First Nations woodcarver who had trouble hearing and was ordered to drop his knife while walking down the street.
The DoJ inquiry resulted in a consent decree that required the agency to make significant reforms under the watch of a federal monitor.
…
Seattle is proud of the progress it has made, Brian Maxey, chief operating officer, said in an interview at police headquarters. From 2011 to 2016, the department’s use of force has dropped 60%, and last year, out of 9,300 cases of encountering people in crisis, officers applied force only 1.6% of the time.
…
… the officers are very unlikely to face any criminal consequences in Washington, which is by some measures the hardest place in America to hold police accountable.
In 1986, the state passed legislation saying officers cannot face prosecution for killing someone in the line of duty unless they acted with “malice” and “evil intent”.
The law is the most restrictive in the US, where it is generally very difficult to convict officers who kill, since they can broadly cite self defense. Despite video evidence, officers across the country have avoided criminal consequences in most high profile killings in recent years, including the deaths of Philando Castile, Alton Sterling and Tamir Rice.
In Washington, police are never convicted. Out of 213 police killings in a 10-year-period, only one officer was even charged, according to a Seattle Times investigation.
“It’s the worst law in the nation,” said André Taylor, a police reform activist whose brother was killed by police last year. “It can embolden officers. They feel they have this special immunity. They don’t want to be responsible or accountable to nobody” (Levin “Insists” 1-4).
One of the two officers who killed Charleena Lyles, the pregnant woman gunned down in her own apartment last year, lied about his justification for shooting her, according to a court document filed Monday, on the one-year anniversary of her death.
Jason Anderson claimed in several interviews since the June 18, 2017 shooting that his back faced the closed front door inside Lyles' apartment when he fired at her as she allegedly advanced at officers with knives.
However, Karen Koehler and Edward Moore, the attorneys for Lyles' estate, say that surveillance footage from the apartment building shows that Anderson shot at Lyles through an open doorway.
...
The detail of the reportedly closed door was given as a reason that Anderson felt trapped as Lyles advanced on him and Officer Steven McNew, court records say.
But, when the audio recording of the officers' response is synchronized with the apartment video footage, they "depict Officer Anderson in the open doorway of the apartment and the hallway at the only time that gunshots can be heard," according to an expert who analyzed the footage.
…
Anderson's account informed the Force Investigation Team (FIT) and the Force Review Board's (FRB) accounts of the incident, leading to the Seattle Police Department’s conclusion that Anderson and NcNew followed agency policy in the shooting.
FIT accepted Anderson's contention that he had no choice but to shoot Lyles because he could not shield himself, given his back was against a closed door, and the small apartment didn't allow him to create more distance between himself and Lyles, according to the Monday court filing.
The officers fired seven times at 30-year-old Lyles -- four times in the back -- within about 4 feet in front of three of her children. Her baby boy crawled on top of her body after she fell to the floor.
…
… "There was no time. We didn't have any shielding and we didn't have distance between us. There was ... literally feet between us."
He [Anderson] claimed in his deposition that he only opened the door after Lyles was on the ground (Burton 2-4).
A King County judge has dismissed negligence claims brought against two Seattle police officers who fatally shot 30-year-old Charleena Lyles in 2017.
The claims were part of a wrongful death and civil rights lawsuit brought against both the officers as well as the city of Seattle.
…
On January 4, King County Judge Julie Spector granted officers Jason Anderson and Steven McNew's motion for summary judgement. The motion argued that the officers were not legally liable for the negligent infliction of emotional distress because Lyles was committing multiple felonies while she was shot.
Lyles' relatives, however, say she was mentally ill and believe the officers could have deescalated the situation without killing her (KUOW 1).
On June 18, close to the three-year anniversary of her death, Lyles’ family gathered on a soundstage in Magnuson Park, backed by a huge image of Lyles, and told the hundreds of people present to turn and look at a building across the street.
“See that building right behind us? That’s where they took her out,” said Lyles’ second cousin, Shaenae Isabell. “So, we’re going to let them know we’re here today, right?”
Isabell called out, “Say her name!”
“Charleena Lyles!” the crowd boomed back, their voices reaching across the field, past the road to the building Lyles called home.
There’s little chance someone inside wouldn’t have heard it.
But reliving Lyles’ death wasn’t what the family had come for. They came to reclaim the narrative built by incomplete media characterizations about her life, to build one of their own and to call for justice.
They were not alone.
The family members of 19 different people killed during encounters with the police across the country joined them. The Forced Trajectory Project, as they’re known, had traveled from their respective home towns with the stories of their loved ones. They came to support the Lyles family, as many of them had been supported in their time of grief.
Because, as the Forced Trajectory Project says, “families are the frontlines.”
…
That pain is loss, but for many of the families — who had held a press conference earlier the same day — it was also watching the names and histories of their loved ones dragged through the media, distorted into caricatures that they could not recognize.
The drip, drip, drip of public documents that show people at their worst. The families believe law enforcement laundered outright lies through newspapers and television programs, accepted by an industry dominated by white people who don’t question police reports and were looking for a story.
“When the police get done, you kill their character,” said Kimberly Handy-Jones on the morning of June 18.
…
As the sun dipped slowly down, holding stubbornly onto the June sky, the night air was filled with remembrances of Lyles, an ode to George Floyd, and calls for change. Lyles’ family has very specific demands.
First, they want Kent, Federal Way, Auburn, and Renton, as well as the two police officers who shot Lyles, to drop lawsuits that are preventing a full inquest into Lyles’ death. …
…
Second, they signed onto the demand to defund SPD by 50%, a demand echoed by protesters in the city and a handful of Seattle City Councilmembers.
Finally, they want the resignation of Mayor Jenny Durkan. Durkan came to them before she won the 2017 mayoral race and promised to be different … (Archibald 1-2).
Works cited:
Archibald, Ashley. “Seattle Police Killing of Charleena Lyles Localized Black Lives Matter Protests and Amasses Similar Stories, Three Years Later.” South Seattle Emerald, June 24, 2020. Net. https://southseattleemerald.com/2020/...
Burton, Lynsi. “Attorneys: Seattle Cop Who Killed Charleena Lyles Lied about Shooting.” Seattle PI, June, 19, 2018. Net. https://www.seattlepi.com/local/crime...
KUOW Staff. “Judge Dismisses Claims against Two Seattle Police Officers in Charleena Lyles Case.” KUOW, January 1, 2019. Net. https://www.kuow.org/stories/king-cou...
Levin, Sam. “Seattle Insists It's a Model for Progressive Policing – So Why Was Charleena Lyles Killed?” The Guardian, July 17, 2017. Net. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...
Levin, Sam. “Seattle Police Shot Charleena Lyles Seven Times, Autopsy Finds.” The Guardian, August 30, 2017. Net. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...
Levin, Sam. “Seattle Woman Killed by Police While Children Were Home after Reporting Theft.” The Guardian, June 19, 2017. Net. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...
The death of 30-year-old Charleena Lyles, who police say was carrying a knife, has sparked outrage across the country, with critics decrying the shooting as another example of US law enforcement using excessive force against black Americans.
Two officers fired at Lyles shortly after arriving to investigate a burglary on Sunday morning, and the mother was pronounced dead before she could be taken to a hospital, according to police. Law enforcement on Monday released a four-minute audio recording of the fatal encounter, which captures an officer saying, “We need help” and “Get back! Get back!” before they fired a stream of bullets.
…
Lyles’ relatives said she suffered from mental health challenges. The officers who fired at Lyles are now on paid administrative leave, which is standard protocol in a shooting.
It’s unclear how the burglary investigation escalated to a fatal shooting. Although the police department would typically only send one officer to investigate a burglary, police said that two officers investigated in this case “due to information pertaining to this address that presented an increased risk to officers”.
In the police recording, which came from the officers’ dashcam video systems, one officer implied that he is familiar with the home, saying, “Is this the one with the three kids?” The officers also briefly mentioned possible mental health issues.
The audio suggests that police fired their weapons very soon after first encountering Lyles. One officer asked about an Xbox being taken and whether the door had been unlocked before the police start shouting at the woman to get back. About 15 seconds after that first command, officers started firing.
“What is the reason to use such lethal force?” said Erneshia Jack, a 23-year-old cousin of Lyles. “There are many ways to subdue someone without shooting them. She’s not big. She’s not intimidating … She called you, and you went to her house and killed her.”
Studies have repeatedly suggested that people with mental illnesses and disabilities are killed by police at disproportionately high rates. One report suggested that the risk of being killed by police is 16 times greater for individuals with untreated mental illness compared to other civilians. Police also kill African Americans at rates significantly higher than the rest of the population. The officers who shot Lyles are white.
…
Lyles lived at a complex of apartments for formerly homeless people, called the Brettler Family Place, according to the Seattle Times. Roughly 400 people live in the apartments and about half of the residents are children.
Mike Buchman, spokesman for Solid Ground, the not-for-profit that operates the complex, told the Guardian that residents and staff were shaken by the shooting.
“It’s horrible. Regardless of what might have been going on with her and the call to police, it should not have ended this way. We all feel that deeply,” he said, adding, “This isn’t an incident in isolation ... The Seattle community has had a lot of scrutiny about police response in communities of color” (Levin “Woman” 1-2, 4).
Charleena Lyles … was shot seven times, including twice in the back, according to an autopsy released on Wednesday.
The medical examiner’s report … classified the death as a homicide and noted that the bullets cut through her uterus and hit her fetus, estimated to be 14 to 15 weeks old.
Lyles’ death sparked national outrage and reignited debates about law enforcement’s disproportionate killing of African Americans and officers’ treatment of people with mental illness.
The two police officers have claimed that Lyles was holding a knife when they killed her on 18 June, but her family has questioned law enforcement’s narrative and justification for using deadly force, noting that she was 100lb, 5ft 3in and not a threatening person.
…
“Did they shoot her as she fell to the ground? Was she running away?” said Katrina Johnson, Lyles’ cousin, in an interview on Wednesday. “How did she get shot in the back? I still don’t know that and understand that, but any which way, it was excessive force. Seven times for her little pregnant 100lb self was out of control.”
The 14-page King County medical examiner’s office report, released by a family attorney and published by the Seattle Times, raises fresh questions about why the officers, Jason Anderson and Steven McNew, used lethal force and fired a round of bullets at the woman at close range.
The officers had arrived at Lyles’ apartment door less than an hour after Lyles dialed 911 to report a burglary, when she discovered her Xbox was missing. After roughly two minutes and 30 seconds, police fired at her from about five feet away as her one-year-old and four-year-old children crawled nearby, police records revealed. Her 11-year-old son was in another room during the shooting.
It’s unclear how the encounter escalated, with police audio recordings capturing a conversation that was initially polite and cordial. In department interviews, the officers claimed that at some point she had a knife on her and that they feared for their safety. The officers didn’t have Tasers on them, even though one of them was supposed to be carrying one. [That officer explained later that the taser’s battery was dead and he had not replaced it]
…
One of the bullets entered her back near her spine and “extensively” lacerated her lungs, ribs and inferior vena cava, which carries blood to the heart, the report said. She was hit on the right and left sides of her back, and two of the bullets hit her uterus.
“How can someone be shot in the back if they are coming at you with knives?” said André Taylor, a local police reform activist assisting the Lyles family.
The toxicology report also found no drugs or alcohol in Lyles’ system when she was killed, the Seattle Times reported. An investigation into the shooting is continuing. Seattle police declined to comment on the autopsy.
Her father, Charles Lyles, told the paper that it was painful to learn of how her unborn child died in the shooting: “Hearing the details of the shooting just makes me feel more empty. I lost my daughter and my next grandson. I just don’t have the words.”
Lyles’ relatives spoke at length with the Guardian in July about police harassment and mistreatment of black communities, despite Seattle officials’ claims that it is one of the most progressive cities in the country for modern policing. Weeks before her death, Lyles had called police to report a domestic disturbance, and instead of being treated as a victim, she was arrested and jailed (Levin “Police” 1-3).
Charleena Lyles, 30, known by her loved ones as Leena, was about 15 weeks pregnant when she was killed. The day after the funeral, her siblings and cousins briefly laughed through their grief at the absurdity of two policemen feeling physically endangered by her.
She was feisty and outspoken, they said, but at 5ft 3in and 100lbs, she was not intimidating or menacing – and certainly not some kind of skilled knife-thrower as police seemed to fear.
“She’s not a threatening person at all,” said Monika Williams, her 37-year-old sister. “She was just one of those people who lit up the room.”
Her relatives said she was known as one of the most energetic people in the family and loved dancing, styling her cousins’ hair and writing poetry about her loved ones. Above all, they said, she was dedicated to her four children.
“I truly admired her as a mother and I just admired her drive,” said Shaneé Isabell, a cousin who grew up alongside her. “She was very courageous and dependable, and she was very loyal.”
Seattle officers saw something very different in Lyles. The day of her death was not the first time she had called police for help and was instead treated like a suspect.
On 5 June, Lyles called police after an ex-boyfriend showed up to her apartment unannounced, according to her family.
Officers arrived to investigate a “physical domestic disturbance”, but instead of approaching her like a potential domestic violence victim, the police quickly had their service pistols drawn, records show. They felt threatened, the officers later said, because Lyles was holding a pair of scissors.
They arrested her for “harassment”, alleging she “repeatedly used words and actions to create a substantial risk of assault”.
A police report on that day said that Lyles seemed “out of touch with reality” and had made statements about police being the devil. But any struggle Lyles was having with her mental health was only further exacerbated by spending the next eight days behind bars, away from her children, her family said.
Four days after her release, on 18 June, two different officers prepared to investigate her burglary call, reviewing Lyles’s previous incident which noted that they should approach her with caution.
“She started talking all crazy,” officer Jason Anderson told the other officer, Steven McNew, according to released audio recordings. “This gal, she was the one making all these weird statements.”
When they arrived at her door, Lyles answered a few questions and the officers, in later interviews with investigators, said that everything seemed normal to them, though they both said they noticed her home was messy.
Within a few minutes, they realized she had a knife in her hand, and said in their official account that they feared she could try and stab them or throw it at them. McNew, 6ft 2in and 250lbs, later noted that he is “a little larger” than Lyles, but said he feared for his life nonetheless.
Anderson and McNew screamed at her to get back, and at one point she complied. They briefly discussed tasering her, but they didn’t have one on them. Within about 12 seconds of them noticing the knife, they both fired multiple rounds at her.
Neither officer ever ordered her to drop the knife.
Deep distrust of police is embedded in the family, said Williams, Lyles’s sister. “I can honestly say I would fear the police, even before this, more than I would fear a gang member. At least a gang member, you’d have to do something to them for them to want to do something to you.”
When Williams’s four-year-old daughter sees an officer, she always asks: “Are you going to shoot my dad?”
Lyles’s relatives all had stories – unjustified tickets, unwarranted stops, threatening physical contact.
Nakeya Isabell, Lyles’s cousin, said this was standard police behavior in Seattle’s African American communities: “They train your mind to fear people, specifically black people.”
“It’s a system founded on racism ... All the training is to kill.”
…
The US Department of Justice (DoJ) validated these kinds of complaints in 2011 when it concluded that the Seattle police department was engaged in an unconstitutional pattern of excessive use of force. The investigation originated with the 2010 police killing of a First Nations woodcarver who had trouble hearing and was ordered to drop his knife while walking down the street.
The DoJ inquiry resulted in a consent decree that required the agency to make significant reforms under the watch of a federal monitor.
…
Seattle is proud of the progress it has made, Brian Maxey, chief operating officer, said in an interview at police headquarters. From 2011 to 2016, the department’s use of force has dropped 60%, and last year, out of 9,300 cases of encountering people in crisis, officers applied force only 1.6% of the time.
…
… the officers are very unlikely to face any criminal consequences in Washington, which is by some measures the hardest place in America to hold police accountable.
In 1986, the state passed legislation saying officers cannot face prosecution for killing someone in the line of duty unless they acted with “malice” and “evil intent”.
The law is the most restrictive in the US, where it is generally very difficult to convict officers who kill, since they can broadly cite self defense. Despite video evidence, officers across the country have avoided criminal consequences in most high profile killings in recent years, including the deaths of Philando Castile, Alton Sterling and Tamir Rice.
In Washington, police are never convicted. Out of 213 police killings in a 10-year-period, only one officer was even charged, according to a Seattle Times investigation.
“It’s the worst law in the nation,” said André Taylor, a police reform activist whose brother was killed by police last year. “It can embolden officers. They feel they have this special immunity. They don’t want to be responsible or accountable to nobody” (Levin “Insists” 1-4).
One of the two officers who killed Charleena Lyles, the pregnant woman gunned down in her own apartment last year, lied about his justification for shooting her, according to a court document filed Monday, on the one-year anniversary of her death.
Jason Anderson claimed in several interviews since the June 18, 2017 shooting that his back faced the closed front door inside Lyles' apartment when he fired at her as she allegedly advanced at officers with knives.
However, Karen Koehler and Edward Moore, the attorneys for Lyles' estate, say that surveillance footage from the apartment building shows that Anderson shot at Lyles through an open doorway.
...
The detail of the reportedly closed door was given as a reason that Anderson felt trapped as Lyles advanced on him and Officer Steven McNew, court records say.
But, when the audio recording of the officers' response is synchronized with the apartment video footage, they "depict Officer Anderson in the open doorway of the apartment and the hallway at the only time that gunshots can be heard," according to an expert who analyzed the footage.
…
Anderson's account informed the Force Investigation Team (FIT) and the Force Review Board's (FRB) accounts of the incident, leading to the Seattle Police Department’s conclusion that Anderson and NcNew followed agency policy in the shooting.
FIT accepted Anderson's contention that he had no choice but to shoot Lyles because he could not shield himself, given his back was against a closed door, and the small apartment didn't allow him to create more distance between himself and Lyles, according to the Monday court filing.
The officers fired seven times at 30-year-old Lyles -- four times in the back -- within about 4 feet in front of three of her children. Her baby boy crawled on top of her body after she fell to the floor.
…
… "There was no time. We didn't have any shielding and we didn't have distance between us. There was ... literally feet between us."
He [Anderson] claimed in his deposition that he only opened the door after Lyles was on the ground (Burton 2-4).
A King County judge has dismissed negligence claims brought against two Seattle police officers who fatally shot 30-year-old Charleena Lyles in 2017.
The claims were part of a wrongful death and civil rights lawsuit brought against both the officers as well as the city of Seattle.
…
On January 4, King County Judge Julie Spector granted officers Jason Anderson and Steven McNew's motion for summary judgement. The motion argued that the officers were not legally liable for the negligent infliction of emotional distress because Lyles was committing multiple felonies while she was shot.
Lyles' relatives, however, say she was mentally ill and believe the officers could have deescalated the situation without killing her (KUOW 1).
On June 18, close to the three-year anniversary of her death, Lyles’ family gathered on a soundstage in Magnuson Park, backed by a huge image of Lyles, and told the hundreds of people present to turn and look at a building across the street.
“See that building right behind us? That’s where they took her out,” said Lyles’ second cousin, Shaenae Isabell. “So, we’re going to let them know we’re here today, right?”
Isabell called out, “Say her name!”
“Charleena Lyles!” the crowd boomed back, their voices reaching across the field, past the road to the building Lyles called home.
There’s little chance someone inside wouldn’t have heard it.
But reliving Lyles’ death wasn’t what the family had come for. They came to reclaim the narrative built by incomplete media characterizations about her life, to build one of their own and to call for justice.
They were not alone.
The family members of 19 different people killed during encounters with the police across the country joined them. The Forced Trajectory Project, as they’re known, had traveled from their respective home towns with the stories of their loved ones. They came to support the Lyles family, as many of them had been supported in their time of grief.
Because, as the Forced Trajectory Project says, “families are the frontlines.”
…
That pain is loss, but for many of the families — who had held a press conference earlier the same day — it was also watching the names and histories of their loved ones dragged through the media, distorted into caricatures that they could not recognize.
The drip, drip, drip of public documents that show people at their worst. The families believe law enforcement laundered outright lies through newspapers and television programs, accepted by an industry dominated by white people who don’t question police reports and were looking for a story.
“When the police get done, you kill their character,” said Kimberly Handy-Jones on the morning of June 18.
…
As the sun dipped slowly down, holding stubbornly onto the June sky, the night air was filled with remembrances of Lyles, an ode to George Floyd, and calls for change. Lyles’ family has very specific demands.
First, they want Kent, Federal Way, Auburn, and Renton, as well as the two police officers who shot Lyles, to drop lawsuits that are preventing a full inquest into Lyles’ death. …
…
Second, they signed onto the demand to defund SPD by 50%, a demand echoed by protesters in the city and a handful of Seattle City Councilmembers.
Finally, they want the resignation of Mayor Jenny Durkan. Durkan came to them before she won the 2017 mayoral race and promised to be different … (Archibald 1-2).
Works cited:
Archibald, Ashley. “Seattle Police Killing of Charleena Lyles Localized Black Lives Matter Protests and Amasses Similar Stories, Three Years Later.” South Seattle Emerald, June 24, 2020. Net. https://southseattleemerald.com/2020/...
Burton, Lynsi. “Attorneys: Seattle Cop Who Killed Charleena Lyles Lied about Shooting.” Seattle PI, June, 19, 2018. Net. https://www.seattlepi.com/local/crime...
KUOW Staff. “Judge Dismisses Claims against Two Seattle Police Officers in Charleena Lyles Case.” KUOW, January 1, 2019. Net. https://www.kuow.org/stories/king-cou...
Levin, Sam. “Seattle Insists It's a Model for Progressive Policing – So Why Was Charleena Lyles Killed?” The Guardian, July 17, 2017. Net. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...
Levin, Sam. “Seattle Police Shot Charleena Lyles Seven Times, Autopsy Finds.” The Guardian, August 30, 2017. Net. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...
Levin, Sam. “Seattle Woman Killed by Police While Children Were Home after Reporting Theft.” The Guardian, June 19, 2017. Net. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...
May 20, 2021
Bad Apples -- July 6, 2016 -- Philando Castile
On July 6, 2016 Philando Castile, an African American, was shot to death by a police officer after being pulled over in Falcon Heights, Minnesota. Castile was known as “Mr. Phil” to the students at J. J. Hill Montessori Magnet School, where he was employed as nutritional supervisor, and was a beloved member of the Twin Cities-area educational community. His girlfriend and her four-year-old daughter were present at the time of the shooting.
The officer had pulled Castile over under the pretext that his brake lights had gone out and had falsely suspected that Castile was the perpetrator in an armed robbery that had happened the previous week. Upon being pulled over, Castile alerted the officer that he had a registered firearm in his pocket. Legally, Castile was not required by law to alert the officer that he was carrying a firearm. Despite repeated attempts to dissuade the officer that he was not reaching for his firearm, the officer disregarded Castile’s warnings. When he reached for his wallet, Castile was shot multiple times at point-blank range. Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, streamed the aftermath of the shooting on her Facebook. Reynold’s four-year-old daughter had seen all of the events transpire from the back seat of the car (Davis 1).
The Minnesota police officer who drew widespread protests after he shot and killed Philando Castile has been found not guilty after being charged with second-degree manslaughter.
After 27 hours of deliberation, the jury found St. Anthony, Minnesota, police officer Jeronimo Yanez not guilty for manslaughter, as well as two counts of dangerous discharge of a firearm, according to the Star Tribune.
The July 2016 shooting captured nationwide attention after Diamond Reynolds, Castile’s fiancée, live-streamed the aftermath on Facebook. The image was grisly, showing a black man’s slumped, bloodied body – the result of yet another police shooting in America.
"He killed my boyfriend," Reynolds said. She claimed that police had opened fire when Castile reached for his driver’s license, as an officer requested: "He let the officer know that he had a firearm, and he was reaching for his wallet, and the officer just shot him in his arm."
…
… Reynolds said Castille reached for his driver’s license, after reportedly letting an officer know he had a legal gun. (Castile had a concealed carry permit, according to family.) The officer then allegedly opened fire.
"I told him not to reach for it," an officer claimed in the Facebook video. "I told him to get his hand out."
"You told him to get his ID, sir — his driver’s license," Reynolds replied. "Oh, my God. Please don’t tell me he’s dead. Please don’t tell me my boyfriend just went like that."
…
The lawyer representing Yanez told the Associated Press that Yanez "was reacting to the actions of the driver. This had nothing to do with race. This had everything to do with the presence of a gun." But Yanez's attorney did not elaborate on how, exactly, Castile displayed his weapon. Officials confirmed that a handgun was recovered from the scene.
A police radio call offered more details into why Castile was pulled over to begin with. The officer said Castile and his girlfriend "just look like people that were involved in a robbery." He added that Castile "looks more like one of our suspects, just 'cause of the wide-set nose."
…
Castile’s final traffic stop was far from his first. According to an NPR analysis, it was in fact his 46th stop —almost all of which were related to fairly minor traffic violations. To critics, Castile’s history shows one of the massive racial biases in policing: Black people are, in many jurisdictions, more likely to be stopped for traffic offenses. And with each of those stops, there’s a risk that the police encounter will escalate — potentially leading to a deadly shooting. When you put those two facts together, it helps explain one reason there are such big racial disparities in police use of force (Lopez 1-2).
Several members of the Castile family screamed profanities and cried after the verdict was announced, despite warnings from the judge that everyone in the courtroom should remain composed.
“Let me go!” yelled Castile’s mother, Valerie.
The families of Castile and Yanez were escorted out of separate courtroom exits. At least 13 officers were present in the small courtroom.
Outside court, Valerie Castile said she was disappointed in the state of Minnesota,
“Because nowhere in the world do you die from being honest and telling the truth.
“The system continues to fail black people,” she said. “My son loved this city and this city killed my son and the murderer gets away! Are you kidding me right now?
“We’re not evolving as a civilization, we’re devolving. We’re going back down to 1969. What is it going to take?”
The jury was composed of eight men and four women, including one black man and one black woman.
Jurors deliberated 27 hours and heard two weeks of testimony about the July 6 traffic stop, in which Yanez pulled over a car driven by Castile, 32, with his girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, and her 4-year-old daughter as passengers.
An audio recording captured Castile telling Yanez he had a gun in the car, and the officer telling Castile not to reach for it. Seconds later, Yanez opened fire.
Prosecutors portrayed Yanez as a nervous officer who lost control of his traffic stop. He was too quick to pull the trigger after learning Castile had a gun, based on an unreasonable suspicion that he was a robbery suspect, they said.
Yanez, a St. Anthony officer, testified he feared for his life because Castile put his hand on his firearm, not his wallet or identification papers, and was pulling the gun from his pocket.
“I didn’t want to shoot Mr. Castile,”Yanez testified. “That wasn’t my intention. I thought I was going to die.”
Yanez’s lawyers alleged Castile had been smoking marijuana the day of the shooting, which they said affected his judgment.
Castile was bleeding heavily in the Facebook video but managed to say he wasn’t reaching for his gun, which he had a permit to carry.
His girlfriend said Castile was reaching for his ID in his back pocket when he was shot.
Castile’s fully loaded gun was found in his shorts pocket, Ramsey County prosecutors said.
Reynolds issued a statement Friday, saying Castile was pulled over because he had “a wide nose,” like a robbery suspect who was being sought.
“He did nothing but comply with Officer Yanez’s instructions to get his driver’s license. He was seat belted and doing as he was told, when he was shot by Officer Yanez who fired seven shots into the vehicle where my …. daughter and I also sat. It is a sad state of affairs when this type of criminal conduct is condoned simply because Yanez is a policeman. God help America” (Ellis and Kirkos 1-3).
“He [Yanez] was making assumptions and jumping to conclusions without engaging in the dialogue he was trained to have in a citizen encounter like this,” Jeffrey Paulsen, a prosecutor, said in closing arguments. “And that’s his fault, not the fault of Philando Castile.”
Mr. Castile was licensed to carry a gun and was recorded on a dashboard camera video calmly telling Officer Yanez that he had a weapon in the car. Officer Yanez told him not to reach for the weapon, and Mr. Castile and Ms. Reynolds both tried to assure the officer that he was not doing so. Within seconds, Officer Yanez fired seven shots.
Prosecutors said Mr. Castile had mentioned his gun to allay concerns, not to threaten the officer or escalate the situation. “If someone were just about to reach in their pocket and pull out a gun and shoot an officer, that’s the last thing they would say,” Mr. Paulsen said.
Mr. Gray, the defense lawyer, said Officer Yanez had to react quickly to what he believed was an imminent threat. He said Officer Yanez smelled marijuana, believed that Mr. Castile matched the description of a recent robbery suspect and saw him grabbing a gun.
“We have him ignoring his commands. He’s got a gun. He might be the robber. He’s got marijuana in his car,” Mr. Gray told jurors. “Those are the things in Officer Yanez’s head.”
Officer Yanez did not tell Mr. Castile about the robbery suspicions, only that his brake light was out. But Mr. Gray said that this approach made sense, and that Officer Yanez had acted reasonably given his training and what he knew that night.
…
At Officer Yanez’s trial, in this small courtroom in downtown St. Paul, defense lawyers made repeated mention of Mr. Castile’s and Ms. Reynolds’s use of marijuana.
The drug was found in Mr. Castile’s car after the shooting, and Mr. Gray said that Mr. Castile had been under the influence of marijuana and delayed in his reactions at the time of the shooting.
“We’re not saying that Philando Castile was going to shoot Officer Yanez,” Mr. Gray said. “What we’re saying is that he did not follow orders. He was stoned.”
But Mr. Paulsen, the prosecutor, said that version of events was contradicted by video. He said footage showed that Mr. Castile was driving normally, pulled over quickly and was alert and courteous when talking to Officer Yanez. He accused the defense of blaming the victim (Smith 1-3).
Philando Castile's trouble with traffic stops began when he still had his learner's permit. He was stopped a day before his 19th birthday.
From there, he descended into a seemingly endless cycle of traffic stops, fines, court appearances, late fees, revocations and reinstatements in various jurisdictions.
Court records raise big questions: Was Castile targeted by police? Or was he just a careless or unlucky driver?
An NPR analysis of those records shows that the 32-year-old cafeteria worker who was shot and killed by a police officer during a traffic stop in a St. Paul, Minn., suburb, was stopped by police 46 times and racked up more than $6,000 in fines. Another curious statistic: Of all of the stops, only six of them were things a police officer would notice from outside a car — things like speeding or having a broken muffler.
…
Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve, a professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at Temple University …, said Castile was the "classic case" of what criminologists have called "net widening," or the move by local authorities to criminalize more and more aspects of regular life.
"It is in particular a way that people of color and the poor are victimized on a daily basis," Gonzalez Van Cleve said.
Many times … the system leaves citizens with no good choices — having to pick, for instance, whether to pay a fine or pay for car insurance.
…
Castile's driving problems often appeared to be triggered by something small — a problem with his license plate or blocking an intersection. When he couldn't keep up with the fines, his license would get suspended, and he'd keep driving.
One six-year period in particular — from 2006 to 2012 — stands out. Castile was stopped 29 times. Sometimes he was fined $270, sometimes $150, but it kept adding up. He soon amassed more than $5,000 in fines.
"I am just baffled, and I've been pulled over in the same vehicle my brother died in," Castile's sister said. Allyza Castile thinks it was her brother's dreadlocks and the big sedans he loved to drive — like the Oldsmobile he was in — that made him stand out.
"I've been pulled over in that car for three or four times for the same exact reason — supposedly a broken taillight," she said. "When you run the plates, his name comes up, so I've been harassed driving his vehicle myself. So I know that they harass my brother."
During some periods of his life, Castile was sometimes able to emerge from a mountain of fines.
From 2012 to late 2014 — like clockwork — he paid off fine after fine, some of them more than $500 a month.
"He was trying to make it right," said Beverly Castile, Philando's aunt. "And it was right. He paid off all his tickets, got his license back and everything else. It was done right."
But about three months after he was done with probation, he was stopped again — for "improper display of original plate." By January of this year, his license was suspended, but he quickly paid $275 to get it back (Peralta and Corley 1-4).
The Minnesota police officer who was acquitted in last year’s fatal shooting of black motorist Philando Castile will receive $48,500 as he leaves the suburban department that employed him at the time of the killing, according to a separation agreement announced Monday.
…
His annual salary at the time of the July 6, 2016, shooting was more than $72,600, not including overtime pay, according to documents released by the city.
…
Yanez’s acquittal led to days of protests, including one in St. Paul that shut down Interstate 94 for hours and ended with 18 arrests. At a recent city council meeting, residents of St. Anthony called on the city’s mayor to resign.
After the trial, Castile’s mother, Valerie Castile, reached a nearly $3 million settlement with the city, precluding a wrongful death lawsuit (Forlitti 1-2).
The Minnesota woman who live-streamed the aftermath of boyfriend Philando Castile’s fatal shooting by police has settled with two cities for $800,000, the city of St. Anthony said Wednesday.
Neither Diamond Reynolds nor her daughter, who was 4 at the time, were injured during the traffic stop that led to Castile’s death, but Reynolds was handcuffed and she and her daughter were held by Roseville police after the shooting.
Reynolds had filed a claim in Ramsey County District Court, seeking money and “other relief” for emotional distress and false arrest (McLaughlin 1).
[If you wish, you may view the two horrific videos of the shooting and its immediate aftermath. I have included them because I believe that in this instance words alone do not convey the enormity of what transpired. Paste the following on Google.]
https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2017/06...
Works cited:
Davis, Rhys. “July 6, 2016: Philando Castile Is Killed by Police.” Zinn Education Project. Net. https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/td...
Ellis, Ralph and Kirkos, Bill. “Officer Who Shot Philando Castile Found Not Guilty on All Counts.” CNN, June 16, 2017. Net. https://www.cnn.com/2017/06/16/us/phi...
Forlitti, Amy. “Cop Who Killed Philando Castile To Be Paid $48,500 in Buyout.” USA Today, July 11, 2017. Net. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/n...
Lopez, German. “Philando Castile Minnesota Police Shooting: Officer Cleared of Manslaughter Charge.” Vox, updated June 16, 2017. Net. https://www.vox.com/2016/7/7/12116288...
McLaughlin, Eliott C. “Girlfriend of Philando Castile Settles with 2 Cities for $800,000.” CNN, November 29, 2017. Net. https://www.cnn.com/2017/11/29/us/phi...
Peralta, Eyder and Corley, Cheryl. “The Driving Life and Death of Philando Castile.” NPR, July 15, 2016. Net. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-w...
Smith, Mitch. “Minnesota Officer Acquitted in Killing of Philando Castile.” The New York Times, June 16, 2017. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/16/us...
The officer had pulled Castile over under the pretext that his brake lights had gone out and had falsely suspected that Castile was the perpetrator in an armed robbery that had happened the previous week. Upon being pulled over, Castile alerted the officer that he had a registered firearm in his pocket. Legally, Castile was not required by law to alert the officer that he was carrying a firearm. Despite repeated attempts to dissuade the officer that he was not reaching for his firearm, the officer disregarded Castile’s warnings. When he reached for his wallet, Castile was shot multiple times at point-blank range. Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, streamed the aftermath of the shooting on her Facebook. Reynold’s four-year-old daughter had seen all of the events transpire from the back seat of the car (Davis 1).
The Minnesota police officer who drew widespread protests after he shot and killed Philando Castile has been found not guilty after being charged with second-degree manslaughter.
After 27 hours of deliberation, the jury found St. Anthony, Minnesota, police officer Jeronimo Yanez not guilty for manslaughter, as well as two counts of dangerous discharge of a firearm, according to the Star Tribune.
The July 2016 shooting captured nationwide attention after Diamond Reynolds, Castile’s fiancée, live-streamed the aftermath on Facebook. The image was grisly, showing a black man’s slumped, bloodied body – the result of yet another police shooting in America.
"He killed my boyfriend," Reynolds said. She claimed that police had opened fire when Castile reached for his driver’s license, as an officer requested: "He let the officer know that he had a firearm, and he was reaching for his wallet, and the officer just shot him in his arm."
…
… Reynolds said Castille reached for his driver’s license, after reportedly letting an officer know he had a legal gun. (Castile had a concealed carry permit, according to family.) The officer then allegedly opened fire.
"I told him not to reach for it," an officer claimed in the Facebook video. "I told him to get his hand out."
"You told him to get his ID, sir — his driver’s license," Reynolds replied. "Oh, my God. Please don’t tell me he’s dead. Please don’t tell me my boyfriend just went like that."
…
The lawyer representing Yanez told the Associated Press that Yanez "was reacting to the actions of the driver. This had nothing to do with race. This had everything to do with the presence of a gun." But Yanez's attorney did not elaborate on how, exactly, Castile displayed his weapon. Officials confirmed that a handgun was recovered from the scene.
A police radio call offered more details into why Castile was pulled over to begin with. The officer said Castile and his girlfriend "just look like people that were involved in a robbery." He added that Castile "looks more like one of our suspects, just 'cause of the wide-set nose."
…
Castile’s final traffic stop was far from his first. According to an NPR analysis, it was in fact his 46th stop —almost all of which were related to fairly minor traffic violations. To critics, Castile’s history shows one of the massive racial biases in policing: Black people are, in many jurisdictions, more likely to be stopped for traffic offenses. And with each of those stops, there’s a risk that the police encounter will escalate — potentially leading to a deadly shooting. When you put those two facts together, it helps explain one reason there are such big racial disparities in police use of force (Lopez 1-2).
Several members of the Castile family screamed profanities and cried after the verdict was announced, despite warnings from the judge that everyone in the courtroom should remain composed.
“Let me go!” yelled Castile’s mother, Valerie.
The families of Castile and Yanez were escorted out of separate courtroom exits. At least 13 officers were present in the small courtroom.
Outside court, Valerie Castile said she was disappointed in the state of Minnesota,
“Because nowhere in the world do you die from being honest and telling the truth.
“The system continues to fail black people,” she said. “My son loved this city and this city killed my son and the murderer gets away! Are you kidding me right now?
“We’re not evolving as a civilization, we’re devolving. We’re going back down to 1969. What is it going to take?”
The jury was composed of eight men and four women, including one black man and one black woman.
Jurors deliberated 27 hours and heard two weeks of testimony about the July 6 traffic stop, in which Yanez pulled over a car driven by Castile, 32, with his girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, and her 4-year-old daughter as passengers.
An audio recording captured Castile telling Yanez he had a gun in the car, and the officer telling Castile not to reach for it. Seconds later, Yanez opened fire.
Prosecutors portrayed Yanez as a nervous officer who lost control of his traffic stop. He was too quick to pull the trigger after learning Castile had a gun, based on an unreasonable suspicion that he was a robbery suspect, they said.
Yanez, a St. Anthony officer, testified he feared for his life because Castile put his hand on his firearm, not his wallet or identification papers, and was pulling the gun from his pocket.
“I didn’t want to shoot Mr. Castile,”Yanez testified. “That wasn’t my intention. I thought I was going to die.”
Yanez’s lawyers alleged Castile had been smoking marijuana the day of the shooting, which they said affected his judgment.
Castile was bleeding heavily in the Facebook video but managed to say he wasn’t reaching for his gun, which he had a permit to carry.
His girlfriend said Castile was reaching for his ID in his back pocket when he was shot.
Castile’s fully loaded gun was found in his shorts pocket, Ramsey County prosecutors said.
Reynolds issued a statement Friday, saying Castile was pulled over because he had “a wide nose,” like a robbery suspect who was being sought.
“He did nothing but comply with Officer Yanez’s instructions to get his driver’s license. He was seat belted and doing as he was told, when he was shot by Officer Yanez who fired seven shots into the vehicle where my …. daughter and I also sat. It is a sad state of affairs when this type of criminal conduct is condoned simply because Yanez is a policeman. God help America” (Ellis and Kirkos 1-3).
“He [Yanez] was making assumptions and jumping to conclusions without engaging in the dialogue he was trained to have in a citizen encounter like this,” Jeffrey Paulsen, a prosecutor, said in closing arguments. “And that’s his fault, not the fault of Philando Castile.”
Mr. Castile was licensed to carry a gun and was recorded on a dashboard camera video calmly telling Officer Yanez that he had a weapon in the car. Officer Yanez told him not to reach for the weapon, and Mr. Castile and Ms. Reynolds both tried to assure the officer that he was not doing so. Within seconds, Officer Yanez fired seven shots.
Prosecutors said Mr. Castile had mentioned his gun to allay concerns, not to threaten the officer or escalate the situation. “If someone were just about to reach in their pocket and pull out a gun and shoot an officer, that’s the last thing they would say,” Mr. Paulsen said.
Mr. Gray, the defense lawyer, said Officer Yanez had to react quickly to what he believed was an imminent threat. He said Officer Yanez smelled marijuana, believed that Mr. Castile matched the description of a recent robbery suspect and saw him grabbing a gun.
“We have him ignoring his commands. He’s got a gun. He might be the robber. He’s got marijuana in his car,” Mr. Gray told jurors. “Those are the things in Officer Yanez’s head.”
Officer Yanez did not tell Mr. Castile about the robbery suspicions, only that his brake light was out. But Mr. Gray said that this approach made sense, and that Officer Yanez had acted reasonably given his training and what he knew that night.
…
At Officer Yanez’s trial, in this small courtroom in downtown St. Paul, defense lawyers made repeated mention of Mr. Castile’s and Ms. Reynolds’s use of marijuana.
The drug was found in Mr. Castile’s car after the shooting, and Mr. Gray said that Mr. Castile had been under the influence of marijuana and delayed in his reactions at the time of the shooting.
“We’re not saying that Philando Castile was going to shoot Officer Yanez,” Mr. Gray said. “What we’re saying is that he did not follow orders. He was stoned.”
But Mr. Paulsen, the prosecutor, said that version of events was contradicted by video. He said footage showed that Mr. Castile was driving normally, pulled over quickly and was alert and courteous when talking to Officer Yanez. He accused the defense of blaming the victim (Smith 1-3).
Philando Castile's trouble with traffic stops began when he still had his learner's permit. He was stopped a day before his 19th birthday.
From there, he descended into a seemingly endless cycle of traffic stops, fines, court appearances, late fees, revocations and reinstatements in various jurisdictions.
Court records raise big questions: Was Castile targeted by police? Or was he just a careless or unlucky driver?
An NPR analysis of those records shows that the 32-year-old cafeteria worker who was shot and killed by a police officer during a traffic stop in a St. Paul, Minn., suburb, was stopped by police 46 times and racked up more than $6,000 in fines. Another curious statistic: Of all of the stops, only six of them were things a police officer would notice from outside a car — things like speeding or having a broken muffler.
…
Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve, a professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at Temple University …, said Castile was the "classic case" of what criminologists have called "net widening," or the move by local authorities to criminalize more and more aspects of regular life.
"It is in particular a way that people of color and the poor are victimized on a daily basis," Gonzalez Van Cleve said.
Many times … the system leaves citizens with no good choices — having to pick, for instance, whether to pay a fine or pay for car insurance.
…
Castile's driving problems often appeared to be triggered by something small — a problem with his license plate or blocking an intersection. When he couldn't keep up with the fines, his license would get suspended, and he'd keep driving.
One six-year period in particular — from 2006 to 2012 — stands out. Castile was stopped 29 times. Sometimes he was fined $270, sometimes $150, but it kept adding up. He soon amassed more than $5,000 in fines.
"I am just baffled, and I've been pulled over in the same vehicle my brother died in," Castile's sister said. Allyza Castile thinks it was her brother's dreadlocks and the big sedans he loved to drive — like the Oldsmobile he was in — that made him stand out.
"I've been pulled over in that car for three or four times for the same exact reason — supposedly a broken taillight," she said. "When you run the plates, his name comes up, so I've been harassed driving his vehicle myself. So I know that they harass my brother."
During some periods of his life, Castile was sometimes able to emerge from a mountain of fines.
From 2012 to late 2014 — like clockwork — he paid off fine after fine, some of them more than $500 a month.
"He was trying to make it right," said Beverly Castile, Philando's aunt. "And it was right. He paid off all his tickets, got his license back and everything else. It was done right."
But about three months after he was done with probation, he was stopped again — for "improper display of original plate." By January of this year, his license was suspended, but he quickly paid $275 to get it back (Peralta and Corley 1-4).
The Minnesota police officer who was acquitted in last year’s fatal shooting of black motorist Philando Castile will receive $48,500 as he leaves the suburban department that employed him at the time of the killing, according to a separation agreement announced Monday.
…
His annual salary at the time of the July 6, 2016, shooting was more than $72,600, not including overtime pay, according to documents released by the city.
…
Yanez’s acquittal led to days of protests, including one in St. Paul that shut down Interstate 94 for hours and ended with 18 arrests. At a recent city council meeting, residents of St. Anthony called on the city’s mayor to resign.
After the trial, Castile’s mother, Valerie Castile, reached a nearly $3 million settlement with the city, precluding a wrongful death lawsuit (Forlitti 1-2).
The Minnesota woman who live-streamed the aftermath of boyfriend Philando Castile’s fatal shooting by police has settled with two cities for $800,000, the city of St. Anthony said Wednesday.
Neither Diamond Reynolds nor her daughter, who was 4 at the time, were injured during the traffic stop that led to Castile’s death, but Reynolds was handcuffed and she and her daughter were held by Roseville police after the shooting.
Reynolds had filed a claim in Ramsey County District Court, seeking money and “other relief” for emotional distress and false arrest (McLaughlin 1).
[If you wish, you may view the two horrific videos of the shooting and its immediate aftermath. I have included them because I believe that in this instance words alone do not convey the enormity of what transpired. Paste the following on Google.]
https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2017/06...
Works cited:
Davis, Rhys. “July 6, 2016: Philando Castile Is Killed by Police.” Zinn Education Project. Net. https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/td...
Ellis, Ralph and Kirkos, Bill. “Officer Who Shot Philando Castile Found Not Guilty on All Counts.” CNN, June 16, 2017. Net. https://www.cnn.com/2017/06/16/us/phi...
Forlitti, Amy. “Cop Who Killed Philando Castile To Be Paid $48,500 in Buyout.” USA Today, July 11, 2017. Net. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/n...
Lopez, German. “Philando Castile Minnesota Police Shooting: Officer Cleared of Manslaughter Charge.” Vox, updated June 16, 2017. Net. https://www.vox.com/2016/7/7/12116288...
McLaughlin, Eliott C. “Girlfriend of Philando Castile Settles with 2 Cities for $800,000.” CNN, November 29, 2017. Net. https://www.cnn.com/2017/11/29/us/phi...
Peralta, Eyder and Corley, Cheryl. “The Driving Life and Death of Philando Castile.” NPR, July 15, 2016. Net. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-w...
Smith, Mitch. “Minnesota Officer Acquitted in Killing of Philando Castile.” The New York Times, June 16, 2017. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/16/us...
May 16, 2021
Bad Apples -- May 5, 2016, Alton Sterling
Alton Sterling, a 37-year-old African American man, was selling bootleg compact discs outside the Triple S convenience store in Baton Rouge in the early hours of July 5, 2016, when white police officers Blane Salamoni and Howie Lake II arrived to investigate a report of a man with a gun. They confronted Sterling and pinned him to the ground. During a struggle, Salamoni fatally shot him.
The whole incident took less than 90 seconds. Within 24 hours, mobile phone video of the shooting made its way around the internet, sparking days of street protests (O’Donoghue 1).
Surveillance video from the Triple S Convenience store shows Sterling selling DVDs outside and packing up his goods as Officer Howie Lake II arrives and confronts him.
When Salamoni arrives to help Lake, he pulls his gun seconds later, according to his body camera video. Ten seconds into the video, as Sterling questions why the officers are trying to detain him, Salamoni shouts, “Don’t f—– move or I’ll shoot your f—- a–. Put your f—— hands on the car.”
Video from Lake’s body camera shows the officer approaching Sterling, trying to get him to put his hands on the hood of a car, and eventually struggling with him on the ground.
During the altercation, another person, presumably Salamoni, screams, “He’s got a gun!” and soon thereafter gunshots are heard.
A gun is not visible in the video, but Lake tells another officer he put it in his car. The officers had been responding to a call from a homeless man who said Sterling showed him a weapon after he approached Sterling for money. Police have said a.38-caliber handgun was found at the scene.
Federal investigators found insufficient evidence to file civil rights charges against the officers in May 2017, and state investigators similarly did not file charges 10 months later (Levenson 4-5).
Investigators said Salamoni drew his handgun and pointed it at Sterling’s head within 20 seconds of arriving on the scene. According to federal officials, as related by Sterling’s family and attorney, the officer said to Sterling something to the effect of “I’m going to kill you, bitch”.
According to the official account of the incident, the officers tried to tackle Sterling and deploy a stun gun. While in a scuffle on the ground, officers believed Sterling was reaching for a gun in his pocket. Salamoni drew his weapon and fired three shots to Sterling’s chest, then three more as he rolled over.
Store owner Abdullah Muhlafi, who considered Sterling a friend and allowed him to sell CDs out front, recorded the incident.
Muhlafi told reporters that though Sterling was carrying a handgun in his pocket or waistband, he never had it in his hands.
The officers said they did not have control of Sterling’s right arm as they attempted to arrest him, and that they believed his hand was moving towards the weapon.
“Throughout the encounter the officers attempted several non-lethal techniques to gain control of Mr Sterling’s hands,” [state attorney general Jeff] Landry said on Tuesday.
“The officers’ concern that he was armed and dangerous was in fact subsequently verified and correct” (Lartey 2).
Sterling ... was a neighborhood fixture, known for selling CDs outside of the store. Those who knew him described him as funny, a father of 5 children who was trying hard to overcome his past criminal record. He had been convicted of carrying an illegal weapon in 2011 and had been out of prison for about 6 months (Samuels 2).
Salamoni defended his use of profanities, according to the report, stating he believed that if he started cursing at Sterling he "would realize that the police are here and we are not playing."
After Sterling is apparently dead, Salamoni can be heard panting, and his hands are seen holding his handgun. He begins going through Sterling's pockets and calls him a "stupid motherf-----" twice (McCausland 2).
Louisiana has declined to press charges against the pair of white police officers involved in the 2016 shooting death of Alton Sterling. The state's attorney general, Jeff Landry, announced the decision at a news conference Tuesday, saying that a months-long review of the incident failed to uncover evidence that either police officer could be held criminally responsible for Sterling's death.
"The Louisiana Department of Justice cannot proceed with a prosecution of either Officer Howie Lake or Officer Blane Salamoni," Landry told reporters after meeting with members of Sterling's family in private.
The announcement comes just over a year and a half after Sterling's killing …
…
After meeting with Landry, members of Sterling's family expressed deep sadness and outrage, but little surprise at the decision.
"They're not going to bring charges on anybody. Why would they do that? This is white America," Sterling's aunt Veda Washington-Abusaleh said, as she left the meeting according to CNN.
"We're all out of tears. We have nothing else in us to cry about, because guess what: We all knew what it was, just like y'all knew what it was going to be," Quinyetta McMillon, the mother of one of Sterling's five children, told reporters.
"The way they killed him was in cold blood," she added. "Yes, the system has failed us. Yes, we are disappointed. But as a family, we're going to stay strong. We're going to stay prayed up. The devil thought he won, but he didn't."
… Baton Rouge Police Chief Murphy Paul said Tuesday that his department still intends to complete disciplinary hearings for the officers, including releasing findings such as dashcam video (Dwyer 1-3).
The [department] report ... included the results of a toxicology test, which said Mr. Sterling’s blood had contained alcohol, cocaine, amphetamine, methamphetamine and THC. The amount of methamphetamine, the report said, was associated with “abusers who exhibited violent and irrational behavior.”
Michael Adams, a lawyer for the Sterling family, said the videos showed that Mr. Sterling was lucid, and not “deranged” or “out of control.”
“He stayed relatively calm throughout this process,” he said. “And that’s a different story or depiction when you read the attorney general’s findings” (Fausset 4).
Baton Rouge Police Chief Murphy Paul apologized on behalf of the department for hiring the officer who killed Alton Sterling ...
“We are sorry Baton Rouge. I want to apologize to the family of Alton Sterling and also to his kids,” Chief Paul said, according to CNN affiliate WAFB.
“We’re sorry because he should have never been hired. And while we obviously cannot change the past, it is clear that we must change the future, and I sincerely apologize for the actions of the past and the role that our profession has played in building barriers in communities of color in Baton Rouge,” said Paul, who joined the department in January 2018.
In March 2018, state officials decided not to file criminal charges against the two officers involved in Sterling’s fatal shooting, saying their actions were justified. But days later, police fired Officer Blane Salamoni for violating use of force policies when he shot Sterling.
Salamoni had appealed his firing, but Paul announced Thursday that they reached a resolution that would keep Salamoni from ever working with the department.
Mayor Sharon Weston Broome said Salamoni will not receive monetary compensation in the resolution.
…
Leo Hamilton, an attorney for the Baton Rouge Police Department, said Thursday that Salamoni had a history of misbehavior prior to Sterling’s shooting.
…
Hamilton said Salamoni regularly shouted profanities and abused individuals with unnecessary uses of force, as he did in the Sterling incident. Salamoni’s ill temperament caused “blow ups” with other officers, including one with a ranking officer, Hamilton said. Another officer told their superior that if something weren’t done about Salamoni, he could kill somebody, according to Hamilton.
Hamilton also said that Salamoni had previously been arrested for his involvement in a physical altercation or domestic abuse incident prior to joining the police, which would have kept him from being accepted to the force (Levenson 1-3).
Attorneys representing the children of Alton Sterling, …, said Thursday that a decision by local officials against offering $5 million to settle a pending civil case showed they were uninformed about the matter.
Sterling was fatally shot on July 5, 2016, outside a Baton Rouge convenience store during a struggle.
Lawyers for Sterling’s five children subsequently filed a wrongful death suit in 2017 against the city, its police department and former police chief and the two officers involved. The suit alleges the shooting fit a pattern of racist behavior and excessive force by Baton Rouge Police. it also claims poor training and inadequate police procedures led to Sterling’s death.
…
Both the East Baton Rouge Parish attorney and lawyers for Sterling’s family met with a mediator on Oct. 3, 2019, about the case and they agreed on a proposed $5 million figure.
On Wednesday, the East Baton Rouge Metro Council heard the matter, which needed seven votes for the settlement to be approved. Six council members voted yes, five voted no and one abstained, meaning the judgment failed.
Barring a settlement, the lawsuit is set to go to trial in March 2021.
Attorney Chris Stewart said at a news conference in Baton Rouge that he was surprised by the decision.
“It was perfectly clear that the city council had no clue what is going on in this case,” Stewart said. “It was clear they were not informed about anything going on in this case and that puts the city at risk. The misinformation that was given lay in the hands of the parish attorney” (Johnson 1).
After a $5 million proposed settlement fell through, officials in Louisiana are now offering $4.5 million to settle the civil lawsuit brought by the family of Alton Sterling ...
The East Baton Rouge Parish Metro Council voted 7-4 Wednesday in favor of offering the multimillion-dollar settlement to the family of Alton Sterling, news outlets reported (Officials 1).
[Paste the link below on google if you choose to watch a CBS News produced video of the shooting]
Alton Sterling shooting video: Raw footage of fatal police ...
Works cited:
Dwyer, Colin. “Baton Rouge Officers Will Not Be Charged in Alton Sterling's Killing.” NPR, March 27, 2018. Net. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-w...
Fausset, Richard. “Baton Rouge Officer Is Fired in Alton Sterling Case as Police Release New Videos.” The New York Times, March 30, 2018. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/30/us...
Johnson, Chevel. “Alton Sterling case: Baton Rouge Nixes $5M Settlement Offer.” AP, September 10, 2020. Net. https://apnews.com/article/police-alt...
Lartey, Jamiles. “Alton Sterling Shooting: Two Police Officers Will Not Be Charged with Any Crime.” The Guardian, March 27, 2018. Net. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...
Levenson, Eric. “Baton Rouge Police Chief Apologizes for Hiring the Officer Who Killed Alton Sterling.” CNN, August 1, 2019. Net.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/01/us/alt...
McCausland, Phil. “Baton Rouge Police Fire Officer Who Killed Alton Sterling.” NBC News, March 30, 2018. Net. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/...
O’Donoghue, Julia. “Alton Sterling Shooting One Year On: What Has – and Hasn't – Happened.” NOLA, July 22, 2019. Net. https://www.nola.com/news/politics/ar...
“Officials Offer $4.5M Settlement over Alton Sterling’s Death.” AP, February 11, 2021. Net. https://apnews.com/article/race-and-e...
Samuels, Diana. “Alton Sterling Shooting: Images from Baton Rouge the Week After.” NOLA, updated July 19, 2019. Net. https://www.nola.com/news/crime_polic...
The whole incident took less than 90 seconds. Within 24 hours, mobile phone video of the shooting made its way around the internet, sparking days of street protests (O’Donoghue 1).
Surveillance video from the Triple S Convenience store shows Sterling selling DVDs outside and packing up his goods as Officer Howie Lake II arrives and confronts him.
When Salamoni arrives to help Lake, he pulls his gun seconds later, according to his body camera video. Ten seconds into the video, as Sterling questions why the officers are trying to detain him, Salamoni shouts, “Don’t f—– move or I’ll shoot your f—- a–. Put your f—— hands on the car.”
Video from Lake’s body camera shows the officer approaching Sterling, trying to get him to put his hands on the hood of a car, and eventually struggling with him on the ground.
During the altercation, another person, presumably Salamoni, screams, “He’s got a gun!” and soon thereafter gunshots are heard.
A gun is not visible in the video, but Lake tells another officer he put it in his car. The officers had been responding to a call from a homeless man who said Sterling showed him a weapon after he approached Sterling for money. Police have said a.38-caliber handgun was found at the scene.
Federal investigators found insufficient evidence to file civil rights charges against the officers in May 2017, and state investigators similarly did not file charges 10 months later (Levenson 4-5).
Investigators said Salamoni drew his handgun and pointed it at Sterling’s head within 20 seconds of arriving on the scene. According to federal officials, as related by Sterling’s family and attorney, the officer said to Sterling something to the effect of “I’m going to kill you, bitch”.
According to the official account of the incident, the officers tried to tackle Sterling and deploy a stun gun. While in a scuffle on the ground, officers believed Sterling was reaching for a gun in his pocket. Salamoni drew his weapon and fired three shots to Sterling’s chest, then three more as he rolled over.
Store owner Abdullah Muhlafi, who considered Sterling a friend and allowed him to sell CDs out front, recorded the incident.
Muhlafi told reporters that though Sterling was carrying a handgun in his pocket or waistband, he never had it in his hands.
The officers said they did not have control of Sterling’s right arm as they attempted to arrest him, and that they believed his hand was moving towards the weapon.
“Throughout the encounter the officers attempted several non-lethal techniques to gain control of Mr Sterling’s hands,” [state attorney general Jeff] Landry said on Tuesday.
“The officers’ concern that he was armed and dangerous was in fact subsequently verified and correct” (Lartey 2).
Sterling ... was a neighborhood fixture, known for selling CDs outside of the store. Those who knew him described him as funny, a father of 5 children who was trying hard to overcome his past criminal record. He had been convicted of carrying an illegal weapon in 2011 and had been out of prison for about 6 months (Samuels 2).
Salamoni defended his use of profanities, according to the report, stating he believed that if he started cursing at Sterling he "would realize that the police are here and we are not playing."
After Sterling is apparently dead, Salamoni can be heard panting, and his hands are seen holding his handgun. He begins going through Sterling's pockets and calls him a "stupid motherf-----" twice (McCausland 2).
Louisiana has declined to press charges against the pair of white police officers involved in the 2016 shooting death of Alton Sterling. The state's attorney general, Jeff Landry, announced the decision at a news conference Tuesday, saying that a months-long review of the incident failed to uncover evidence that either police officer could be held criminally responsible for Sterling's death.
"The Louisiana Department of Justice cannot proceed with a prosecution of either Officer Howie Lake or Officer Blane Salamoni," Landry told reporters after meeting with members of Sterling's family in private.
The announcement comes just over a year and a half after Sterling's killing …
…
After meeting with Landry, members of Sterling's family expressed deep sadness and outrage, but little surprise at the decision.
"They're not going to bring charges on anybody. Why would they do that? This is white America," Sterling's aunt Veda Washington-Abusaleh said, as she left the meeting according to CNN.
"We're all out of tears. We have nothing else in us to cry about, because guess what: We all knew what it was, just like y'all knew what it was going to be," Quinyetta McMillon, the mother of one of Sterling's five children, told reporters.
"The way they killed him was in cold blood," she added. "Yes, the system has failed us. Yes, we are disappointed. But as a family, we're going to stay strong. We're going to stay prayed up. The devil thought he won, but he didn't."
… Baton Rouge Police Chief Murphy Paul said Tuesday that his department still intends to complete disciplinary hearings for the officers, including releasing findings such as dashcam video (Dwyer 1-3).
The [department] report ... included the results of a toxicology test, which said Mr. Sterling’s blood had contained alcohol, cocaine, amphetamine, methamphetamine and THC. The amount of methamphetamine, the report said, was associated with “abusers who exhibited violent and irrational behavior.”
Michael Adams, a lawyer for the Sterling family, said the videos showed that Mr. Sterling was lucid, and not “deranged” or “out of control.”
“He stayed relatively calm throughout this process,” he said. “And that’s a different story or depiction when you read the attorney general’s findings” (Fausset 4).
Baton Rouge Police Chief Murphy Paul apologized on behalf of the department for hiring the officer who killed Alton Sterling ...
“We are sorry Baton Rouge. I want to apologize to the family of Alton Sterling and also to his kids,” Chief Paul said, according to CNN affiliate WAFB.
“We’re sorry because he should have never been hired. And while we obviously cannot change the past, it is clear that we must change the future, and I sincerely apologize for the actions of the past and the role that our profession has played in building barriers in communities of color in Baton Rouge,” said Paul, who joined the department in January 2018.
In March 2018, state officials decided not to file criminal charges against the two officers involved in Sterling’s fatal shooting, saying their actions were justified. But days later, police fired Officer Blane Salamoni for violating use of force policies when he shot Sterling.
Salamoni had appealed his firing, but Paul announced Thursday that they reached a resolution that would keep Salamoni from ever working with the department.
Mayor Sharon Weston Broome said Salamoni will not receive monetary compensation in the resolution.
…
Leo Hamilton, an attorney for the Baton Rouge Police Department, said Thursday that Salamoni had a history of misbehavior prior to Sterling’s shooting.
…
Hamilton said Salamoni regularly shouted profanities and abused individuals with unnecessary uses of force, as he did in the Sterling incident. Salamoni’s ill temperament caused “blow ups” with other officers, including one with a ranking officer, Hamilton said. Another officer told their superior that if something weren’t done about Salamoni, he could kill somebody, according to Hamilton.
Hamilton also said that Salamoni had previously been arrested for his involvement in a physical altercation or domestic abuse incident prior to joining the police, which would have kept him from being accepted to the force (Levenson 1-3).
Attorneys representing the children of Alton Sterling, …, said Thursday that a decision by local officials against offering $5 million to settle a pending civil case showed they were uninformed about the matter.
Sterling was fatally shot on July 5, 2016, outside a Baton Rouge convenience store during a struggle.
Lawyers for Sterling’s five children subsequently filed a wrongful death suit in 2017 against the city, its police department and former police chief and the two officers involved. The suit alleges the shooting fit a pattern of racist behavior and excessive force by Baton Rouge Police. it also claims poor training and inadequate police procedures led to Sterling’s death.
…
Both the East Baton Rouge Parish attorney and lawyers for Sterling’s family met with a mediator on Oct. 3, 2019, about the case and they agreed on a proposed $5 million figure.
On Wednesday, the East Baton Rouge Metro Council heard the matter, which needed seven votes for the settlement to be approved. Six council members voted yes, five voted no and one abstained, meaning the judgment failed.
Barring a settlement, the lawsuit is set to go to trial in March 2021.
Attorney Chris Stewart said at a news conference in Baton Rouge that he was surprised by the decision.
“It was perfectly clear that the city council had no clue what is going on in this case,” Stewart said. “It was clear they were not informed about anything going on in this case and that puts the city at risk. The misinformation that was given lay in the hands of the parish attorney” (Johnson 1).
After a $5 million proposed settlement fell through, officials in Louisiana are now offering $4.5 million to settle the civil lawsuit brought by the family of Alton Sterling ...
The East Baton Rouge Parish Metro Council voted 7-4 Wednesday in favor of offering the multimillion-dollar settlement to the family of Alton Sterling, news outlets reported (Officials 1).
[Paste the link below on google if you choose to watch a CBS News produced video of the shooting]
Alton Sterling shooting video: Raw footage of fatal police ...
Works cited:
Dwyer, Colin. “Baton Rouge Officers Will Not Be Charged in Alton Sterling's Killing.” NPR, March 27, 2018. Net. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-w...
Fausset, Richard. “Baton Rouge Officer Is Fired in Alton Sterling Case as Police Release New Videos.” The New York Times, March 30, 2018. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/30/us...
Johnson, Chevel. “Alton Sterling case: Baton Rouge Nixes $5M Settlement Offer.” AP, September 10, 2020. Net. https://apnews.com/article/police-alt...
Lartey, Jamiles. “Alton Sterling Shooting: Two Police Officers Will Not Be Charged with Any Crime.” The Guardian, March 27, 2018. Net. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...
Levenson, Eric. “Baton Rouge Police Chief Apologizes for Hiring the Officer Who Killed Alton Sterling.” CNN, August 1, 2019. Net.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/01/us/alt...
McCausland, Phil. “Baton Rouge Police Fire Officer Who Killed Alton Sterling.” NBC News, March 30, 2018. Net. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/...
O’Donoghue, Julia. “Alton Sterling Shooting One Year On: What Has – and Hasn't – Happened.” NOLA, July 22, 2019. Net. https://www.nola.com/news/politics/ar...
“Officials Offer $4.5M Settlement over Alton Sterling’s Death.” AP, February 11, 2021. Net. https://apnews.com/article/race-and-e...
Samuels, Diana. “Alton Sterling Shooting: Images from Baton Rouge the Week After.” NOLA, updated July 19, 2019. Net. https://www.nola.com/news/crime_polic...
May 13, 2021
Bad Apples -- July 13, 2015 -- Sandra Bland
[Sandra] Bland was a graduate of Willowbrook High School in Villa Park, Illinois, where she ran track and played volleyball, The Chicago Tribune reported. She was also a varsity cheerleader and part of the marching band. As a member of the high school’s World Languages Honor Society, she was required to have at least an A average, according to the newspaper.
Bland recently worked on the administrative staff of a food service equipment and supplies dealer in Illinois, according to the Tribune. She and her family were members of DuPage African Methodist Episcopal Church, where her funeral will be held.
…
Bland was taking a new job at Prairie View A&M University in Texas. She had graduated from the historically black college in 2009 and was returning as a student ambassador, according to family members.
“To know Sandy was to love her,” said Sharon Cooper, one of Bland’s four sisters.
“She was someone who was extremely spontaneous, spunky, outgoing, truly filled with life and joy. When you think through the circumstances that have been shared with us to this point, it is unimaginable and difficult for us to wrap our minds around the Sandy that we knew – for this to be characteristic of her.”
…
Sandra Bland, like many people her age, regularly voiced opinions about racism and other topics on social media.
The 28-year-old posted about going natural with her hair, the “Black Lives Matter” movement, and even offered a “shout out” to a girl who handed her a bottle of water after a John Legend concert.
On Facebook, using the #SandySpeaks hashtag, she would monologue about police brutality and the plight of African Americans.
“Being a black person in America is very, very hard,” she said in a video posted in April. “At the moment black lives matter. They matter.”
Her last tweet, dated June 18, offered prayers for the nine people gunned down by a young white man a day earlier during a Bible study meeting at the historically black Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina (Sanchez, 1, 4-5, 6).
Bland talked about black-on-black crime. She blamed racism on both black and white people, saying both groups needed to make more friends across racial lines. She also cheerfully referred to the black people watching her videos as “kings” and “queens.”
She was dedicated to educating herself and others — she recorded one video from the DuSable Museum of African American History in Chicago, radiant with pride and enthusiasm.
“Sandy is gonna speak whenever I see something wrong,” Bland informed her audience (McDonald 3).
Ms. Bland was one of five sisters who grew up in a Chicago suburb before she left for Texas to attend Prairie View A&M University [located in rural west Texas] near Hempstead, the state’s self-proclaimed watermelon capital. She graduated with a degree in agriculture in 2009, returned to Illinois, and had come back to Texas to start a job at her alma mater when the fateful traffic stop occurred (Montgomery 4 “It”).
[Bland was pulled over near the campus on July 10, 2015, for failing to signal a lane change. Trooper Encinia later explained that he had followed Bland to check on “the condition of the vehicle, such as the make, the model, had a license plate, any other conditions.” She is overheard on the state trooper’s dash camcorder saying that he had approached her from behind at a high speed causing her to get out of his way. The trooper’s dash cam video allows us to see and hear most of what transpired during the stop and arrest. Using her cell phone, Bland recorded 37 seconds of her encounter with Officer Encinia. Near the end of the roadside confrontation, a bystander, from a distance, recorded briefly some of what transpired.]
The trooper, Brian T. Encinia, approached Ms. Bland’s car, took her information and returned to his vehicle to write out a citation.
The newly surfaced video [Bland’s recording] begins when the trooper walks back to her car with the ticket.
Trooper Encinia asked if Ms. Bland was O.K. and told her she seemed “very irritated.” She said she was, because she was being written up simply for moving out of the trooper’s way.
The trooper then asked her to put out the cigarette she was holding, and she refused. The encounter quickly escalated from there.
The trooper ordered Ms. Bland out of the car, but she refused. He shouted that he would “yank you out” and tried to do so, but she resisted. He pulled out a stun gun and yelled, “I will light you up.”
At that point, Ms. Bland got out of the car. The newly released video ends there, but the encounter remained heated; before long, Ms. Bland was shouting insults and profanities and the trooper had her in handcuffs (Hassan 2-3).
In part of the encounter that occurred out of the camera’s view, a scuffle could be heard, and Ms. Bland indicated that she was on the ground. “You just slammed me, knocked my head into the ground,” she said.
Addressing Trooper Encinia with an expletive, she said, “I got epilepsy.”
Trooper Encinia responded, “Good.”
In the affidavit, Trooper Encinia described Ms. Bland as “combative and uncooperative” and said she had begun swinging at him with her elbows after she was removed from the car, handcuffed and forcibly subdued, according to his arrest report.
“Bland was placed in handcuffs for officer safety,” Trooper Encinia said in the arrest affidavit. “Bland began swinging her elbows at me and then kicked my right leg in the shin. I had a pain in my right leg and suffered small cuts on my right hand.”
The affidavit was released by the Waller County district attorney’s office, and the Department of Public Safety released the dashboard camera’s video of the arrest (Montgomery 4-5 “Threatened”).
After the arrest, Encinia told authorities that he feared for his life and didn’t know what Bland could grab inside her car and purse.
“My safety was in jeopardy at more than one time,” Encinia told investigators (Collister 3).
Ms. Bland was booked and placed in a housing area for women in the one-story Waller County Jail. Three days later, on July 13, a guard making rounds found her hanging in her 15-by-20-foot cell.
Waller County officials said she was found in a “semi-standing position,” with a plastic trash-can liner roped around her neck and affixed to a U-shaped metal hook overhead. Ms. Bland was pronounced dead at 9:16 a.m. The authorities ruled her death a suicide.
Two of her jailers left the Waller County sheriff’s office shortly afterward (Hassan 4).
Waller County Sheriff R. Glenn Smith said Bland told the county jailer during her intake that she had previously tried to kill herself.
Authorities released jail intake forms late Wednesday that appear to show Bland answering “yes” to the following questions: Have you ever been very depressed? Do you feel this way now? Have you had thoughts of killing yourself in the last year? Have you ever attempted suicide?
But, later, on a different sheet, the word “no” appears next to questions about mental illness and attempted suicide. A reason for the apparent discrepancy was not immediately clear.
Separately, an inmate who was held in a cell adjacent to Bland told CNN she did not hear any commotion or screaming that would suggest foul play before Bland was found dead.
The woman said Bland wasn’t eating, and was emotional and often crying during her three days in the jail. She was also stressed about missing her first day of work at her new job, said Alexandria Pyle.
“She found out her bond was $5,000, and no one – she was calling and calling – and no one was answering, and then after that she just broke down. She was crying and crying,” Pyle said (Sanchez 4).
Rafael Zuniga and Michael Serges left the Waller County sheriff’s office in September 2015 for the Waller Police Department, a smaller agency with less responsibility, according to state records obtained by The Associated Press. They started work on the same day.
They have kept those jobs even after admitting under oath their roles in falsifying a jail monitoring log that indicated guards checked on Bland an hour before she was found hanging in her cell in July 2015, according to an attorney for the Bland family, which has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the county and several employees, including the two former jailers. Local authorities ruled Bland’s death a suicide.
Attorney Tom Rhodes told the AP this week that Zuniga acknowledged in a deposition that the log was filled out in advance with times that he supposedly conducted cell checks. Serges acknowledged that he signed the bottom of the log sheet at the beginning of the shift before any actual checks, according to Rhodes, who described the depositions but did not provide transcripts to the AP.
...
Jail records show Bland had said at booking she previously tried to commit suicide, which means she should have been checked at least every 30 minutes by jail standards. State guidelines say all inmates are to be checked hourly.
Instead, two hours elapsed before jailers noticed Bland was unconscious, which isn’t reflected in the jail log, Rhodes told the AP.
The sheriff’s office has acknowledged the documented 8 a.m. in-person check was done by intercom.
The Texas Commission on Jail Standards cited the jail after Bland’s death for not observing inmates in person and failing to provide documentation that its staff had been trained on how to deal with potentially suicidal inmates.
“There’s a lot more going on here than there’s reflected in the documents,” Rhodes said. “Because the documents in many cases are just flat-out wrong.”
…
When asked whether they had checked Bland’s cell at 8:01 a.m., as noted in the jail log, both Zuniga and Serges said they had not, Rhodes said. Bland was pronounced dead at 9:06 a.m., authorities said (Fusaro 1-2).
… Encinia initially claimed that he pulled Bland out of her car so that he could more safely conduct the stop when she failed to use a turning signal. A grand jury found that to be false and indicted him on a perjury charge, the Texas Tribune reports. On Wednesday, the judge dismissed that charge after the cop's defense team cut a deal contingent on Encinia never working in law enforcement again.
"Brian and his family appreciate the thoughtful review by the prosecutors," Encinia's lawyer said in a statement. "Dismissal was the right thing to do. The Encinias will remain forever grateful to their family, friends, and members of the law enforcement community for all their support."
Ever since her death, Bland's family has vehemently opposed a medical examiner's assertion, citing the 28-year-old activist’s brand-new job as a compelling reason to live.
In July 2016, a local cop levied the accusation that he was commanded to stay quiet about certain aspects of Bland's time in custody.
Prairie View officer Michael Kelley said that Encinia had to cook up an "assaulting a public servant charge" against Bland with the help of a supervisor in order to justify her detainment. He also said that Bland came into jail with marks on her forehead—a detail that was omitted by the police report Encinia filled out.
Although no one was ultimately held responsible for Bland's death, her name remains a focal point in the national conversation about police brutality.
Additionally, the Texas legislature passed the Sandra Bland Act on June 15, which requires independent investigations of deaths that take place in jails (Conti 1-2).
The circumstances of her arrest and death led the Texas Legislature to pass the “Sandra Bland Act,” which expands citizens' protections during police interactions. It also helps people with a history of mental health or substance abuse issues get treatment, and get easier access to bond if they end up in jail.
But Houston Democratic state Rep. Garnet Coleman, who cosponsored the bill, told Texas Standard host David Brown on Monday that it fell short of his original goals. He said key provisions were left out of the final law, including an end to "pretext" stops. That means an officer doesn't need to have probable cause to stop a driver, only a "reasonable suspicion" that the driver might have committed a crime.
"We all know what happened in New York with their policy of stop and frisk," Coleman said. "This is stop and frisk in a car."
Coleman and other advocates of the "Sandra Bland Act," including [state] Rep. Nicole Collier, a Democrat from Fort Worth who chairs the Criminal Jurisprudence Committee, said other important provisions were left out of the 2017 law. Limits would have been placed on arrests in fine-only cases, like the traffic stop that led to Bland's death, Collier [said] ...
"She was arrested for an alleged minor traffic violation," she said. "We want to be able to limit those types of interactions that could escalate unnecessarily."
Collier said addressing the kinds of police practices that led to Bland being stopped, and that contribute to incidents of violence against Black Americans, requires a rethinking of how officers are hired.
“Not everybody deserves to be a law enforcement officer," she said. "That is a position in high regard, with a lot of authority."
Collier advocated for greater supervision over police, and creating a standard definition of "excessive force" across police agencies.
Despite what's missing from the final version of the "Sandra Bland Act," Coleman said it does include important provisions like deescalation training for officers.
The Legislative Black Caucus has asked Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to make police reform a priority during the 2021 legislative session. But Abbott, so far, has declined to commit to such an effort (Diaz 2-3).
[You may access the two important videos by pasting these links on Googler]
7 plus-minute dashcam video segment of a 59 minute recording.
https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/1000...
Bland’s 39 second cell phone video. (Scroll down the article’s page a little.)
https://www.npr.org/2019/05/07/721086...
A Black Writer’s Commentary
I am sick and tired of us falling for the okie-doke. I am sick and tired of the abuse of black women being rationalized away because we talk back and don’t stay in our place.
Sandra Bland did not kill herself.
I keep repeating myself for good reason: because despite, however “woke” you may be, you probably have to be convinced that Bland’s death was undeserving, and, much more, not at her own hands.
Because this is the burden of blackness: to always be guilty until proven innocent. And even when not proven guilty, to always, always, always have people be suspicious of you.
On Tuesday, I was reminded anew that I could’ve been a murdered somebody, and, folks, including black folk who know and love me, would believe it was possible that I killed me.
And so I’m waiting, not on a reopened investigation—which is more than warranted.
Nor am I waiting on justice in dollars or in jail sentences, because she already got a futile street sign. I’m waiting on [when] black folk realize how much we’ve internalized white supremacy.
I’m waiting because if I ever come up dead while in police custody, I want y’all to know that somebody killed me. Don’t let no one tell y’all nothing different, ever.
That is why I’m going to keep telling the world again and again and again: Sandra Bland did not kill herself (deGregory 1-2).
Works cited:
Collister, Brian. “Sandra Bland Recorded Her Own Arrest. Watch Her Cellphone Video from the 2015 Traffic Stop.” WFAA, Updated May 7, 2019. Net. https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/san...
Conti, Allie. “The Cop Who Arrested Sandra Bland Was Cleared of All Charges.” Vice, June 29, 2017. Net. https://www.vice.com/en/article/d38z4...
deGregory, Crystal A. “deGregory: ‘Sandra Bland Did Not Kill Herself’.” The Atlanta Voice, May 9, 2019. Net. https://www.theatlantavoice.com/artic...
Diaz, Joy. “Lawmakers Push for More Police Reforms on Five-Year Anniversary of Sandra Bland's Death.” KUT90.5, July 13, 2020. Net. https://www.kut.org/texas/2020-07-13/...
Fusaro, Nick. “2 Jailers Moved into Policing Jobs after Sandra Bland’s Death.” News 10, Updated August 6, 2016. Net. https://www.news10.com/news/2-jailers...
Hassan, Adeel. “The Sandra Bland Video: What We Know.” The New York Times, May 7, 2019. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/07/us...
McDonald, Soraya Nadia. “HBO’s ‘Say Her Name’ Has Few Answers about What Happened to Sandra Bland.” The Undefeated, December 3, 2018. Net. https://theundefeated.com/features/hb...
Montgomery, David. “Sandra Bland, It Turns Out, Filmed Traffic Stop Confrontation Herself.” The New York Times, May 7, 2019. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/07/us...
Montgomery, David. “Sandra Bland Was Threatened with Taser, Police Video Shows.” The New York Times, July 21, 2015. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/22/us...
Sanchez, Ray. “Who was Sandra Bland?” CNN, Updated July 23, 2015. Net. https://www.cnn.com/2015/07/22/us/san...
Bland recently worked on the administrative staff of a food service equipment and supplies dealer in Illinois, according to the Tribune. She and her family were members of DuPage African Methodist Episcopal Church, where her funeral will be held.
…
Bland was taking a new job at Prairie View A&M University in Texas. She had graduated from the historically black college in 2009 and was returning as a student ambassador, according to family members.
“To know Sandy was to love her,” said Sharon Cooper, one of Bland’s four sisters.
“She was someone who was extremely spontaneous, spunky, outgoing, truly filled with life and joy. When you think through the circumstances that have been shared with us to this point, it is unimaginable and difficult for us to wrap our minds around the Sandy that we knew – for this to be characteristic of her.”
…
Sandra Bland, like many people her age, regularly voiced opinions about racism and other topics on social media.
The 28-year-old posted about going natural with her hair, the “Black Lives Matter” movement, and even offered a “shout out” to a girl who handed her a bottle of water after a John Legend concert.
On Facebook, using the #SandySpeaks hashtag, she would monologue about police brutality and the plight of African Americans.
“Being a black person in America is very, very hard,” she said in a video posted in April. “At the moment black lives matter. They matter.”
Her last tweet, dated June 18, offered prayers for the nine people gunned down by a young white man a day earlier during a Bible study meeting at the historically black Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina (Sanchez, 1, 4-5, 6).
Bland talked about black-on-black crime. She blamed racism on both black and white people, saying both groups needed to make more friends across racial lines. She also cheerfully referred to the black people watching her videos as “kings” and “queens.”
She was dedicated to educating herself and others — she recorded one video from the DuSable Museum of African American History in Chicago, radiant with pride and enthusiasm.
“Sandy is gonna speak whenever I see something wrong,” Bland informed her audience (McDonald 3).
Ms. Bland was one of five sisters who grew up in a Chicago suburb before she left for Texas to attend Prairie View A&M University [located in rural west Texas] near Hempstead, the state’s self-proclaimed watermelon capital. She graduated with a degree in agriculture in 2009, returned to Illinois, and had come back to Texas to start a job at her alma mater when the fateful traffic stop occurred (Montgomery 4 “It”).
[Bland was pulled over near the campus on July 10, 2015, for failing to signal a lane change. Trooper Encinia later explained that he had followed Bland to check on “the condition of the vehicle, such as the make, the model, had a license plate, any other conditions.” She is overheard on the state trooper’s dash camcorder saying that he had approached her from behind at a high speed causing her to get out of his way. The trooper’s dash cam video allows us to see and hear most of what transpired during the stop and arrest. Using her cell phone, Bland recorded 37 seconds of her encounter with Officer Encinia. Near the end of the roadside confrontation, a bystander, from a distance, recorded briefly some of what transpired.]
The trooper, Brian T. Encinia, approached Ms. Bland’s car, took her information and returned to his vehicle to write out a citation.
The newly surfaced video [Bland’s recording] begins when the trooper walks back to her car with the ticket.
Trooper Encinia asked if Ms. Bland was O.K. and told her she seemed “very irritated.” She said she was, because she was being written up simply for moving out of the trooper’s way.
The trooper then asked her to put out the cigarette she was holding, and she refused. The encounter quickly escalated from there.
The trooper ordered Ms. Bland out of the car, but she refused. He shouted that he would “yank you out” and tried to do so, but she resisted. He pulled out a stun gun and yelled, “I will light you up.”
At that point, Ms. Bland got out of the car. The newly released video ends there, but the encounter remained heated; before long, Ms. Bland was shouting insults and profanities and the trooper had her in handcuffs (Hassan 2-3).
In part of the encounter that occurred out of the camera’s view, a scuffle could be heard, and Ms. Bland indicated that she was on the ground. “You just slammed me, knocked my head into the ground,” she said.
Addressing Trooper Encinia with an expletive, she said, “I got epilepsy.”
Trooper Encinia responded, “Good.”
In the affidavit, Trooper Encinia described Ms. Bland as “combative and uncooperative” and said she had begun swinging at him with her elbows after she was removed from the car, handcuffed and forcibly subdued, according to his arrest report.
“Bland was placed in handcuffs for officer safety,” Trooper Encinia said in the arrest affidavit. “Bland began swinging her elbows at me and then kicked my right leg in the shin. I had a pain in my right leg and suffered small cuts on my right hand.”
The affidavit was released by the Waller County district attorney’s office, and the Department of Public Safety released the dashboard camera’s video of the arrest (Montgomery 4-5 “Threatened”).
After the arrest, Encinia told authorities that he feared for his life and didn’t know what Bland could grab inside her car and purse.
“My safety was in jeopardy at more than one time,” Encinia told investigators (Collister 3).
Ms. Bland was booked and placed in a housing area for women in the one-story Waller County Jail. Three days later, on July 13, a guard making rounds found her hanging in her 15-by-20-foot cell.
Waller County officials said she was found in a “semi-standing position,” with a plastic trash-can liner roped around her neck and affixed to a U-shaped metal hook overhead. Ms. Bland was pronounced dead at 9:16 a.m. The authorities ruled her death a suicide.
Two of her jailers left the Waller County sheriff’s office shortly afterward (Hassan 4).
Waller County Sheriff R. Glenn Smith said Bland told the county jailer during her intake that she had previously tried to kill herself.
Authorities released jail intake forms late Wednesday that appear to show Bland answering “yes” to the following questions: Have you ever been very depressed? Do you feel this way now? Have you had thoughts of killing yourself in the last year? Have you ever attempted suicide?
But, later, on a different sheet, the word “no” appears next to questions about mental illness and attempted suicide. A reason for the apparent discrepancy was not immediately clear.
Separately, an inmate who was held in a cell adjacent to Bland told CNN she did not hear any commotion or screaming that would suggest foul play before Bland was found dead.
The woman said Bland wasn’t eating, and was emotional and often crying during her three days in the jail. She was also stressed about missing her first day of work at her new job, said Alexandria Pyle.
“She found out her bond was $5,000, and no one – she was calling and calling – and no one was answering, and then after that she just broke down. She was crying and crying,” Pyle said (Sanchez 4).
Rafael Zuniga and Michael Serges left the Waller County sheriff’s office in September 2015 for the Waller Police Department, a smaller agency with less responsibility, according to state records obtained by The Associated Press. They started work on the same day.
They have kept those jobs even after admitting under oath their roles in falsifying a jail monitoring log that indicated guards checked on Bland an hour before she was found hanging in her cell in July 2015, according to an attorney for the Bland family, which has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the county and several employees, including the two former jailers. Local authorities ruled Bland’s death a suicide.
Attorney Tom Rhodes told the AP this week that Zuniga acknowledged in a deposition that the log was filled out in advance with times that he supposedly conducted cell checks. Serges acknowledged that he signed the bottom of the log sheet at the beginning of the shift before any actual checks, according to Rhodes, who described the depositions but did not provide transcripts to the AP.
...
Jail records show Bland had said at booking she previously tried to commit suicide, which means she should have been checked at least every 30 minutes by jail standards. State guidelines say all inmates are to be checked hourly.
Instead, two hours elapsed before jailers noticed Bland was unconscious, which isn’t reflected in the jail log, Rhodes told the AP.
The sheriff’s office has acknowledged the documented 8 a.m. in-person check was done by intercom.
The Texas Commission on Jail Standards cited the jail after Bland’s death for not observing inmates in person and failing to provide documentation that its staff had been trained on how to deal with potentially suicidal inmates.
“There’s a lot more going on here than there’s reflected in the documents,” Rhodes said. “Because the documents in many cases are just flat-out wrong.”
…
When asked whether they had checked Bland’s cell at 8:01 a.m., as noted in the jail log, both Zuniga and Serges said they had not, Rhodes said. Bland was pronounced dead at 9:06 a.m., authorities said (Fusaro 1-2).
… Encinia initially claimed that he pulled Bland out of her car so that he could more safely conduct the stop when she failed to use a turning signal. A grand jury found that to be false and indicted him on a perjury charge, the Texas Tribune reports. On Wednesday, the judge dismissed that charge after the cop's defense team cut a deal contingent on Encinia never working in law enforcement again.
"Brian and his family appreciate the thoughtful review by the prosecutors," Encinia's lawyer said in a statement. "Dismissal was the right thing to do. The Encinias will remain forever grateful to their family, friends, and members of the law enforcement community for all their support."
Ever since her death, Bland's family has vehemently opposed a medical examiner's assertion, citing the 28-year-old activist’s brand-new job as a compelling reason to live.
In July 2016, a local cop levied the accusation that he was commanded to stay quiet about certain aspects of Bland's time in custody.
Prairie View officer Michael Kelley said that Encinia had to cook up an "assaulting a public servant charge" against Bland with the help of a supervisor in order to justify her detainment. He also said that Bland came into jail with marks on her forehead—a detail that was omitted by the police report Encinia filled out.
Although no one was ultimately held responsible for Bland's death, her name remains a focal point in the national conversation about police brutality.
Additionally, the Texas legislature passed the Sandra Bland Act on June 15, which requires independent investigations of deaths that take place in jails (Conti 1-2).
The circumstances of her arrest and death led the Texas Legislature to pass the “Sandra Bland Act,” which expands citizens' protections during police interactions. It also helps people with a history of mental health or substance abuse issues get treatment, and get easier access to bond if they end up in jail.
But Houston Democratic state Rep. Garnet Coleman, who cosponsored the bill, told Texas Standard host David Brown on Monday that it fell short of his original goals. He said key provisions were left out of the final law, including an end to "pretext" stops. That means an officer doesn't need to have probable cause to stop a driver, only a "reasonable suspicion" that the driver might have committed a crime.
"We all know what happened in New York with their policy of stop and frisk," Coleman said. "This is stop and frisk in a car."
Coleman and other advocates of the "Sandra Bland Act," including [state] Rep. Nicole Collier, a Democrat from Fort Worth who chairs the Criminal Jurisprudence Committee, said other important provisions were left out of the 2017 law. Limits would have been placed on arrests in fine-only cases, like the traffic stop that led to Bland's death, Collier [said] ...
"She was arrested for an alleged minor traffic violation," she said. "We want to be able to limit those types of interactions that could escalate unnecessarily."
Collier said addressing the kinds of police practices that led to Bland being stopped, and that contribute to incidents of violence against Black Americans, requires a rethinking of how officers are hired.
“Not everybody deserves to be a law enforcement officer," she said. "That is a position in high regard, with a lot of authority."
Collier advocated for greater supervision over police, and creating a standard definition of "excessive force" across police agencies.
Despite what's missing from the final version of the "Sandra Bland Act," Coleman said it does include important provisions like deescalation training for officers.
The Legislative Black Caucus has asked Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to make police reform a priority during the 2021 legislative session. But Abbott, so far, has declined to commit to such an effort (Diaz 2-3).
[You may access the two important videos by pasting these links on Googler]
7 plus-minute dashcam video segment of a 59 minute recording.
https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/1000...
Bland’s 39 second cell phone video. (Scroll down the article’s page a little.)
https://www.npr.org/2019/05/07/721086...
A Black Writer’s Commentary
I am sick and tired of us falling for the okie-doke. I am sick and tired of the abuse of black women being rationalized away because we talk back and don’t stay in our place.
Sandra Bland did not kill herself.
I keep repeating myself for good reason: because despite, however “woke” you may be, you probably have to be convinced that Bland’s death was undeserving, and, much more, not at her own hands.
Because this is the burden of blackness: to always be guilty until proven innocent. And even when not proven guilty, to always, always, always have people be suspicious of you.
On Tuesday, I was reminded anew that I could’ve been a murdered somebody, and, folks, including black folk who know and love me, would believe it was possible that I killed me.
And so I’m waiting, not on a reopened investigation—which is more than warranted.
Nor am I waiting on justice in dollars or in jail sentences, because she already got a futile street sign. I’m waiting on [when] black folk realize how much we’ve internalized white supremacy.
I’m waiting because if I ever come up dead while in police custody, I want y’all to know that somebody killed me. Don’t let no one tell y’all nothing different, ever.
That is why I’m going to keep telling the world again and again and again: Sandra Bland did not kill herself (deGregory 1-2).
Works cited:
Collister, Brian. “Sandra Bland Recorded Her Own Arrest. Watch Her Cellphone Video from the 2015 Traffic Stop.” WFAA, Updated May 7, 2019. Net. https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/san...
Conti, Allie. “The Cop Who Arrested Sandra Bland Was Cleared of All Charges.” Vice, June 29, 2017. Net. https://www.vice.com/en/article/d38z4...
deGregory, Crystal A. “deGregory: ‘Sandra Bland Did Not Kill Herself’.” The Atlanta Voice, May 9, 2019. Net. https://www.theatlantavoice.com/artic...
Diaz, Joy. “Lawmakers Push for More Police Reforms on Five-Year Anniversary of Sandra Bland's Death.” KUT90.5, July 13, 2020. Net. https://www.kut.org/texas/2020-07-13/...
Fusaro, Nick. “2 Jailers Moved into Policing Jobs after Sandra Bland’s Death.” News 10, Updated August 6, 2016. Net. https://www.news10.com/news/2-jailers...
Hassan, Adeel. “The Sandra Bland Video: What We Know.” The New York Times, May 7, 2019. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/07/us...
McDonald, Soraya Nadia. “HBO’s ‘Say Her Name’ Has Few Answers about What Happened to Sandra Bland.” The Undefeated, December 3, 2018. Net. https://theundefeated.com/features/hb...
Montgomery, David. “Sandra Bland, It Turns Out, Filmed Traffic Stop Confrontation Herself.” The New York Times, May 7, 2019. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/07/us...
Montgomery, David. “Sandra Bland Was Threatened with Taser, Police Video Shows.” The New York Times, July 21, 2015. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/22/us...
Sanchez, Ray. “Who was Sandra Bland?” CNN, Updated July 23, 2015. Net. https://www.cnn.com/2015/07/22/us/san...
May 9, 2021
Bad Apples -- April 19, 2015 -- Freddie Gray
When Freddie Gray briefly locked eyes with police at 8:39 a.m. on a corner of an impoverished West Baltimore neighborhood two weeks ago, they seemed to recognize each other immediately. As three officers approached on bicycles along West North Avenue, the 25-year-old Gray was on the east corner of North Mount Street chatting with a friend, according to Shawn Washington, who frequents the block.
"Ay, yo, here comes Time Out," a young man on the opposite corner yelled, using a neighborhood term for police.
Gray swore, taking off on foot as the officers began hot-stepping on their pedals to catch up. One officer jumped off his bike to chase Gray on foot, police said.
…
Michael Robertson, 27, said his friend — who had a record of drug arrests — ran because he "had a history with that police beating him" (Rector “Mystery” 1).
On April 12, 2015, Freddie Carlos Gray Jr. was arrested in the Gilmor Homes housing development in West Baltimore by three officers on bike patrol. Less than an hour later, a medic was called to the Western District police station, where Gray, 25, was unconscious and not breathing. On April 19, Gray died from complications due to a cervical spine injury.
Baltimore resident Kevin Moore captured some of Gray’s arrest on video that was widely shared. The video showed Gray screaming as he was restrained on his belly by a heavyset bike officer, Garrett Miller, and then loaded into a police transport van, his legs dragging. “I hear the screams every night,” Moore later said. “‘I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I need help, I need medical attention.’ This is the shit that play in my mind over and over again.”
…
At a press conference the day after Gray died, the Baltimore Police Department revealed that the transport van that picked him up made several stops, including to pick up another prisoner. Deputy Commissioner Jerry Rodriguez also insisted, “We have no evidence—physical or video or statements—of any use of force.”
On May 1, street protests turned into celebrations when State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby filed charges against six officers in Gray’s death. The charges—ranging from misconduct in office to manslaughter and second-degree depraved-heart murder—pertained to the officers’ failure to put Gray in a seatbelt or call for timely medical assistance. In September 2015, Baltimore reached a $6.4 million settlement with Gray’s family. But Mosby’s cases ended up failing in criminal court. After one mistrial and three acquittals on all charges, Mosby dropped charges against the remaining three officers in July 2016 (Barron 1-3).
[Here are the identities of and information about the six officers charged]
[William G. Porter] was requested twice by Gray for a medic, but did not call for one. He was charged with involuntary manslaughter; second-degree assault; misconduct in office.
Caesar R. Goodson Jr. …, the driver of the van, was charged with second-degree depraved-heart murder; involuntary manslaughter; second-degree assault; manslaughter by vehicle (gross negligence); manslaughter by vehicle (criminal negligence); and misconduct in office.
Garrett E. Miller and Edward M. Nero ... caught Gray after he fled, and, after apprehending him, handcuffed Gray with his arms behind his back. Miller was charged with two counts of second-degree assault; two counts of misconduct in office; and false imprisonment. Nero was charged with two counts of second-degree assault; misconduct in office and false imprisonment.
Brian W. Rice, who initially made eye contact with Gray while on a bicycle patrol, … was charged with involuntary manslaughter; two counts of second-degree assault; manslaughter by vehicle (gross negligence); two counts of misconduct in office; and false imprisonment.
Alicia D. White … was accused of not calling for medical assistance when she encountered Gray, "despite the fact she was advised that he needed a medic". She was charged with involuntary manslaughter; second-degree assault; and misconduct (Death 4-5).
The Appeal obtained evidence from the discovery file in the criminal case against the officers that, along with the police department’s Internal Affairs investigation, sheds light on what occurred during Gray’s arrest. The evidence includes video and audio interviews conducted by investigators with eyewitnesses, officers, and medics, as well as the police department’s full Internal Affairs investigation.
The new files reveal numerous unreported eyewitness accounts of force by officers, particularly at the van’s second stop.
Witnesses told investigators that they saw Gray thrown headfirst into the van at that stop. Several witnesses also described him becoming quiet and motionless at this stop, after screaming loudly for several minutes.
According to the autopsy report, Gray’s fatal injury, usually seen in “shallow water diving incidents,” was caused by a “high-energy” impact of his head against a hard surface.
But the medical examiner testified in court that she relied on the accounts of police officers, who were the primary suspects in the case, to make her conclusions about when and how Gray died. She made no mention of any civilian witnesses to force in her autopsy report or trial testimony. She also said the state’s attorney’s office determined which statements she received. The newly obtained evidence supports and broadens the investigation that journalist Amelia McDonell-Parry and I conducted into Gray’s death for the 2017 podcast “Undisclosed: The Killing of Freddie Gray.”
STOP ONE: GRAY’S ARREST
Kevin Moore’s video brought international attention to Gray’s arrest on Presbury Street in West Baltimore, which became known as “stop one” of the police van’s six-stop journey. But the new files reveal that throughout April 2015, police and prosecutors took numerous statements from eyewitnesses who reported accounts of excessive force before Moore started filming.
With some variations in their accounts, these witnesses described officers forcefully restraining Gray, putting a knee into his upper back, and dragging him aggressively across the concrete.
And Gray’s body showed signs of trauma, including a fresh-looking wound on his shoulder that was never accounted for or investigated by police:
Some witnesses also described Gray being beaten and/or shot with a Taser during his initial arrest. Moore can be heard on his own video screaming, “That was after they tased the fuck out of him.”
Despite Gray’s apparent physical distress during stop one, police, prosecutors, and the medical examiner ruled out the possibility that he had been fatally injured during his arrest. They pointed to his ability to lift his neck, speak, and bear weight on his legs when entering the van in Moore’s video. …
Gray’s specific type of fatal injury, a “jumped facet” of his C4 and C5 cervical spine, was caused by an “abrupt deceleration” of his rotated head against a hard surface, according to the autopsy. Even Officer Miller, who weighed 240 pounds, could not cause that specific injury by putting pressure on Gray’s spine from above, according to Dr. Leigh Hlavaty, professor of pathology at the University of Michigan. “Even if Freddie had his head down and turned to the side, the knee to the back of the neck was not going to be the force to create this jump lock facet type of fracture,” she explained on the “Undisclosed” podcast.
…
STOP TWO: AROUND THE CORNER
According to the police, Lieutenant Brian Rice and the other bike officers decided to send Gray directly to Central Booking rather than question him at the station. After stop one, they met up with the van driver around the corner, at Mount and Baker streets, to complete the arrest process away from the crowd of observers. There, officers shackled Gray’s ankles.
Gray can be heard screaming on the van driver’s dispatch call between stops one and two, and the accounts that witnesses provided to investigators about stop two are consistent. These stories mostly went unreported by the media, leaving a piece of the history of what happened to Gray out of the public narrative.
Moore, who took the cell phone video of stop one, was the first witness to report to police about stop two. He did so mere hours after Gray’s arrest.
… “They pulled him out the paddy wagon, tased him again, and then threw him back in.”
He clarified this later: “They lift him up, wet noodle, throw him in the back of the paddy wagon.”
“Feet first or headfirst?” one detective asked.
“Headfirst,” Moore responded.
Moore told detectives that one officer threatened him and other witnesses: “You’d better get the F away from here,” he reported the officer saying. “Jail, jail, jail.”
The detectives pressed Moore for details about the alleged Taser shooting.
“They got the prongs that shoot out,” Moore said, gesturing toward his right knee. “They’re on him. You know?”
“You can physically see the prongs?” the detective asked.
“I can physically see the prongs in his leg,” Moore answered.
Baltimore police officials denied that Gray was ever shot with a Taser. During the April 20 press conference, Deputy Commissioner Rodriguez said that there was no evidence of any use of a Taser, neither “physical nor any of the statements.” But Moore provided his statement about Gray’s alleged tasing on April 12.
…
In total, there were 11 known witnesses to stop two. Nine reported that Gray was thrown into the van, many saying “headfirst.”
Most reported Gray screaming loudly and then becoming quiet and/or motionless at this stop. Police asked three witnesses to give longer videotaped interviews on the record.
Prosecutors asked just [Brandon] Ross and [Jamel] Baker [two friends of Gray] to testify in court. Their testimony was mostly limited to identifying Gray in videos. Neither was asked about Gray being thrown headfirst into the van.
The prosecution’s case was that Gray was still alive and well leaving stop two, based on the autopsy report. To support this claim, prosecutors actively disputed claims that Gray was injured during the first two stops during the four trials. While ostensibly holding the officers accountable in Gray’s death, the state relied mostly on what law enforcement said that morning.
STOP TWO: ACCORDING TO THE POLICE
Over four trials, the officers present at stop two offered consistent accounts about what happened there: Rice and Miller pulled Gray out of the van, Miller shackled his ankles, and Gray acted like a “dead fish” in order to resist arrest. Rice pulled Gray into the van, and Nero helped by lifting his legs. Then, the officers laid Gray flat on the van’s floor and closed its doors. Each officer testified that Gray then suddenly got up and started banging, yelling, and shaking the van back and forth, despite being shackled at the hands and feet.
But the accounts presented by officers in court changed significantly from what they told investigators during the afternoon of Gray’s arrest. Their original stories were not consistent and did not include what Ross’s video showed: Gray’s motionless body hanging out of the van.
The officers’ first-day statements were especially contradictory and confusing about how they put Gray back into the van—notable, given the clarity of witness claims that he was thrown. “We lifted him up and actually put him back up into the wagon,” Lt. Rice said. Nero said that all of the officers worked together to “push” Gray in the van. Miller believed that Rice pulled him in alone. …
Lt. Rice’s account of Gray’s arrest differed most starkly from the other officers. He said that Gray was “shaking the van violently” throughout stops one and two. Miller mentioned the shaking, but only at the end of stop two.
Rice’s account was important, because the van-shaking story became a pillar of the Freddie Gray case narrative. The shaking, which only Rice had reported, is mentioned in the autopsy report as occurring throughout stops one and two. It became the defense’s story in court for how stop two concluded, repeated by all of the officers present at the scene. It also became central to the media narrative about the case.
But Rice’s van-shaking story was not corroborated by any civilian witnesses.
…
During his first-day interview, Rice also repeatedly said that Gray was “hitting his head” against the van walls after the doors were closed at stop two. “When he got back into the wagon, the wagon began shaking violently, and he was hitting his head, and kicking the door,” he said.
But Rice’s account of Gray’s head striking the van’s walls never made it to trial. It wasn’t supported by the physical evidence: Gray’s head only had one point of major impact, not surface injuries. …
…
Investigators heard this account one more time on April 12 from Donta Allen, who was a passenger in the van with Gray. The bike officers had placed Allen on the other side of a metal partition from Gray at stop five, the last stop before the Western District. Allen told investigators, “It sounded like he was banging his head against the metal, like he was trying to knock himself out or something.”
In media interviews, Allen later changed his statement, saying that he only heard “light banging.” During the July 2016 trial of Officer Goodson, he also testified that he had spoken to Novak ...
During Goodson’s trial, Judge Barry G. Williams scolded prosecutors for failing to turn over to the defense evidence of two private meetings they held with Allen. “I’m not saying you did anything nefariously,” Williams said. “I’m saying you don’t know what exculpatory means.”
The story that Allen heard Gray banging his head in the police van was repeated throughout the media. But the public never learned that Lt. Rice was a primary source. …
Prosecutors largely did not hold the officers accountable for their confused and changed stories about stop two. The state’s case was based on the autopsy, which determined that Gray was fatally injured sometime between stops two and four while the van was in motion. Dr. Allan’s report, however, was not conclusive: “Therefore, the time the injury most likely occurred was after the 2nd but before the 4th stop of the van, and possibly before the 3rd stop,” she wrote (Barron 4-19).
Happenings at the Remaining Stops, According to the Officers
Video indicates at around 8:56 am, while Officer Goodson was transporting Gray in the back of the wagon from Stop 2 to central booking, he made a wide right turn onto Freemont Avenue from Riggs Street, and briefly crossed over the double yellow line in the roadway. He then made an unannounced stop near Freemont Avenue (Stop 3). While there, Goodson got out of the wagon, walked to the rear of the vehicle, and disappeared from camera view for approximately 10 seconds. Goodson then got back in the van and drove away. It is unclear whether Goodson had any interaction with Gray at the back of the wagon at this stop, or what Goodson might have observed or heard.
Goodson declined to provide a statement to state investigators about Gray or about that day. There is no other evidence of what occurred at Stop 3.
At approximately 8:59 am, after leaving Stop 3, Officer Goodson radioed to request that a police unit meet him at Druid Hill Avenue and Dolphin Street (Stop 4) for the purpose of checking on Gray. Officer Porter answered Goodson’s call and later provided two statements to investigators. He also testified at trial about his version of events. As Goodson has never given a statement in the criminal case, and could not legally be compelled to do so, Porter’s accounts offer the only evidence of what occurred at Stop 4.
According to Porter, when he arrived at Stop 4, he met Goodson at the rear of the wagon, and Goodson opened the doors without discussion. There, Porter observed Gray lying on his stomach on the floor of the wagon with his head toward the front of the wagon, his feet toward the door, and his hands cuffed behind him. Gray asked for “help,” prompting Porter to ask what was wrong with him.
According to Porter, Gray did not immediately reply, and then stated, “Help. Help me up.” In one of his statements to investigators, Porter is alleged to have also heard Gray say “I can’t breathe,” although he later denied having heard that.
After Gray asked for help, Officer Porter entered the wagon, pulled Gray up, and placed him on the bench. According to Porter, Gray used his own legs to assist Porter in placing him on the bench. Once there, Gray sat normally and supported his own head.
Porter asked Gray if he wanted to go to the hospital, and Gray replied that he did. Gray did not complain of pain or of a specific injury, and Porter did not see any visible injury. Gray spoke in a regular tone of voice and breathed normally. According to Porter, because there were no signs of genuine medical distress, Porter did not believe that Gray was actually injured, despite Gray’s complaints. Porter allegedly believed that Gray was either lethargic from banging against the wagon, or was feigning a medical issue in order to avoid going to jail. However, because of Gray’s complaints, Porter told Goodson, who was standing at the rear of the wagon, that Gray was not going to “pass medical” at central booking. Goodson agreed, and Porter suggested that Goodson take Gray straight to the hospital. However, at that moment, at approximately 9:07 am, Lieutenant Rice radioed a request for available police units and a police wagon to respond to a different location. In response, Porter left the wagon, got back into his car, and responded to Rice’s dispatch. Goodson responded to Lieutenant Rice’s request as well and did not take Gray to the hospital. Again, neither officer seat-belted Gray.
Video surveillance reveals that the wagon arrived at Lieutenant Rice’s location (Stop 5) at approximately 9:11 am. When Goodson arrived, he parked the wagon near Lieutenant Rice and Officers Miller and Nero, who were standing on the sidewalk with a new handcuffed arrestee. It was decided that the new arrestee would be transported in the wagon back to the Western District police station for questioning. The doors to the rear of the wagon were opened, and at some point, another officer who had arrived at Stop 5 observed Gray kneeling in the wagon in a posture that resembled a praying position while facing the bench. In addition, Sergeant Alicia White arrived in order to investigate a complaint that an anonymous caller had made earlier that day about an altercation in the area. According to a statement later made by Sergeant White, she looked into the wagon, and while she could not see Gray’s face, she saw him kneeling on the wagon floor, facing away from her, and leaning over the bench with his head down. White attempted to question Gray, believing that he might know something about the complaint she was investigating. He gave no verbal response, but made an audible noise. White interpreted Gray’s silence as an indication that he did not want to cooperate with the police. Porter also attempted to speak to Gray at Stop 5, and asked Gray again if he wanted to go the hospital. Gray answered, “Yes.” According to Porter, he told Sergeant White that Gray wanted a medic, and in response, Sergeant White told Porter to follow the wagon back to the Western District to drop off the new arrestee, and then escort Gray to the hospital.
At 9:16 am, Goodson left for the Western District station with Gray and the new arrestee in tow. The new arrestee later told investigators that the ride to the police station was smooth and lacked rapid accelerations, decelerations, or turns. The arrestee also stated that he heard loud banging from the other side of the wagon, and that he believed, based on the sound alone, that Gray was knocking his head against the wagon’s middle partition.
Upon Gray’s arrival at the Western District station (Stop 6), at approximately 9:18 am, Officer Porter, Sergeant White, and another BPD officer found Gray to be unconscious.
Porter noted that Gray’s eyes were shut, his neck was limp, and he appeared not to be breathing. Sergeant White observed that Gray was drooling. Two officers, one of whom was Sergeant White, called for paramedics.
Once the paramedics arrived, they observed that Gray was not breathing, had a small amount of blood coming from his nose, and had frothy vomitus discharge around his mouth. Gray also smelled of feces, indicating incontinence.
The paramedics took Gray to the hospital, where he remained comatose for days.
During that time, he underwent multiple rounds of surgery. CT and MRI scans revealed that he suffered from a fractured neck and pinched spinal cord. Medical experts who analyzed the injuries later determined that they were akin to those sustained by a person who dives into a shallow pool and hits his head on the bottom, causing the neck to break when his head rotates forward. Those experts largely concluded that sometime in between Stops 2 and 6, Gray’s head forcefully impacted the interior surfaces of the wagon, such as the walls or doors, causing the injury. On April 19, 2015, Gray died as a result of medical complications accompanying those injuries (Federal 4-7).
The Civilian Witnesses
At least 15 civilians reported that Gray was the victim of excessive force by the Baltimore police. Many of the witnesses were elderly residents of row houses across the street from Gilmor Homes. Their accounts were consistent; they can also be seen on CCTV cameras that recorded Gray’s arrest, which definitively places them at the scene. But, at most, they were interviewed for a few minutes outside their homes and forgotten.
Some of the witnesses say they remain frustrated by the investigative process. “They asked a few questions, but they act like they didn’t believe what I was saying.” Alethea Booze, who witnessed stop one, told The Appeal. “Everyone that saw what happened wanted to appear in court, but they didn’t call any of us.”
Five years later, [Jamel] Baker, who did appear in court, still feels let down by the prosecutors. “They made it seem like we was going to get justice, but nothing really happened,” he told The Appeal. He described the trials as “a waste of time.”
When the police department officially closed the Gray case in 2017, it released several binders of documents and photographs to the Baltimore Sun in response to a Public Information Act request. (The Sun has since removed the documents from its website.)
The newly obtained evidence reveals that significant pieces of the case were not included in the police’s 2017 release. The binders included official transcripts from officers’ statements but none from any civilian witnesses. Witnesses were reduced to mugshots, criminal histories, and scant notes by investigators. The 2017 release represented the police’s final word on the Gray case, but it mirrored the department’s investigation, which suppressed witness statements and minimized the lived experiences of people in the Gilmor Homes community (Barron 20).
The outrage surrounding Freddie Gray's death is rooted in concerns about how cops handle themselves in the city. Not only have police allegedly abused other detainees in their custody, but they have hurt people by placing them in vans without seat belts — similar to what Gray went through, suffering some sort of medical emergency in a police van while not buckled in, then being rushed to the hospital.
The Baltimore Police Department has long been subject to allegations of brutality. A September 2014 report by the Baltimore Sun’s Mark Puente found that the city had paid about $5.7 million since 2011 to more than 100 people — most of whom were black — who claimed that officers had beaten them.
…
Baltimore police have also been accused of taking people in “rough rides in which handcuffed detainees are driven in a reckless manner while they're not wearing seat belts — all to purposely cause injuries. The Baltimore Sun’s Puente and Doug Donovan documented several cases in which people were injured in police vans, some of whom won lawsuits against the city. One of them, a 27-year-old assistant librarian who was arrested following a noise complaint, described the experience: "They were braking really short so that I would slam against the wall, and they were taking really wide, fast turns. I couldn't brace myself. I was terrified."
…
The protests over Freddie Gray's death in Baltimore were part of the "Black Lives Matter" movement that has become prominent since the police shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old, in Ferguson, Missouri. Since Brown's death, the rallying call of Black Lives Matter has been pushed in protests over several other police killings — of Eric Garner in New York City, Tamir Rice in Cleveland, and Walter Scott in North Charleston, South Carolina.
These deaths and others have fed into the idea in black communities that their own — even their own sons — could be the next victims of police brutality. (Lopez 1-3).
BALTIMORE— The U.S. Supreme Court denied an appeal on Tuesday from five Baltimore police officers in a case in which they alleged they were wrongfully prosecuted for the death of Freddie Gray by Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby.
The decision brings the case to an end, in Mosby’s favor. It leaves intact a May decision by a Richmond, Va.-based federal appeals court that blocked the officers’ lawsuit on the grounds that prosecutors have immunity from such charges. The officers appealed that court’s decision to the Supreme Court in October.
...
… Mosby filed criminal charges against six Baltimore police officers involved in Gray’s arrest. Three were acquitted at trial, after which Mosby dropped all charges against the other three. None of the officers were found guilty of administrative violations by the department.
Five of the officers — Lt. Brian Rice, Sgt. Alicia White and Officers Edward Nero, Garrett Miller and William Porter — sued Mosby afterward, alleging she defamed them, lacked evidence for the charges she brought against them, and only charged them to ease the unrest. The sixth officer charged in the case, Officer Caesar Goodson Jr., did not join the lawsuit.
…
Despite her lack of convictions in the case, she said “justice has prevailed because every single Baltimore police officer is being held accountable for the actions of a few” through sweeping reforms that have been implemented in the department since Gray’s death (Rector “Supreme” 1-2).
[Paste the following to Google to watch video of Gray being put initially into the police van]
New video shows arrest of Freddie Gray in Baltimore - YouTube
Works cited:
Barron, Justine. “Freddie Gray, Five Years Later.” The Appeal, April 23, 2020. Net. https://theappeal.org/freddie-gray-fi...
“Death of Freddie Gray.” Wikipedia. Net. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_o...
“Federal Officials Decline Prosecution in the Death of Freddie Gray.” Department of Justice News, September 12, 2017. Net. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/federa...
Lopez, German. “The Baltimore Protests over Freddie Gray’s Death, Explained.” Vox, Updated August 18, 2016. Net. https://www.vox.com/2016/7/27/1808935...
Rector, Kevin. “The 45-Minute Mystery of Freddie Gray's Death.” The Baltimore Sun, April 25, 2015. Net. https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/cri...
Rector, Kevin. “Supreme Court Denies Appeal by Officers in Freddie Gray Case.” Police 1, November 14, 2018. Net. https://www.police1.com/freddie-gray/...
"Ay, yo, here comes Time Out," a young man on the opposite corner yelled, using a neighborhood term for police.
Gray swore, taking off on foot as the officers began hot-stepping on their pedals to catch up. One officer jumped off his bike to chase Gray on foot, police said.
…
Michael Robertson, 27, said his friend — who had a record of drug arrests — ran because he "had a history with that police beating him" (Rector “Mystery” 1).
On April 12, 2015, Freddie Carlos Gray Jr. was arrested in the Gilmor Homes housing development in West Baltimore by three officers on bike patrol. Less than an hour later, a medic was called to the Western District police station, where Gray, 25, was unconscious and not breathing. On April 19, Gray died from complications due to a cervical spine injury.
Baltimore resident Kevin Moore captured some of Gray’s arrest on video that was widely shared. The video showed Gray screaming as he was restrained on his belly by a heavyset bike officer, Garrett Miller, and then loaded into a police transport van, his legs dragging. “I hear the screams every night,” Moore later said. “‘I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I need help, I need medical attention.’ This is the shit that play in my mind over and over again.”
…
At a press conference the day after Gray died, the Baltimore Police Department revealed that the transport van that picked him up made several stops, including to pick up another prisoner. Deputy Commissioner Jerry Rodriguez also insisted, “We have no evidence—physical or video or statements—of any use of force.”
On May 1, street protests turned into celebrations when State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby filed charges against six officers in Gray’s death. The charges—ranging from misconduct in office to manslaughter and second-degree depraved-heart murder—pertained to the officers’ failure to put Gray in a seatbelt or call for timely medical assistance. In September 2015, Baltimore reached a $6.4 million settlement with Gray’s family. But Mosby’s cases ended up failing in criminal court. After one mistrial and three acquittals on all charges, Mosby dropped charges against the remaining three officers in July 2016 (Barron 1-3).
[Here are the identities of and information about the six officers charged]
[William G. Porter] was requested twice by Gray for a medic, but did not call for one. He was charged with involuntary manslaughter; second-degree assault; misconduct in office.
Caesar R. Goodson Jr. …, the driver of the van, was charged with second-degree depraved-heart murder; involuntary manslaughter; second-degree assault; manslaughter by vehicle (gross negligence); manslaughter by vehicle (criminal negligence); and misconduct in office.
Garrett E. Miller and Edward M. Nero ... caught Gray after he fled, and, after apprehending him, handcuffed Gray with his arms behind his back. Miller was charged with two counts of second-degree assault; two counts of misconduct in office; and false imprisonment. Nero was charged with two counts of second-degree assault; misconduct in office and false imprisonment.
Brian W. Rice, who initially made eye contact with Gray while on a bicycle patrol, … was charged with involuntary manslaughter; two counts of second-degree assault; manslaughter by vehicle (gross negligence); two counts of misconduct in office; and false imprisonment.
Alicia D. White … was accused of not calling for medical assistance when she encountered Gray, "despite the fact she was advised that he needed a medic". She was charged with involuntary manslaughter; second-degree assault; and misconduct (Death 4-5).
The Appeal obtained evidence from the discovery file in the criminal case against the officers that, along with the police department’s Internal Affairs investigation, sheds light on what occurred during Gray’s arrest. The evidence includes video and audio interviews conducted by investigators with eyewitnesses, officers, and medics, as well as the police department’s full Internal Affairs investigation.
The new files reveal numerous unreported eyewitness accounts of force by officers, particularly at the van’s second stop.
Witnesses told investigators that they saw Gray thrown headfirst into the van at that stop. Several witnesses also described him becoming quiet and motionless at this stop, after screaming loudly for several minutes.
According to the autopsy report, Gray’s fatal injury, usually seen in “shallow water diving incidents,” was caused by a “high-energy” impact of his head against a hard surface.
But the medical examiner testified in court that she relied on the accounts of police officers, who were the primary suspects in the case, to make her conclusions about when and how Gray died. She made no mention of any civilian witnesses to force in her autopsy report or trial testimony. She also said the state’s attorney’s office determined which statements she received. The newly obtained evidence supports and broadens the investigation that journalist Amelia McDonell-Parry and I conducted into Gray’s death for the 2017 podcast “Undisclosed: The Killing of Freddie Gray.”
STOP ONE: GRAY’S ARREST
Kevin Moore’s video brought international attention to Gray’s arrest on Presbury Street in West Baltimore, which became known as “stop one” of the police van’s six-stop journey. But the new files reveal that throughout April 2015, police and prosecutors took numerous statements from eyewitnesses who reported accounts of excessive force before Moore started filming.
With some variations in their accounts, these witnesses described officers forcefully restraining Gray, putting a knee into his upper back, and dragging him aggressively across the concrete.
And Gray’s body showed signs of trauma, including a fresh-looking wound on his shoulder that was never accounted for or investigated by police:
Some witnesses also described Gray being beaten and/or shot with a Taser during his initial arrest. Moore can be heard on his own video screaming, “That was after they tased the fuck out of him.”
Despite Gray’s apparent physical distress during stop one, police, prosecutors, and the medical examiner ruled out the possibility that he had been fatally injured during his arrest. They pointed to his ability to lift his neck, speak, and bear weight on his legs when entering the van in Moore’s video. …
Gray’s specific type of fatal injury, a “jumped facet” of his C4 and C5 cervical spine, was caused by an “abrupt deceleration” of his rotated head against a hard surface, according to the autopsy. Even Officer Miller, who weighed 240 pounds, could not cause that specific injury by putting pressure on Gray’s spine from above, according to Dr. Leigh Hlavaty, professor of pathology at the University of Michigan. “Even if Freddie had his head down and turned to the side, the knee to the back of the neck was not going to be the force to create this jump lock facet type of fracture,” she explained on the “Undisclosed” podcast.
…
STOP TWO: AROUND THE CORNER
According to the police, Lieutenant Brian Rice and the other bike officers decided to send Gray directly to Central Booking rather than question him at the station. After stop one, they met up with the van driver around the corner, at Mount and Baker streets, to complete the arrest process away from the crowd of observers. There, officers shackled Gray’s ankles.
Gray can be heard screaming on the van driver’s dispatch call between stops one and two, and the accounts that witnesses provided to investigators about stop two are consistent. These stories mostly went unreported by the media, leaving a piece of the history of what happened to Gray out of the public narrative.
Moore, who took the cell phone video of stop one, was the first witness to report to police about stop two. He did so mere hours after Gray’s arrest.
… “They pulled him out the paddy wagon, tased him again, and then threw him back in.”
He clarified this later: “They lift him up, wet noodle, throw him in the back of the paddy wagon.”
“Feet first or headfirst?” one detective asked.
“Headfirst,” Moore responded.
Moore told detectives that one officer threatened him and other witnesses: “You’d better get the F away from here,” he reported the officer saying. “Jail, jail, jail.”
The detectives pressed Moore for details about the alleged Taser shooting.
“They got the prongs that shoot out,” Moore said, gesturing toward his right knee. “They’re on him. You know?”
“You can physically see the prongs?” the detective asked.
“I can physically see the prongs in his leg,” Moore answered.
Baltimore police officials denied that Gray was ever shot with a Taser. During the April 20 press conference, Deputy Commissioner Rodriguez said that there was no evidence of any use of a Taser, neither “physical nor any of the statements.” But Moore provided his statement about Gray’s alleged tasing on April 12.
…
In total, there were 11 known witnesses to stop two. Nine reported that Gray was thrown into the van, many saying “headfirst.”
Most reported Gray screaming loudly and then becoming quiet and/or motionless at this stop. Police asked three witnesses to give longer videotaped interviews on the record.
Prosecutors asked just [Brandon] Ross and [Jamel] Baker [two friends of Gray] to testify in court. Their testimony was mostly limited to identifying Gray in videos. Neither was asked about Gray being thrown headfirst into the van.
The prosecution’s case was that Gray was still alive and well leaving stop two, based on the autopsy report. To support this claim, prosecutors actively disputed claims that Gray was injured during the first two stops during the four trials. While ostensibly holding the officers accountable in Gray’s death, the state relied mostly on what law enforcement said that morning.
STOP TWO: ACCORDING TO THE POLICE
Over four trials, the officers present at stop two offered consistent accounts about what happened there: Rice and Miller pulled Gray out of the van, Miller shackled his ankles, and Gray acted like a “dead fish” in order to resist arrest. Rice pulled Gray into the van, and Nero helped by lifting his legs. Then, the officers laid Gray flat on the van’s floor and closed its doors. Each officer testified that Gray then suddenly got up and started banging, yelling, and shaking the van back and forth, despite being shackled at the hands and feet.
But the accounts presented by officers in court changed significantly from what they told investigators during the afternoon of Gray’s arrest. Their original stories were not consistent and did not include what Ross’s video showed: Gray’s motionless body hanging out of the van.
The officers’ first-day statements were especially contradictory and confusing about how they put Gray back into the van—notable, given the clarity of witness claims that he was thrown. “We lifted him up and actually put him back up into the wagon,” Lt. Rice said. Nero said that all of the officers worked together to “push” Gray in the van. Miller believed that Rice pulled him in alone. …
Lt. Rice’s account of Gray’s arrest differed most starkly from the other officers. He said that Gray was “shaking the van violently” throughout stops one and two. Miller mentioned the shaking, but only at the end of stop two.
Rice’s account was important, because the van-shaking story became a pillar of the Freddie Gray case narrative. The shaking, which only Rice had reported, is mentioned in the autopsy report as occurring throughout stops one and two. It became the defense’s story in court for how stop two concluded, repeated by all of the officers present at the scene. It also became central to the media narrative about the case.
But Rice’s van-shaking story was not corroborated by any civilian witnesses.
…
During his first-day interview, Rice also repeatedly said that Gray was “hitting his head” against the van walls after the doors were closed at stop two. “When he got back into the wagon, the wagon began shaking violently, and he was hitting his head, and kicking the door,” he said.
But Rice’s account of Gray’s head striking the van’s walls never made it to trial. It wasn’t supported by the physical evidence: Gray’s head only had one point of major impact, not surface injuries. …
…
Investigators heard this account one more time on April 12 from Donta Allen, who was a passenger in the van with Gray. The bike officers had placed Allen on the other side of a metal partition from Gray at stop five, the last stop before the Western District. Allen told investigators, “It sounded like he was banging his head against the metal, like he was trying to knock himself out or something.”
In media interviews, Allen later changed his statement, saying that he only heard “light banging.” During the July 2016 trial of Officer Goodson, he also testified that he had spoken to Novak ...
During Goodson’s trial, Judge Barry G. Williams scolded prosecutors for failing to turn over to the defense evidence of two private meetings they held with Allen. “I’m not saying you did anything nefariously,” Williams said. “I’m saying you don’t know what exculpatory means.”
The story that Allen heard Gray banging his head in the police van was repeated throughout the media. But the public never learned that Lt. Rice was a primary source. …
Prosecutors largely did not hold the officers accountable for their confused and changed stories about stop two. The state’s case was based on the autopsy, which determined that Gray was fatally injured sometime between stops two and four while the van was in motion. Dr. Allan’s report, however, was not conclusive: “Therefore, the time the injury most likely occurred was after the 2nd but before the 4th stop of the van, and possibly before the 3rd stop,” she wrote (Barron 4-19).
Happenings at the Remaining Stops, According to the Officers
Video indicates at around 8:56 am, while Officer Goodson was transporting Gray in the back of the wagon from Stop 2 to central booking, he made a wide right turn onto Freemont Avenue from Riggs Street, and briefly crossed over the double yellow line in the roadway. He then made an unannounced stop near Freemont Avenue (Stop 3). While there, Goodson got out of the wagon, walked to the rear of the vehicle, and disappeared from camera view for approximately 10 seconds. Goodson then got back in the van and drove away. It is unclear whether Goodson had any interaction with Gray at the back of the wagon at this stop, or what Goodson might have observed or heard.
Goodson declined to provide a statement to state investigators about Gray or about that day. There is no other evidence of what occurred at Stop 3.
At approximately 8:59 am, after leaving Stop 3, Officer Goodson radioed to request that a police unit meet him at Druid Hill Avenue and Dolphin Street (Stop 4) for the purpose of checking on Gray. Officer Porter answered Goodson’s call and later provided two statements to investigators. He also testified at trial about his version of events. As Goodson has never given a statement in the criminal case, and could not legally be compelled to do so, Porter’s accounts offer the only evidence of what occurred at Stop 4.
According to Porter, when he arrived at Stop 4, he met Goodson at the rear of the wagon, and Goodson opened the doors without discussion. There, Porter observed Gray lying on his stomach on the floor of the wagon with his head toward the front of the wagon, his feet toward the door, and his hands cuffed behind him. Gray asked for “help,” prompting Porter to ask what was wrong with him.
According to Porter, Gray did not immediately reply, and then stated, “Help. Help me up.” In one of his statements to investigators, Porter is alleged to have also heard Gray say “I can’t breathe,” although he later denied having heard that.
After Gray asked for help, Officer Porter entered the wagon, pulled Gray up, and placed him on the bench. According to Porter, Gray used his own legs to assist Porter in placing him on the bench. Once there, Gray sat normally and supported his own head.
Porter asked Gray if he wanted to go to the hospital, and Gray replied that he did. Gray did not complain of pain or of a specific injury, and Porter did not see any visible injury. Gray spoke in a regular tone of voice and breathed normally. According to Porter, because there were no signs of genuine medical distress, Porter did not believe that Gray was actually injured, despite Gray’s complaints. Porter allegedly believed that Gray was either lethargic from banging against the wagon, or was feigning a medical issue in order to avoid going to jail. However, because of Gray’s complaints, Porter told Goodson, who was standing at the rear of the wagon, that Gray was not going to “pass medical” at central booking. Goodson agreed, and Porter suggested that Goodson take Gray straight to the hospital. However, at that moment, at approximately 9:07 am, Lieutenant Rice radioed a request for available police units and a police wagon to respond to a different location. In response, Porter left the wagon, got back into his car, and responded to Rice’s dispatch. Goodson responded to Lieutenant Rice’s request as well and did not take Gray to the hospital. Again, neither officer seat-belted Gray.
Video surveillance reveals that the wagon arrived at Lieutenant Rice’s location (Stop 5) at approximately 9:11 am. When Goodson arrived, he parked the wagon near Lieutenant Rice and Officers Miller and Nero, who were standing on the sidewalk with a new handcuffed arrestee. It was decided that the new arrestee would be transported in the wagon back to the Western District police station for questioning. The doors to the rear of the wagon were opened, and at some point, another officer who had arrived at Stop 5 observed Gray kneeling in the wagon in a posture that resembled a praying position while facing the bench. In addition, Sergeant Alicia White arrived in order to investigate a complaint that an anonymous caller had made earlier that day about an altercation in the area. According to a statement later made by Sergeant White, she looked into the wagon, and while she could not see Gray’s face, she saw him kneeling on the wagon floor, facing away from her, and leaning over the bench with his head down. White attempted to question Gray, believing that he might know something about the complaint she was investigating. He gave no verbal response, but made an audible noise. White interpreted Gray’s silence as an indication that he did not want to cooperate with the police. Porter also attempted to speak to Gray at Stop 5, and asked Gray again if he wanted to go the hospital. Gray answered, “Yes.” According to Porter, he told Sergeant White that Gray wanted a medic, and in response, Sergeant White told Porter to follow the wagon back to the Western District to drop off the new arrestee, and then escort Gray to the hospital.
At 9:16 am, Goodson left for the Western District station with Gray and the new arrestee in tow. The new arrestee later told investigators that the ride to the police station was smooth and lacked rapid accelerations, decelerations, or turns. The arrestee also stated that he heard loud banging from the other side of the wagon, and that he believed, based on the sound alone, that Gray was knocking his head against the wagon’s middle partition.
Upon Gray’s arrival at the Western District station (Stop 6), at approximately 9:18 am, Officer Porter, Sergeant White, and another BPD officer found Gray to be unconscious.
Porter noted that Gray’s eyes were shut, his neck was limp, and he appeared not to be breathing. Sergeant White observed that Gray was drooling. Two officers, one of whom was Sergeant White, called for paramedics.
Once the paramedics arrived, they observed that Gray was not breathing, had a small amount of blood coming from his nose, and had frothy vomitus discharge around his mouth. Gray also smelled of feces, indicating incontinence.
The paramedics took Gray to the hospital, where he remained comatose for days.
During that time, he underwent multiple rounds of surgery. CT and MRI scans revealed that he suffered from a fractured neck and pinched spinal cord. Medical experts who analyzed the injuries later determined that they were akin to those sustained by a person who dives into a shallow pool and hits his head on the bottom, causing the neck to break when his head rotates forward. Those experts largely concluded that sometime in between Stops 2 and 6, Gray’s head forcefully impacted the interior surfaces of the wagon, such as the walls or doors, causing the injury. On April 19, 2015, Gray died as a result of medical complications accompanying those injuries (Federal 4-7).
The Civilian Witnesses
At least 15 civilians reported that Gray was the victim of excessive force by the Baltimore police. Many of the witnesses were elderly residents of row houses across the street from Gilmor Homes. Their accounts were consistent; they can also be seen on CCTV cameras that recorded Gray’s arrest, which definitively places them at the scene. But, at most, they were interviewed for a few minutes outside their homes and forgotten.
Some of the witnesses say they remain frustrated by the investigative process. “They asked a few questions, but they act like they didn’t believe what I was saying.” Alethea Booze, who witnessed stop one, told The Appeal. “Everyone that saw what happened wanted to appear in court, but they didn’t call any of us.”
Five years later, [Jamel] Baker, who did appear in court, still feels let down by the prosecutors. “They made it seem like we was going to get justice, but nothing really happened,” he told The Appeal. He described the trials as “a waste of time.”
When the police department officially closed the Gray case in 2017, it released several binders of documents and photographs to the Baltimore Sun in response to a Public Information Act request. (The Sun has since removed the documents from its website.)
The newly obtained evidence reveals that significant pieces of the case were not included in the police’s 2017 release. The binders included official transcripts from officers’ statements but none from any civilian witnesses. Witnesses were reduced to mugshots, criminal histories, and scant notes by investigators. The 2017 release represented the police’s final word on the Gray case, but it mirrored the department’s investigation, which suppressed witness statements and minimized the lived experiences of people in the Gilmor Homes community (Barron 20).
The outrage surrounding Freddie Gray's death is rooted in concerns about how cops handle themselves in the city. Not only have police allegedly abused other detainees in their custody, but they have hurt people by placing them in vans without seat belts — similar to what Gray went through, suffering some sort of medical emergency in a police van while not buckled in, then being rushed to the hospital.
The Baltimore Police Department has long been subject to allegations of brutality. A September 2014 report by the Baltimore Sun’s Mark Puente found that the city had paid about $5.7 million since 2011 to more than 100 people — most of whom were black — who claimed that officers had beaten them.
…
Baltimore police have also been accused of taking people in “rough rides in which handcuffed detainees are driven in a reckless manner while they're not wearing seat belts — all to purposely cause injuries. The Baltimore Sun’s Puente and Doug Donovan documented several cases in which people were injured in police vans, some of whom won lawsuits against the city. One of them, a 27-year-old assistant librarian who was arrested following a noise complaint, described the experience: "They were braking really short so that I would slam against the wall, and they were taking really wide, fast turns. I couldn't brace myself. I was terrified."
…
The protests over Freddie Gray's death in Baltimore were part of the "Black Lives Matter" movement that has become prominent since the police shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old, in Ferguson, Missouri. Since Brown's death, the rallying call of Black Lives Matter has been pushed in protests over several other police killings — of Eric Garner in New York City, Tamir Rice in Cleveland, and Walter Scott in North Charleston, South Carolina.
These deaths and others have fed into the idea in black communities that their own — even their own sons — could be the next victims of police brutality. (Lopez 1-3).
BALTIMORE— The U.S. Supreme Court denied an appeal on Tuesday from five Baltimore police officers in a case in which they alleged they were wrongfully prosecuted for the death of Freddie Gray by Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby.
The decision brings the case to an end, in Mosby’s favor. It leaves intact a May decision by a Richmond, Va.-based federal appeals court that blocked the officers’ lawsuit on the grounds that prosecutors have immunity from such charges. The officers appealed that court’s decision to the Supreme Court in October.
...
… Mosby filed criminal charges against six Baltimore police officers involved in Gray’s arrest. Three were acquitted at trial, after which Mosby dropped all charges against the other three. None of the officers were found guilty of administrative violations by the department.
Five of the officers — Lt. Brian Rice, Sgt. Alicia White and Officers Edward Nero, Garrett Miller and William Porter — sued Mosby afterward, alleging she defamed them, lacked evidence for the charges she brought against them, and only charged them to ease the unrest. The sixth officer charged in the case, Officer Caesar Goodson Jr., did not join the lawsuit.
…
Despite her lack of convictions in the case, she said “justice has prevailed because every single Baltimore police officer is being held accountable for the actions of a few” through sweeping reforms that have been implemented in the department since Gray’s death (Rector “Supreme” 1-2).
[Paste the following to Google to watch video of Gray being put initially into the police van]
New video shows arrest of Freddie Gray in Baltimore - YouTube
Works cited:
Barron, Justine. “Freddie Gray, Five Years Later.” The Appeal, April 23, 2020. Net. https://theappeal.org/freddie-gray-fi...
“Death of Freddie Gray.” Wikipedia. Net. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_o...
“Federal Officials Decline Prosecution in the Death of Freddie Gray.” Department of Justice News, September 12, 2017. Net. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/federa...
Lopez, German. “The Baltimore Protests over Freddie Gray’s Death, Explained.” Vox, Updated August 18, 2016. Net. https://www.vox.com/2016/7/27/1808935...
Rector, Kevin. “The 45-Minute Mystery of Freddie Gray's Death.” The Baltimore Sun, April 25, 2015. Net. https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/cri...
Rector, Kevin. “Supreme Court Denies Appeal by Officers in Freddie Gray Case.” Police 1, November 14, 2018. Net. https://www.police1.com/freddie-gray/...
May 6, 2021
Bad Apples -- 04--04--2015 -- Walter Scott
A white police officer in North Charleston, S.C., was charged with murder on Tuesday after a video surfaced showing him shooting in the back and killing an apparently unarmed black man while the man ran away.
The officer, Michael T. Slager, 33, said he had feared for his life because the man had taken his stun gun in a scuffle after a traffic stop on Saturday. A video, however, shows the officer firing eight times as the man, Walter L. Scott, 50, fled. The North Charleston mayor announced the state charges at a news conference Tuesday evening.
The shooting came on the heels of high-profile instances of police officers’ using lethal force in New York, Cleveland, Ferguson, Mo., and elsewhere. The deaths have set off a national debate over whether the police are too quick to use force, particularly in cases involving black men.
…
The shooting unfolded after Officer Slager stopped the driver of a Mercedes-Benz with a broken taillight, according to police reports. Mr. Scott ran away, and Officer Slager chased him into a grassy lot that abuts a muffler shop. He fired his Taser, an electronic stun gun, but it did not stop Mr. Scott, according to police reports.
[Paste the following on Google to watch the officer’s dashcam (CNN presented) video of Slager and Scott’s initial conversation and Scott’s initial flight]
Dash cam shows moments before shooting of Walter Scott ...
Moments after the struggle, Officer Slager reported on his radio: “Shots fired and the subject is down. He took my Taser,” according to police reports.
But the video, which was taken by a bystander and provided to The New York Times by the Scott family’s lawyer, presents a different account. The video begins in the vacant lot, apparently moments after Officer Slager fired his Taser. Wires, which carry the electrical current from the stun gun, appear to be extending from Mr. Scott’s body as the two men tussle and Mr. Scott turns to run.
Something — it is not clear whether it is the stun gun — is either tossed or knocked to the ground behind the two men, and Officer Slager draws his gun, the video shows. When the officer fires, Mr. Scott appears to be 15 to 20 feet away and fleeing. He falls after the last of eight shots.
The officer then runs back toward where the initial scuffle occurred and picks something up off the ground. Moments later, he drops an object near Mr. Scott’s body, the video shows (Schmidt and Apuzzo 1-2).
Slager had been patrolling North Charleston’s Remount Road on that hazy Saturday morning. His department had been working for years to tamp down crime. They employed “pretext stops” in which officers looked for small violations as opportunities to pull over drivers and stop pedestrians in hopes of nabbing hardened criminals and taking guns and drugs off the streets (Yee 2).
Mr. Scott had been arrested about 10 times, mostly for failing to pay child support or show up for court hearings, according to The Post and Courier newspaper of Charleston. He was arrested in 1987 on an assault and battery charge and convicted in 1991 of possession of a bludgeon, the newspaper reported. Mr. Scott’s brother, Anthony, said he believed Mr. Scott had fled from the police on Saturday because he owed child support.
“He has four children; he doesn’t have some type of big violent past or arrest record,” said Chris Stewart, a lawyer for Mr. Scott’s family. “He had a job; he was engaged. He had back child support and didn’t want to go to jail for back child support.”
Mr. Stewart said the coroner had told him that Mr. Scott was struck five times — three times in the back, once in the upper buttocks and once in the ear — with at least one bullet entering his heart. It is not clear whether Mr. Scott died immediately. (The coroner’s office declined to make the report available to The Times.)
Police reports say that officers performed CPR and delivered first aid to Mr. Scott. The video shows that for several minutes after the shooting, Mr. Scott remained face down with his hands cuffed behind his back. A second officer arrives, puts on blue medical gloves and attends to Mr. Scott, but is not shown performing CPR. As sirens wail in the background, a third officer later arrives, apparently with a medical kit, but is also not seen performing CPR.
…
Mr. Scott’s brother said his mother had called him on Saturday, telling him that his brother had been shot by a Taser after a traffic stop.
“You may need to go over there and see what’s going on,” he said his mother told him.
When he arrived at the scene of the shooting, officers told him that his brother was dead, but he said they had no explanation for why. “This just doesn’t sound right,” he said in an interview. “How do you lose your life at a traffic stop” (Schmidt and Apuzzo 3).
Feidin Santana, the bystander who captured on video North Charleston police officer Michael Slager shooting Walter Scott in the back, says his life has "changed" following the incident and he remains cautious and "scared."
"I say life changed in a matter of seconds. I never thought this would happen, that I would be a witness," he told TODAY's Matt Lauer in an exclusive interview Thursday. "I'm still scared."
Santana said he "definitely" believes Slager saw him when, at one point in the video, he looked his way.
"I recorded the video so that maybe he can feel that someone is there," he said. "There were just the three of us in that moment. I couldn’t tell what was going to happen, so I just wanted him to know that he's not by himself."
On Wednesday, Santana, 23, revealed himself as the man behind the video in an interview wih NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt.
"Before I started recording, they were down on the floor. I remember the police [officer] had control of the situation," Santana told Holt. "He had control of Scott. And Scott was trying just to get away from the Taser. But like I said, he never used the Taser against the cop."
"As you can see in the video, the police officer just shot him in the back," Santana said on Wednesday. "I knew right away, I had something on my hands."
Santana's lawyer, Todd Rutherford, told Lauer on TODAY that his client fears for his life knowing that police officers who responded to the shooting continue to be investigated for what happened after Scott was shot, including whether anyone administered CPR to him like they said they did.
…
Santana, who is originally from the Dominican Republic, said his life has completely changed since going public.
"Now people know where I live. People know where I work, so my normal routine from just walking to my house to work have changed," he said. "At some point, I thought about staying anonymous and not showing my face and not talking about it. But this [is] something that has to go beyond that (Kim 1-2).
[Paste on Google this NBC presentation of Santana’s video]
Video Shows Fatal Police Shooting - The New York Times
Santana did not immediately release what he’d recorded. Having followed the Eric Garner case, Santana knew [Ramsey] Orta had been incarcerated. He knew justice was rare and witnesses were in danger of police retaliation.
...
Santana has said in interviews that he held on to the video because he felt his life would be in danger. He considered deleting it and leaving Charleston altogether. He had reason to believe that the video wouldn’t secure justice for the Scott family, as Orta’s had not for Garner’s family. It took Santana three days to find the bravery to come forward with the video. How many others would not? Have not (Jones 20).
Michael T. Slager played cops and robbers as a boy in the Virginia woods, volunteered as an emergency medical technician after high school and earned an associate degree in criminal justice while working full time as a patrolman.
Before he was caught on video firing eight shots at the back of an unarmed fleeing man and then dispassionately handcuffing him as he lay dying, he received praise from his supervisors at the North Charleston Police Department and excelled in police training. He was also the subject of two formal complaints in five years.
The adults who watched Mr. Slager, now 33, grow up recalled him being a shy loner who struggled to adjust to his broken home, and had a hard time socializing. They remembered him more for what he was not — not much of an athlete, not a troublemaker and not someone who spent much time with friends.
A little more than a week ago he was just a police officer in a working-class city — a homebody whose patrol car was often parked in his driveway — with a wife, expecting their first child together. Now even the police union, which is not paying for his legal defense, has distanced itself from him.
…
Mr. Slager was arrested and charged with murder on Tuesday, after state investigators said he had given inconsistent accounts about the shooting of Walter L. Scott, a 50-year-old forklift operator. It is not clear why Mr. Scott ran when Mr. Slager stopped him for a broken taillight on April 4. Mr. Scott told the officer that he was in the process of buying the 1990s-era Mercedes-Benz he was driving but had not yet registered it. Mr. Scott owed $18,104 in child support payments and fees, and an arrest warrant was issued for him in 2013, according to county records.
…
The Police Department dismissed Mr. Slager on Wednesday, the day after his arrest (Robles, Blinder, and Grant 1-2).
Police records obtained by The New York Times show that Mr. Slager was involved in 19 use-of-force episodes during his tenure as a police officer, including the shooting death of Mr. Scott and the encounter with Mr. Givens.
Of those 19 episodes, the records show, at least 14 involved Mr. Slager’s using his Taser in some manner. Mr. Scott’s shooting was the only time that Mr. Slager fired his handgun while on patrol (Blinder and Williams 1-2).
In 2013, a North Charleston man filed a complaint against Mr. Slager, accusing the officer of arriving at his house in pursuit of a burglary suspect and using a Taser on him on the steps of his own home.
City records show that the man, Mario Givens, told authorities that he had explained to Mr. Slager that the suspect he sought was 5-foot-5. Mr. Givens was 6-foot-3. The burglary victim, who was waiting outside in her car, shouted to the officer that Mr. Givens was not the burglar, according to the records.
…
Mrs. Shay, the former neighbor, spoke on Saturday with the officer’s stepmother, who was crying and puzzled over the latest turn of events and wondering whether Mr. Slager had become “desensitized” after joining the Police Department.
“She and I are agreeing on the fact that we both believe that something happened in the training,” Mrs. Shay said. “She agrees with me. I, from the beginning, thought this is not Michael at all” (Robles, Blinder, and Grant 3).
A former police officer in North Charleston, S.C., was indicted Monday by a grand jury on a murder charge in connection with the April shooting death of Walter L. Scott ….
The former officer, Michael T. Slager, had been jailed on a murder charge since April 7, when the video [of the killing] became public.
…
Under South Carolina law, there is only a single murder charge, … described as being an “unlawful killing with malice aforethought” — with the premeditation required to exist for only a few seconds before a killing in order to gain a conviction (Blinder and Williams 3).
CHARLESTON, S.C. — In a hushed courtroom, Michael T. Slager, a former North Charleston, S.C., police officer, was indicted here Wednesday on federal charges in the shooting death last year of Walter L. Scott, an unarmed black man.
Wearing a dark suit that only partly covered his cuffed wrists and ankles, Mr. Slager, already facing state murder charges, appeared before Magistrate Judge Bristow Marchant to hear federal charges that accused him of violating Mr. Scott’s civil rights, obstructing justice and using a weapon during the commission of a crime.
…
The obstruction of justice charge stems from Mr. Slager’s telling state investigators that Mr. Scott was moving toward him when he fired.
Mr. Slager knowingly misled investigators “by falsely stating that he fired his weapon at Scott while Scott was coming forward at him with a Taser,” the indictment said, when in fact, as the officer “then well knew, he repeatedly fired his weapon at Scott when Scott was running away from him.”
In recent years, amid mounting public outrage over the treatment of African-Americans by the police, the federal government has investigated several deaths — including those of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., Laquan McDonald in Chicago and Eric Garner in New York in 2014, as well as that of Freddie Gray last year in Baltimore.
But the Scott case is the first to elicit federal charges, which Mr. Slager’s lawyer, Andrew Savage, said was unprecedented. “It really feels as if Officer Slager is carrying the burden of many past cases that were handled differently,” Mr. Savage said.
Seth W. Stoughton, a professor at the University of South Carolina, said such an indictment was fairly rare. “There are only about half a dozen cases in which police officers have faced federal civil rights charges for a shooting,” he said. “The reason it’s so rare is the burden of proof — requiring prosecutors to show that it was a willful act, with specific intent. It’s not easy to show what was in someone’s mind.”
…
Standing at eye level to a bank of microphones after the court hearing, Walter Scott’s mother, Judy, fought back tears. “I thank God that my son was used to pull the cover off all the violence and the cover-ups that have been going on,” she said. “I’m happy for that. But I’m sad because my son is gone” (Dixon and Lewin 1-3).
On June 8, 2015, a South Carolina grand jury indicted Slager for murder. His trial began on October 31, 2016, in North Charleston. The court proceeding lasted for two months before Judge Clifton B. Newman declared a mistrial after the jury deadlocked. Eleven of the twelve jurors favored a conviction. A few months later, on May 2, 2017, in a plea agreement, the murder charges were dropped when Slager pled guilty to federal charges of civil rights violations. In an out-of-court settlement, the City of North Charleston agreed to pay $6.5 million to the family of Walter Scott (Momodu 1).
On Thursday [December 2017], Michael Slager, who was fired as a North Charleston patrolman days after the shooting, was sentenced to 20 years behind bars after pleading guilty in Scott's death.
U.S. District Judge David Norton, in issuing the sentence, said Slager shot Scott with "malice and recklessness" and then gave false testimony to investigators. Norton ruled that Slager, 36, was guilty of second-degree murder and obstruction of justice, and he also sentenced Slager to two years of supervision after his release.
Scott's mother, Judy, was one of seven family members who spoke before the sentencing. She recalled her 50-year-old son growing up as a "happy, jolly child" and then turned to Slager directly, telling him, "I forgive you."
Slager began to cry.
In his final statement before sentencing, the ex-officer said: "I wish I could go back in time and change the events. But I can't. It's a very tragic situation. I'm standing before the Scott family and the court and taking responsibility for the actions of April 4, 2015."
...
While prosecutors acknowledged during the trial last year that Scott wouldn't have been shot if he hadn't resisted in the first place, they said that Slager had been trained against using lethal force in such a situation and had gone too far. A jury of 11 white people and one black man — the foreman, Dorsey Montgomery II — couldn't agree on a verdict.
Montgomery later told "Today" that one other juror refused to convict the officer, while several remained on the fence. He said that while "race will always be a factor," he didn't believe it played into the decision for "the majority" of the jurors (Vann and Ortiz 1-2).
Works cited:
Blinder, Alan and Williams, Timothy. “Ex-South Carolina Officer Is Indicted in Shooting Death of Black Man.” The New York Times, June 8, 2015. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/09/us...
Dixon, Chris and Lewin, Tamar. “South Carolina Officer Faces Federal Charges in Fatal Shooting.” The New York Times, May 11, 2016. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/12/us...
Jones, Chloe Cooper. “Fearing for His Live.” The Verge, March 13, 2019. Net. https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/13/18...
Kim, Eun Kyung. “Feidin Santana, Bystander Who Recorded Walter Scott Shooting: 'I'm still scared'.” Today, April 9, 2015. Net. https://www.today.com/news/feidin-san...
Momodu, Samuel. “Walter Lamar Scott (1965-2015).” BlackPast, September 17, 2017. Net. https://www.blackpast.org/african-ame...
Robles, Frances, Blinder, Alan, and Grant, Jason. “After 8 Shots in North Charleston, Michael Slager Becomes an Officer Scorned.” The New York Times, April 12, 2015. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/13/us...
Schmidt, Michael and Apuzzo, Matt. “South Carolina Officer Is Charged with Murder of Walter Scott.” The New York Times, April 7, 2015. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/08/us...
Vann, Matthew and Ortiz, Erik. “Walter Scott Shooting: Michael Slager, Ex-Officer, Sentenced to 20 Years in Prison.” NBC News, Updated December 9, 2017. Net. https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/wal...
Yee, Gregory. “How Walter Scott’s Death Continues To Reverberate 5 Years Later for Two SC Families.” The Post and Courier, Updated March 26, 2021. Net. https://www.postandcourier.com/news/h...
The officer, Michael T. Slager, 33, said he had feared for his life because the man had taken his stun gun in a scuffle after a traffic stop on Saturday. A video, however, shows the officer firing eight times as the man, Walter L. Scott, 50, fled. The North Charleston mayor announced the state charges at a news conference Tuesday evening.
The shooting came on the heels of high-profile instances of police officers’ using lethal force in New York, Cleveland, Ferguson, Mo., and elsewhere. The deaths have set off a national debate over whether the police are too quick to use force, particularly in cases involving black men.
…
The shooting unfolded after Officer Slager stopped the driver of a Mercedes-Benz with a broken taillight, according to police reports. Mr. Scott ran away, and Officer Slager chased him into a grassy lot that abuts a muffler shop. He fired his Taser, an electronic stun gun, but it did not stop Mr. Scott, according to police reports.
[Paste the following on Google to watch the officer’s dashcam (CNN presented) video of Slager and Scott’s initial conversation and Scott’s initial flight]
Dash cam shows moments before shooting of Walter Scott ...
Moments after the struggle, Officer Slager reported on his radio: “Shots fired and the subject is down. He took my Taser,” according to police reports.
But the video, which was taken by a bystander and provided to The New York Times by the Scott family’s lawyer, presents a different account. The video begins in the vacant lot, apparently moments after Officer Slager fired his Taser. Wires, which carry the electrical current from the stun gun, appear to be extending from Mr. Scott’s body as the two men tussle and Mr. Scott turns to run.
Something — it is not clear whether it is the stun gun — is either tossed or knocked to the ground behind the two men, and Officer Slager draws his gun, the video shows. When the officer fires, Mr. Scott appears to be 15 to 20 feet away and fleeing. He falls after the last of eight shots.
The officer then runs back toward where the initial scuffle occurred and picks something up off the ground. Moments later, he drops an object near Mr. Scott’s body, the video shows (Schmidt and Apuzzo 1-2).
Slager had been patrolling North Charleston’s Remount Road on that hazy Saturday morning. His department had been working for years to tamp down crime. They employed “pretext stops” in which officers looked for small violations as opportunities to pull over drivers and stop pedestrians in hopes of nabbing hardened criminals and taking guns and drugs off the streets (Yee 2).
Mr. Scott had been arrested about 10 times, mostly for failing to pay child support or show up for court hearings, according to The Post and Courier newspaper of Charleston. He was arrested in 1987 on an assault and battery charge and convicted in 1991 of possession of a bludgeon, the newspaper reported. Mr. Scott’s brother, Anthony, said he believed Mr. Scott had fled from the police on Saturday because he owed child support.
“He has four children; he doesn’t have some type of big violent past or arrest record,” said Chris Stewart, a lawyer for Mr. Scott’s family. “He had a job; he was engaged. He had back child support and didn’t want to go to jail for back child support.”
Mr. Stewart said the coroner had told him that Mr. Scott was struck five times — three times in the back, once in the upper buttocks and once in the ear — with at least one bullet entering his heart. It is not clear whether Mr. Scott died immediately. (The coroner’s office declined to make the report available to The Times.)
Police reports say that officers performed CPR and delivered first aid to Mr. Scott. The video shows that for several minutes after the shooting, Mr. Scott remained face down with his hands cuffed behind his back. A second officer arrives, puts on blue medical gloves and attends to Mr. Scott, but is not shown performing CPR. As sirens wail in the background, a third officer later arrives, apparently with a medical kit, but is also not seen performing CPR.
…
Mr. Scott’s brother said his mother had called him on Saturday, telling him that his brother had been shot by a Taser after a traffic stop.
“You may need to go over there and see what’s going on,” he said his mother told him.
When he arrived at the scene of the shooting, officers told him that his brother was dead, but he said they had no explanation for why. “This just doesn’t sound right,” he said in an interview. “How do you lose your life at a traffic stop” (Schmidt and Apuzzo 3).
Feidin Santana, the bystander who captured on video North Charleston police officer Michael Slager shooting Walter Scott in the back, says his life has "changed" following the incident and he remains cautious and "scared."
"I say life changed in a matter of seconds. I never thought this would happen, that I would be a witness," he told TODAY's Matt Lauer in an exclusive interview Thursday. "I'm still scared."
Santana said he "definitely" believes Slager saw him when, at one point in the video, he looked his way.
"I recorded the video so that maybe he can feel that someone is there," he said. "There were just the three of us in that moment. I couldn’t tell what was going to happen, so I just wanted him to know that he's not by himself."
On Wednesday, Santana, 23, revealed himself as the man behind the video in an interview wih NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt.
"Before I started recording, they were down on the floor. I remember the police [officer] had control of the situation," Santana told Holt. "He had control of Scott. And Scott was trying just to get away from the Taser. But like I said, he never used the Taser against the cop."
"As you can see in the video, the police officer just shot him in the back," Santana said on Wednesday. "I knew right away, I had something on my hands."
Santana's lawyer, Todd Rutherford, told Lauer on TODAY that his client fears for his life knowing that police officers who responded to the shooting continue to be investigated for what happened after Scott was shot, including whether anyone administered CPR to him like they said they did.
…
Santana, who is originally from the Dominican Republic, said his life has completely changed since going public.
"Now people know where I live. People know where I work, so my normal routine from just walking to my house to work have changed," he said. "At some point, I thought about staying anonymous and not showing my face and not talking about it. But this [is] something that has to go beyond that (Kim 1-2).
[Paste on Google this NBC presentation of Santana’s video]
Video Shows Fatal Police Shooting - The New York Times
Santana did not immediately release what he’d recorded. Having followed the Eric Garner case, Santana knew [Ramsey] Orta had been incarcerated. He knew justice was rare and witnesses were in danger of police retaliation.
...
Santana has said in interviews that he held on to the video because he felt his life would be in danger. He considered deleting it and leaving Charleston altogether. He had reason to believe that the video wouldn’t secure justice for the Scott family, as Orta’s had not for Garner’s family. It took Santana three days to find the bravery to come forward with the video. How many others would not? Have not (Jones 20).
Michael T. Slager played cops and robbers as a boy in the Virginia woods, volunteered as an emergency medical technician after high school and earned an associate degree in criminal justice while working full time as a patrolman.
Before he was caught on video firing eight shots at the back of an unarmed fleeing man and then dispassionately handcuffing him as he lay dying, he received praise from his supervisors at the North Charleston Police Department and excelled in police training. He was also the subject of two formal complaints in five years.
The adults who watched Mr. Slager, now 33, grow up recalled him being a shy loner who struggled to adjust to his broken home, and had a hard time socializing. They remembered him more for what he was not — not much of an athlete, not a troublemaker and not someone who spent much time with friends.
A little more than a week ago he was just a police officer in a working-class city — a homebody whose patrol car was often parked in his driveway — with a wife, expecting their first child together. Now even the police union, which is not paying for his legal defense, has distanced itself from him.
…
Mr. Slager was arrested and charged with murder on Tuesday, after state investigators said he had given inconsistent accounts about the shooting of Walter L. Scott, a 50-year-old forklift operator. It is not clear why Mr. Scott ran when Mr. Slager stopped him for a broken taillight on April 4. Mr. Scott told the officer that he was in the process of buying the 1990s-era Mercedes-Benz he was driving but had not yet registered it. Mr. Scott owed $18,104 in child support payments and fees, and an arrest warrant was issued for him in 2013, according to county records.
…
The Police Department dismissed Mr. Slager on Wednesday, the day after his arrest (Robles, Blinder, and Grant 1-2).
Police records obtained by The New York Times show that Mr. Slager was involved in 19 use-of-force episodes during his tenure as a police officer, including the shooting death of Mr. Scott and the encounter with Mr. Givens.
Of those 19 episodes, the records show, at least 14 involved Mr. Slager’s using his Taser in some manner. Mr. Scott’s shooting was the only time that Mr. Slager fired his handgun while on patrol (Blinder and Williams 1-2).
In 2013, a North Charleston man filed a complaint against Mr. Slager, accusing the officer of arriving at his house in pursuit of a burglary suspect and using a Taser on him on the steps of his own home.
City records show that the man, Mario Givens, told authorities that he had explained to Mr. Slager that the suspect he sought was 5-foot-5. Mr. Givens was 6-foot-3. The burglary victim, who was waiting outside in her car, shouted to the officer that Mr. Givens was not the burglar, according to the records.
…
Mrs. Shay, the former neighbor, spoke on Saturday with the officer’s stepmother, who was crying and puzzled over the latest turn of events and wondering whether Mr. Slager had become “desensitized” after joining the Police Department.
“She and I are agreeing on the fact that we both believe that something happened in the training,” Mrs. Shay said. “She agrees with me. I, from the beginning, thought this is not Michael at all” (Robles, Blinder, and Grant 3).
A former police officer in North Charleston, S.C., was indicted Monday by a grand jury on a murder charge in connection with the April shooting death of Walter L. Scott ….
The former officer, Michael T. Slager, had been jailed on a murder charge since April 7, when the video [of the killing] became public.
…
Under South Carolina law, there is only a single murder charge, … described as being an “unlawful killing with malice aforethought” — with the premeditation required to exist for only a few seconds before a killing in order to gain a conviction (Blinder and Williams 3).
CHARLESTON, S.C. — In a hushed courtroom, Michael T. Slager, a former North Charleston, S.C., police officer, was indicted here Wednesday on federal charges in the shooting death last year of Walter L. Scott, an unarmed black man.
Wearing a dark suit that only partly covered his cuffed wrists and ankles, Mr. Slager, already facing state murder charges, appeared before Magistrate Judge Bristow Marchant to hear federal charges that accused him of violating Mr. Scott’s civil rights, obstructing justice and using a weapon during the commission of a crime.
…
The obstruction of justice charge stems from Mr. Slager’s telling state investigators that Mr. Scott was moving toward him when he fired.
Mr. Slager knowingly misled investigators “by falsely stating that he fired his weapon at Scott while Scott was coming forward at him with a Taser,” the indictment said, when in fact, as the officer “then well knew, he repeatedly fired his weapon at Scott when Scott was running away from him.”
In recent years, amid mounting public outrage over the treatment of African-Americans by the police, the federal government has investigated several deaths — including those of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., Laquan McDonald in Chicago and Eric Garner in New York in 2014, as well as that of Freddie Gray last year in Baltimore.
But the Scott case is the first to elicit federal charges, which Mr. Slager’s lawyer, Andrew Savage, said was unprecedented. “It really feels as if Officer Slager is carrying the burden of many past cases that were handled differently,” Mr. Savage said.
Seth W. Stoughton, a professor at the University of South Carolina, said such an indictment was fairly rare. “There are only about half a dozen cases in which police officers have faced federal civil rights charges for a shooting,” he said. “The reason it’s so rare is the burden of proof — requiring prosecutors to show that it was a willful act, with specific intent. It’s not easy to show what was in someone’s mind.”
…
Standing at eye level to a bank of microphones after the court hearing, Walter Scott’s mother, Judy, fought back tears. “I thank God that my son was used to pull the cover off all the violence and the cover-ups that have been going on,” she said. “I’m happy for that. But I’m sad because my son is gone” (Dixon and Lewin 1-3).
On June 8, 2015, a South Carolina grand jury indicted Slager for murder. His trial began on October 31, 2016, in North Charleston. The court proceeding lasted for two months before Judge Clifton B. Newman declared a mistrial after the jury deadlocked. Eleven of the twelve jurors favored a conviction. A few months later, on May 2, 2017, in a plea agreement, the murder charges were dropped when Slager pled guilty to federal charges of civil rights violations. In an out-of-court settlement, the City of North Charleston agreed to pay $6.5 million to the family of Walter Scott (Momodu 1).
On Thursday [December 2017], Michael Slager, who was fired as a North Charleston patrolman days after the shooting, was sentenced to 20 years behind bars after pleading guilty in Scott's death.
U.S. District Judge David Norton, in issuing the sentence, said Slager shot Scott with "malice and recklessness" and then gave false testimony to investigators. Norton ruled that Slager, 36, was guilty of second-degree murder and obstruction of justice, and he also sentenced Slager to two years of supervision after his release.
Scott's mother, Judy, was one of seven family members who spoke before the sentencing. She recalled her 50-year-old son growing up as a "happy, jolly child" and then turned to Slager directly, telling him, "I forgive you."
Slager began to cry.
In his final statement before sentencing, the ex-officer said: "I wish I could go back in time and change the events. But I can't. It's a very tragic situation. I'm standing before the Scott family and the court and taking responsibility for the actions of April 4, 2015."
...
While prosecutors acknowledged during the trial last year that Scott wouldn't have been shot if he hadn't resisted in the first place, they said that Slager had been trained against using lethal force in such a situation and had gone too far. A jury of 11 white people and one black man — the foreman, Dorsey Montgomery II — couldn't agree on a verdict.
Montgomery later told "Today" that one other juror refused to convict the officer, while several remained on the fence. He said that while "race will always be a factor," he didn't believe it played into the decision for "the majority" of the jurors (Vann and Ortiz 1-2).
Works cited:
Blinder, Alan and Williams, Timothy. “Ex-South Carolina Officer Is Indicted in Shooting Death of Black Man.” The New York Times, June 8, 2015. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/09/us...
Dixon, Chris and Lewin, Tamar. “South Carolina Officer Faces Federal Charges in Fatal Shooting.” The New York Times, May 11, 2016. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/12/us...
Jones, Chloe Cooper. “Fearing for His Live.” The Verge, March 13, 2019. Net. https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/13/18...
Kim, Eun Kyung. “Feidin Santana, Bystander Who Recorded Walter Scott Shooting: 'I'm still scared'.” Today, April 9, 2015. Net. https://www.today.com/news/feidin-san...
Momodu, Samuel. “Walter Lamar Scott (1965-2015).” BlackPast, September 17, 2017. Net. https://www.blackpast.org/african-ame...
Robles, Frances, Blinder, Alan, and Grant, Jason. “After 8 Shots in North Charleston, Michael Slager Becomes an Officer Scorned.” The New York Times, April 12, 2015. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/13/us...
Schmidt, Michael and Apuzzo, Matt. “South Carolina Officer Is Charged with Murder of Walter Scott.” The New York Times, April 7, 2015. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/08/us...
Vann, Matthew and Ortiz, Erik. “Walter Scott Shooting: Michael Slager, Ex-Officer, Sentenced to 20 Years in Prison.” NBC News, Updated December 9, 2017. Net. https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/wal...
Yee, Gregory. “How Walter Scott’s Death Continues To Reverberate 5 Years Later for Two SC Families.” The Post and Courier, Updated March 26, 2021. Net. https://www.postandcourier.com/news/h...
May 2, 2021
Bad Apples -- November 22, 2014-- Tamir Rice
He was known as a boisterous, friendly boy. At school, where he had a good attendance record, Tamir was often in trouble, classmates said, mainly for his pranks: He was deft with a whoopee cushion and liked to reseal his empty milk carton to tempt the unsuspecting.
Deonte Goldsby, 21, a relative, said Tamir, the youngest of four, would take care of his smaller cousins at family gatherings, chasing them or playing with their action figures and dolls. With adults, he was well-mannered, using ma’am and sir and offering to fetch sodas from the refrigerator.
Cudell Commons … was the geographic center of his daily life. The park is flanked on one side by the recreation center where Tamir, who stood 5-foot-7, played basketball, boasting, “You can’t check me!” when he scored. On the other side stood his school, Marion C. Seltzer Elementary, where the calendar is printed in five languages and the bulletin boards teach children to distinguish stereotypes from reality (Dewan and Oppel Jr. 11).
CLEVELAND — It began with a swap: one boy’s cellphone for another’s replica of a Colt pistol.
One of the boys went to play in a nearby park, striking poses with the lifelike, airsoft-style gun, which fired plastic pellets. He threw a snowball, settled down at a picnic table and flopped his head onto his arms in a perfect assertion of preteen ennui, a grainy security video shows.
Then, with the gun tucked away, he walked to the edge of the gazebo. He might have been wandering aimlessly, or he might have been attracted by the sight of a squad car barreling across the lawn.
Seconds later, the boy lay dying from a police officer’s bullet. “Shots fired, male down,” one of the officers in the car called across his radio. “Black male, maybe 20, black revolver, black handgun by him. Send E.M.S. this way, and a roadblock.”
But the boy, Tamir Rice, was only 12. Now, with the county sheriff’s office reviewing the shooting, interviews and recently released video and police records show how a series of miscommunications, tactical errors and institutional failures by the Cleveland police cascaded into one irreversible mistake.
…
Because of multiple layers in Cleveland’s 911 system, crucial information from the initial call about “a guy in here with a pistol” was never relayed to the responding police officers, including the caller’s caveats that the gun was “probably fake” and that the wielder was “probably a juvenile.”
What the officers, Frank Garmback and his rookie partner, Tim Loehmann, did hear from a dispatcher was, “We have a Code 1,” the department’s highest level of urgency.
When the officers raced into action, they took a shortcut that pointed their squad car straight into the park, pulling up so close to Tamir that it made it difficult to take cover, or to use verbal persuasion or other tactics suggested by the department’s use-of-force policy.
Within two seconds of the car’s arrival, Officer Loehmann shot Tamir in the abdomen from point-blank range, raising doubts that he could have warned the boy three times to raise his hands, as the police later claimed.
And when Tamir’s 14-year-old sister came running up minutes later, the officers, who are white, tackled her to the ground and put her in handcuffs, intensifying later public outrage about the boy’s death. When his distraught mother arrived, the officers also threatened to arrest her unless she calmed down, the mother, Samaria Rice, said.
Officers Garmback and Loehmann did not check Tamir’s vital signs or perform first aid in the minutes after he was shot. But Officer Garmback frantically requested an emergency medical team at least seven times, urging the dispatcher to “step it up” and to send medical workers from a fire station a block away. It would be eight minutes before they arrived.
The shooting fit into a broader history of dysfunction at the Cleveland Division of Police. Two weeks after Tamir’s death, the Justice Department released a scathing report accusing the department of a pattern of excessive force for which officers were rarely disciplined, and pressed the department to accept a federal monitor. Just a year before, in 2013, an investigation by the state attorney general found “systemic failure” in the department.
It also highlighted shortcomings in the department’s vetting process for recruits. Police records show that Officer Loehmann was hired without a review of his file at a previous department, where he resigned after suffering a “dangerous loss of composure” during firearms training.
The Cleveland police department and mayor’s office declined to comment for this article (Dewan and Oppel Jr. 1-9).
Steve Loomis, president of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association, defended Loehmann a few months after the shooting saying, “Tamir Rice is in the wrong. He’s menacing. He’s 5-foot-7, 191 pounds. He wasn’t that little kid you’re seeing in pictures. He’s a 12-year-old in an adult body” (McGraw 4).
For Cleveland residents, the shooting highlighted another longstanding problem: The department’s community policing programs had been whittled down to a token effort, a result of cuts a decade earlier that might well have made a life-or-death difference to Tamir. A sign on a telephone pole yards from where he was shot down still advertises a police mini-station in the nearby recreation center where he played basketball. The station is long gone.
“If there was one there,” Councilman Jeffrey Johnson said, “he would have known Tamir, because Tamir was a regular, and he would have heard the call and gone out there and said, ‘Tamir, what are you doing’” (Dewan and Oppel Jr. 10)?
The 911 caller was calm, pausing to exchange pleasantries with the dispatcher before getting to the point: A male in Cudell Commons was pointing a pistol at people and scaring them. The gun was “probably fake,” he said twice before signing off, and its wielder was “probably a juvenile” (Dewan and Oppel Jr. 13).
The dispatcher who told police that a male outside of a Cleveland recreation center had a gun, but failed to tell police that the caller thought the gun might be fake, has resigned.
…
A 911 caller told [Beth] Mandl, "It's probably fake, but you know what, it's scaring" me.
That message was not relayed to the responding officers, Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback.
Loehmann, who shot Tamir moments after exiting his patrol car, has said that Tamir reached for the gun before he opened fire.
"He gave me no choice. He reached for the gun and there was nothing I could do," Loehmann told a fellow officer in the moments after he shot Tamir … (Police 1).
Officer Garmback, 46, who had joined the force in 2008, was at a nearby church when the call came. With him was his partner, Officer Loehmann, 26, hired just eight months before.
Officer Loehmann had grown up in Parma, a largely white suburb of Cleveland, but he commuted 30 minutes to an all-male, Roman Catholic high school on the city’s east side, Benedictine, where many of the students were minorities.
People who knew Officer Loehmann there recalled him as quiet and serious, active in the band and the German Club. The Rev. Gerard Gonda, the school’s president, said Mr. Loehmann had a solid record at Benedictine, where as a junior he was in Father Gonda’s theology class. “He had a very low-key personality, and I would say kind of a gentle personality,” Father Gonda said.
Officer Loehmann had long wanted to emulate his father, Frederic, who served in the New York Police Department for 20 years before becoming a federal marshal. So in 2011, he earned a bachelor’s degree in criminology and sociology from Cleveland State University, according to his personnel file, and the next year, he went to work for the police in Independence, Ohio.
But there, according to police records, he had emotional problems related to a girlfriend. At a shooting range, he was “distracted and weepy,” a supervisor said. One of his supervisors concluded that Officer Loehmann “would not be able to substantially cope, or make good decisions,” during stressful situations. After six months, the department allowed him to resign.
Officer Loehmann stayed in the Cleveland area, where he took private security jobs. He continued to apply for local law enforcement jobs but was not hired until the Cleveland police gave him a chance, in March 2014. The department never reviewed his Independence personnel file.
Officer Loehmann did well, graduating from the Cleveland Police Academy with a score of 98.8. He was assigned to a district on Cleveland’s west side, which included the poor, blighted neighborhood around Cudell Commons (Dewan and Oppel Jr 13-16).
By the time Officer Loehmann was hired, the department was already struggling with a host of problems that had begun at least a decade before.
In 2004, city leaders laid off 250 officers to help close a budget gap. That trimmed the force 15 percent, to about 1,500 officers, seriously hurting community policing and closing mini-stations.
Over the next two years, the city’s violent crime rate leapt by double digits. It has since declined from that peak, but the city is still more violent than it was in 2004, according to F.B.I. data, even as violent crime has continued to drop across Ohio and the country.
As the police department was shrinking, it came under increasing criticism for excessive use of force. The Justice Department began an investigation prompted by police shootings that led to an agreement in 2004 calling for the city to tighten its guidelines for the use of force and to improve its documentation of those incidents. But many reforms were not maintained, according to the recent Justice Department report.
Episodes of abuse continued to surface. In 2011, a helicopter video captured police officers kicking Edward Henderson in the head even though he was spread-eagled on the ground. None of the officers admitted to wrongdoing, and none were fired, though the video showed them “kicking his head like a football,” said David Malik, a prominent civil rights lawyer who won a $600,000 settlement for Mr. Henderson, who suffered a broken facial bone.
Mr. Malik said the city’s discipline and arbitration system heavily favored officers, making it difficult to punish misconduct. “It’s a culture of no consequences,” said Mr. Malik, who has filed or investigated potential lawsuits against the Cleveland police on more than 100 occasions.
Nearly two years after the assault on Mr. Henderson, more than 60 police cruisers and one-third of the city’s on-duty force engaged in a high-speed chase after officers mistook a car’s backfiring for gunfire. It ended when officers killed the two unarmed occupants by firing 137 rounds into their vehicle.
…
The deadly chase also spurred calls for a new Justice Department investigation. Released in December, that study found a pattern of excessive force, suggesting that the police were often hostile with residents and were rarely held accountable for misconduct.
“Officers use excessive force against individuals who are in mental health crisis or who may be unable to understand or comply with officers’ commands, including when the individual is not suspected of having committed any crime at all,” the report said.
Cleveland and the Justice Department have agreed to work toward a consent decree that would tighten use-of-force policies and subject the department to oversight by a monitor (Dewan and Oppel Jr. 17-18).
The Justice Department announced it found insufficient evidence to "support federal criminal charges against Cleveland Division of Police (CDP) Officers Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback."
In a statement released Tuesday, the department said it notified Rice's family attorneys about the decision on Monday "and today [December 29, 2020] sent a letter to Mr. Rice's family explaining the findings of the investigation and reasons for the decision."
...
In December 2015, a grand jury declined to bring criminal charges against Loehmann and Garmback.
In its statement Tuesday, the Justice Department said the officers "repeatedly and consistently stated that Officer Loehmann gave Tamir multiple commands to show his hands before shooting, and both officers repeatedly and consistently said that they saw Tamir reaching for his gun."
"Based on this evidence and the high burdens of the applicable federal laws, career prosecutors have concluded that there is insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Tamir did not reach for his toy gun; thus, there is insufficient evidence to establish that Officer Loehmann acted unreasonably under the circumstances," the department said.
The statement noted Loehmann and Garmback were the only two witnesses in the near vicinity of the shooting.
Loehmann was fired nearly three years after Rice's death for lying on his application to the Cleveland police (Romo 1-2).
[Afterward, Loehmann tried to secure another law enforcement job]
The Cleveland police officer who fatally shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice outside a recreation center four years ago backed out of a part-time job with another Ohio police department days after he was hired.
Richard Flanagan, the police chief for the Bellaire Police Department in Ohio, confirmed that Timothy Loehmann had withdrawn his application as a part-time officer.
"I have accepted his withdrawal from the Bellaire police department," Flanagan said in a statement to NBC affiliate WKYC3. "The pressures of all of this. He's been through enough the last couple years. He cared about the community here. He didn't want no protests, no violence, nothing of that nature."
A call by NBC News to the Ballaire Police Department was not returned.
During a news conference on Wednesday, Rice's mother, Samaria, and members of Black Lives Matter said "thousands" of people had contacted the police department to protest the hiring (Burke 1).
In her own words, Samaria recounts her emotional journey and shares her opinions that have been shaped by her life-changing loss.
People used to joke and say my son was going to be with me until he was 35 years old. They probably would have been right. He was mommy’s baby.
Tamir had just turned 12 years old and was transitioning from playing with Legos to playing video games and becoming a teen.
As a single parent and his dad not really being around, Tamir was very attached to me. He would give me hugs and kisses. He was able to keep the family laughing and basically kept us glued together.
He went from one activity to the next. He really enjoyed soccer. He enjoyed football. He enjoyed basketball as well. He liked to draw, too. He was part of the art program. He liked his school, for the most part. I would say he liked science and reading. I was able to expose him to the things that I wasn't exposed to. I put him in mentoring and tutoring. I really tried to keep him out of trouble by keeping him busy.
He was loving and caring but he was a jokester -- definitely a ladies’ man.
If Tamir was alive, he’d probably be doing something with sports. That little boy was so athletic at an early age. I'm not sure what kind of athlete he would have been. We didn't really have a chance to have a lot of those conversations. He would be 18 and have graduated high school by now.
That day Tamir was murdered I received a knock at the door and it was a neighborhood kid saying my son had been shot by police. I said, "What are you talking about?" I was in denial and shock.
As I arrived on the scene, my 14-year-old was in the back of a police car. Tamir was laying on the pavement in a gazebo with police surrounding him. My 16-year-old was surrounded by police officers as well.
Basically, police told me to calm down or else they were going to put me in the back of a police car. They gave me an ultimatum to stay at the scene of the crime, or to go with Tamir in the ambulance.
The day was very horrific for me. I was enraged by the way he was killed, murdered, assassinated, lynched, whatever they may call it. Nobody bothered to look at this man’s record before he became a Cleveland police officer. He had a horrible report. Nobody in Cleveland did their job, and that's why I have a dead son today (Rice 1-2).
It's not uncommon for trainers, known as FTOs in cop-speak, to have histories of misconduct and citizen complaints, according to a Marshall Project review of 10 big-city departments. The trainers get little formal instruction in how to mold young officers' behavior. Becoming a field trainer is seen as a mark of prestige and seniority, rather than a serious and challenging job, law enforcement officials said. Critics say the low standards create poisonous field training programs that fuel a toxic street-cop culture, marked by too much aggression and too little accountability.
Since 2011, the Justice Department has ordered at least five major cities to revamp how they run field training.
Training problems have continued despite nationwide protests against police brutality, especially against Black people. In fact, field trainers have been involved in many of the deaths that have prompted demonstrations over the last six years.
Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was a trainer; as his pupils watched, he kneeled on George Floyd's neck for more than 8 minutes.
"What was my client supposed to do but follow what his training officer said?" a defense lawyer, Earl Gray, asked during a court appearance for one of Chauvin's trainees, Thomas Lane. Lane is charged with aiding and abetting Floyd's murder.
In Cleveland, the cop who drove up to 12-year-old Tamir Rice on a cold November morning in 2014 was a trainer. Officer Frank Garmback was teaching Timothy Loehmann when a 911 dispatcher asked the pair whether they could check out a report of a man with a firearm outside a recreation center.
As they approached, Garmback warned, "Watch him, he's going to run,"according to Loehmann’s written statement released by local prosecutors. Loehmann got out of the car and shot and killed Tamir two seconds later. …
A grand jury declined to indict Garmback and Loehmann. Sgt. Jennifer Ciaccia, a police department spokeswoman, confirmed that Garmback is still on the force, but she said he no longer works as a trainer. Through his lawyer, Garmback declined to comment (Weichselbaum 1-2).
A police union has filed an appeal with the Ohio Supreme Court to reinstate former Cleveland Police Officer Timothy Loehmann, ...
The Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association (CPPA) filed the appeal Friday. Loehmann was fired in May 2017 after an internal review panel investigating the Tamir Rice shooting found he lied or omitted crucial information in his application's personal history statement.
…
Loehmann has not been charged in Tamir's death. Former Attorney General William Barr announced in December that the Justice Department would not pursue criminal charges in Tamir's death, saying there was not enough conclusive evidence against the police officers.
Tamir's family sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland on April 16 [2021] asking him to reopen the investigation into the boy's 2014 shooting death and to convene a grand jury to consider charges against the Cleveland police officers who killed him (Vera, Alonso, and Riess 1).
Ryan Getty, a former cop who has worked as a trainer and is now a criminologist at California State University, Sacramento … and other policing experts said the biggest failure of the [training] programs is that departments allow officers with questionable backgrounds to mentor new hires. Chauvin, for example, racked up at least a dozen complaints during his 19 years on the Minneapolis force without being disciplined.
"They pass on that socialization of 'I don't care what you learned in the academy; this is how you do it on the street,'" said Getty, who is writing a textbook on field training.
In his academic research on field training officers, Getty found that if young officers drew citizen complaints within their first two years on the job, it was likely that their trainers had histories of allegations filed against them. "There is a definite association between FTOs and their issues and the trainees' later success or deviance in their careers," Getty said.
…
Before recruits can work as officers, they attend police academies, which generally offer four to six months of classes. Then they become trainees on probation, who are easy to fire. Trainees usually don't chase violent 911 calls unless no other patrol officers are around, but as the shooting of Tamir Rice showed, they aren't exempt from responding to complex situations (Weichselbaum 2).
[You may view The Guardian’s showing of the video of the shooting by pasting the following on Google]
Tamir Rice: police release video of 12-year-old's fatal shooting ...
Works cited:
Burke, Minyvonne. “Officer Who Fatally Shot Tamir Rice Quits Ohio Police Department Days after He Was Hired.” NBC News, October 11, 2018. Net. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/...
Dewan, Shaila and Oppel Jr., Richard A. “In Tamir Rice Case, Many Errors by Cleveland Police, Then a Fatal One.” The New York Times, January 22, 2015. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/23/us...
McGraw, Daniel. “How Should Tamir Rice Be Remembered?” The Undefeated, August 23, 2016. Net. https://theundefeated.com/features/ho...
“Police Dispatcher in Tamir Rice Case Resigns.” USA Today, September 21, 2015. Net. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/n...
Rice, Samaria. “My 12-Year-Old Son, Tamir Rice, Was Killed by Police. I’m Not Allowed To Be Normal.” ABC News, July 13, 2020. Net. https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/News/12-ye...
Romo, Vanessa. “Justice Department Declines To Prosecute Cleveland Officers In Death of Tamir Rice.” NPR, December 29, 2020. Net. https://www.npr.org/2020/12/29/951277...
Vera, Amir, Alonso, Melissa, and Riess, Rebekah. “Ohio Police Union Appeals Firing of Ex-Officer Who Fatally Shot Tamir Rice.” CNN, updated April 28, 2021. Net. https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/28/us/tam...
Weichselbaum, Simone. “One Roadblock to Police Reform: Veteran Officers Who Train Recruits.” The Marshall Project, July 22, 2020. Net. https://www.themarshallproject.org/20...
Deonte Goldsby, 21, a relative, said Tamir, the youngest of four, would take care of his smaller cousins at family gatherings, chasing them or playing with their action figures and dolls. With adults, he was well-mannered, using ma’am and sir and offering to fetch sodas from the refrigerator.
Cudell Commons … was the geographic center of his daily life. The park is flanked on one side by the recreation center where Tamir, who stood 5-foot-7, played basketball, boasting, “You can’t check me!” when he scored. On the other side stood his school, Marion C. Seltzer Elementary, where the calendar is printed in five languages and the bulletin boards teach children to distinguish stereotypes from reality (Dewan and Oppel Jr. 11).
CLEVELAND — It began with a swap: one boy’s cellphone for another’s replica of a Colt pistol.
One of the boys went to play in a nearby park, striking poses with the lifelike, airsoft-style gun, which fired plastic pellets. He threw a snowball, settled down at a picnic table and flopped his head onto his arms in a perfect assertion of preteen ennui, a grainy security video shows.
Then, with the gun tucked away, he walked to the edge of the gazebo. He might have been wandering aimlessly, or he might have been attracted by the sight of a squad car barreling across the lawn.
Seconds later, the boy lay dying from a police officer’s bullet. “Shots fired, male down,” one of the officers in the car called across his radio. “Black male, maybe 20, black revolver, black handgun by him. Send E.M.S. this way, and a roadblock.”
But the boy, Tamir Rice, was only 12. Now, with the county sheriff’s office reviewing the shooting, interviews and recently released video and police records show how a series of miscommunications, tactical errors and institutional failures by the Cleveland police cascaded into one irreversible mistake.
…
Because of multiple layers in Cleveland’s 911 system, crucial information from the initial call about “a guy in here with a pistol” was never relayed to the responding police officers, including the caller’s caveats that the gun was “probably fake” and that the wielder was “probably a juvenile.”
What the officers, Frank Garmback and his rookie partner, Tim Loehmann, did hear from a dispatcher was, “We have a Code 1,” the department’s highest level of urgency.
When the officers raced into action, they took a shortcut that pointed their squad car straight into the park, pulling up so close to Tamir that it made it difficult to take cover, or to use verbal persuasion or other tactics suggested by the department’s use-of-force policy.
Within two seconds of the car’s arrival, Officer Loehmann shot Tamir in the abdomen from point-blank range, raising doubts that he could have warned the boy three times to raise his hands, as the police later claimed.
And when Tamir’s 14-year-old sister came running up minutes later, the officers, who are white, tackled her to the ground and put her in handcuffs, intensifying later public outrage about the boy’s death. When his distraught mother arrived, the officers also threatened to arrest her unless she calmed down, the mother, Samaria Rice, said.
Officers Garmback and Loehmann did not check Tamir’s vital signs or perform first aid in the minutes after he was shot. But Officer Garmback frantically requested an emergency medical team at least seven times, urging the dispatcher to “step it up” and to send medical workers from a fire station a block away. It would be eight minutes before they arrived.
The shooting fit into a broader history of dysfunction at the Cleveland Division of Police. Two weeks after Tamir’s death, the Justice Department released a scathing report accusing the department of a pattern of excessive force for which officers were rarely disciplined, and pressed the department to accept a federal monitor. Just a year before, in 2013, an investigation by the state attorney general found “systemic failure” in the department.
It also highlighted shortcomings in the department’s vetting process for recruits. Police records show that Officer Loehmann was hired without a review of his file at a previous department, where he resigned after suffering a “dangerous loss of composure” during firearms training.
The Cleveland police department and mayor’s office declined to comment for this article (Dewan and Oppel Jr. 1-9).
Steve Loomis, president of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association, defended Loehmann a few months after the shooting saying, “Tamir Rice is in the wrong. He’s menacing. He’s 5-foot-7, 191 pounds. He wasn’t that little kid you’re seeing in pictures. He’s a 12-year-old in an adult body” (McGraw 4).
For Cleveland residents, the shooting highlighted another longstanding problem: The department’s community policing programs had been whittled down to a token effort, a result of cuts a decade earlier that might well have made a life-or-death difference to Tamir. A sign on a telephone pole yards from where he was shot down still advertises a police mini-station in the nearby recreation center where he played basketball. The station is long gone.
“If there was one there,” Councilman Jeffrey Johnson said, “he would have known Tamir, because Tamir was a regular, and he would have heard the call and gone out there and said, ‘Tamir, what are you doing’” (Dewan and Oppel Jr. 10)?
The 911 caller was calm, pausing to exchange pleasantries with the dispatcher before getting to the point: A male in Cudell Commons was pointing a pistol at people and scaring them. The gun was “probably fake,” he said twice before signing off, and its wielder was “probably a juvenile” (Dewan and Oppel Jr. 13).
The dispatcher who told police that a male outside of a Cleveland recreation center had a gun, but failed to tell police that the caller thought the gun might be fake, has resigned.
…
A 911 caller told [Beth] Mandl, "It's probably fake, but you know what, it's scaring" me.
That message was not relayed to the responding officers, Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback.
Loehmann, who shot Tamir moments after exiting his patrol car, has said that Tamir reached for the gun before he opened fire.
"He gave me no choice. He reached for the gun and there was nothing I could do," Loehmann told a fellow officer in the moments after he shot Tamir … (Police 1).
Officer Garmback, 46, who had joined the force in 2008, was at a nearby church when the call came. With him was his partner, Officer Loehmann, 26, hired just eight months before.
Officer Loehmann had grown up in Parma, a largely white suburb of Cleveland, but he commuted 30 minutes to an all-male, Roman Catholic high school on the city’s east side, Benedictine, where many of the students were minorities.
People who knew Officer Loehmann there recalled him as quiet and serious, active in the band and the German Club. The Rev. Gerard Gonda, the school’s president, said Mr. Loehmann had a solid record at Benedictine, where as a junior he was in Father Gonda’s theology class. “He had a very low-key personality, and I would say kind of a gentle personality,” Father Gonda said.
Officer Loehmann had long wanted to emulate his father, Frederic, who served in the New York Police Department for 20 years before becoming a federal marshal. So in 2011, he earned a bachelor’s degree in criminology and sociology from Cleveland State University, according to his personnel file, and the next year, he went to work for the police in Independence, Ohio.
But there, according to police records, he had emotional problems related to a girlfriend. At a shooting range, he was “distracted and weepy,” a supervisor said. One of his supervisors concluded that Officer Loehmann “would not be able to substantially cope, or make good decisions,” during stressful situations. After six months, the department allowed him to resign.
Officer Loehmann stayed in the Cleveland area, where he took private security jobs. He continued to apply for local law enforcement jobs but was not hired until the Cleveland police gave him a chance, in March 2014. The department never reviewed his Independence personnel file.
Officer Loehmann did well, graduating from the Cleveland Police Academy with a score of 98.8. He was assigned to a district on Cleveland’s west side, which included the poor, blighted neighborhood around Cudell Commons (Dewan and Oppel Jr 13-16).
By the time Officer Loehmann was hired, the department was already struggling with a host of problems that had begun at least a decade before.
In 2004, city leaders laid off 250 officers to help close a budget gap. That trimmed the force 15 percent, to about 1,500 officers, seriously hurting community policing and closing mini-stations.
Over the next two years, the city’s violent crime rate leapt by double digits. It has since declined from that peak, but the city is still more violent than it was in 2004, according to F.B.I. data, even as violent crime has continued to drop across Ohio and the country.
As the police department was shrinking, it came under increasing criticism for excessive use of force. The Justice Department began an investigation prompted by police shootings that led to an agreement in 2004 calling for the city to tighten its guidelines for the use of force and to improve its documentation of those incidents. But many reforms were not maintained, according to the recent Justice Department report.
Episodes of abuse continued to surface. In 2011, a helicopter video captured police officers kicking Edward Henderson in the head even though he was spread-eagled on the ground. None of the officers admitted to wrongdoing, and none were fired, though the video showed them “kicking his head like a football,” said David Malik, a prominent civil rights lawyer who won a $600,000 settlement for Mr. Henderson, who suffered a broken facial bone.
Mr. Malik said the city’s discipline and arbitration system heavily favored officers, making it difficult to punish misconduct. “It’s a culture of no consequences,” said Mr. Malik, who has filed or investigated potential lawsuits against the Cleveland police on more than 100 occasions.
Nearly two years after the assault on Mr. Henderson, more than 60 police cruisers and one-third of the city’s on-duty force engaged in a high-speed chase after officers mistook a car’s backfiring for gunfire. It ended when officers killed the two unarmed occupants by firing 137 rounds into their vehicle.
…
The deadly chase also spurred calls for a new Justice Department investigation. Released in December, that study found a pattern of excessive force, suggesting that the police were often hostile with residents and were rarely held accountable for misconduct.
“Officers use excessive force against individuals who are in mental health crisis or who may be unable to understand or comply with officers’ commands, including when the individual is not suspected of having committed any crime at all,” the report said.
Cleveland and the Justice Department have agreed to work toward a consent decree that would tighten use-of-force policies and subject the department to oversight by a monitor (Dewan and Oppel Jr. 17-18).
The Justice Department announced it found insufficient evidence to "support federal criminal charges against Cleveland Division of Police (CDP) Officers Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback."
In a statement released Tuesday, the department said it notified Rice's family attorneys about the decision on Monday "and today [December 29, 2020] sent a letter to Mr. Rice's family explaining the findings of the investigation and reasons for the decision."
...
In December 2015, a grand jury declined to bring criminal charges against Loehmann and Garmback.
In its statement Tuesday, the Justice Department said the officers "repeatedly and consistently stated that Officer Loehmann gave Tamir multiple commands to show his hands before shooting, and both officers repeatedly and consistently said that they saw Tamir reaching for his gun."
"Based on this evidence and the high burdens of the applicable federal laws, career prosecutors have concluded that there is insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Tamir did not reach for his toy gun; thus, there is insufficient evidence to establish that Officer Loehmann acted unreasonably under the circumstances," the department said.
The statement noted Loehmann and Garmback were the only two witnesses in the near vicinity of the shooting.
Loehmann was fired nearly three years after Rice's death for lying on his application to the Cleveland police (Romo 1-2).
[Afterward, Loehmann tried to secure another law enforcement job]
The Cleveland police officer who fatally shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice outside a recreation center four years ago backed out of a part-time job with another Ohio police department days after he was hired.
Richard Flanagan, the police chief for the Bellaire Police Department in Ohio, confirmed that Timothy Loehmann had withdrawn his application as a part-time officer.
"I have accepted his withdrawal from the Bellaire police department," Flanagan said in a statement to NBC affiliate WKYC3. "The pressures of all of this. He's been through enough the last couple years. He cared about the community here. He didn't want no protests, no violence, nothing of that nature."
A call by NBC News to the Ballaire Police Department was not returned.
During a news conference on Wednesday, Rice's mother, Samaria, and members of Black Lives Matter said "thousands" of people had contacted the police department to protest the hiring (Burke 1).
In her own words, Samaria recounts her emotional journey and shares her opinions that have been shaped by her life-changing loss.
People used to joke and say my son was going to be with me until he was 35 years old. They probably would have been right. He was mommy’s baby.
Tamir had just turned 12 years old and was transitioning from playing with Legos to playing video games and becoming a teen.
As a single parent and his dad not really being around, Tamir was very attached to me. He would give me hugs and kisses. He was able to keep the family laughing and basically kept us glued together.
He went from one activity to the next. He really enjoyed soccer. He enjoyed football. He enjoyed basketball as well. He liked to draw, too. He was part of the art program. He liked his school, for the most part. I would say he liked science and reading. I was able to expose him to the things that I wasn't exposed to. I put him in mentoring and tutoring. I really tried to keep him out of trouble by keeping him busy.
He was loving and caring but he was a jokester -- definitely a ladies’ man.
If Tamir was alive, he’d probably be doing something with sports. That little boy was so athletic at an early age. I'm not sure what kind of athlete he would have been. We didn't really have a chance to have a lot of those conversations. He would be 18 and have graduated high school by now.
That day Tamir was murdered I received a knock at the door and it was a neighborhood kid saying my son had been shot by police. I said, "What are you talking about?" I was in denial and shock.
As I arrived on the scene, my 14-year-old was in the back of a police car. Tamir was laying on the pavement in a gazebo with police surrounding him. My 16-year-old was surrounded by police officers as well.
Basically, police told me to calm down or else they were going to put me in the back of a police car. They gave me an ultimatum to stay at the scene of the crime, or to go with Tamir in the ambulance.
The day was very horrific for me. I was enraged by the way he was killed, murdered, assassinated, lynched, whatever they may call it. Nobody bothered to look at this man’s record before he became a Cleveland police officer. He had a horrible report. Nobody in Cleveland did their job, and that's why I have a dead son today (Rice 1-2).
It's not uncommon for trainers, known as FTOs in cop-speak, to have histories of misconduct and citizen complaints, according to a Marshall Project review of 10 big-city departments. The trainers get little formal instruction in how to mold young officers' behavior. Becoming a field trainer is seen as a mark of prestige and seniority, rather than a serious and challenging job, law enforcement officials said. Critics say the low standards create poisonous field training programs that fuel a toxic street-cop culture, marked by too much aggression and too little accountability.
Since 2011, the Justice Department has ordered at least five major cities to revamp how they run field training.
Training problems have continued despite nationwide protests against police brutality, especially against Black people. In fact, field trainers have been involved in many of the deaths that have prompted demonstrations over the last six years.
Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was a trainer; as his pupils watched, he kneeled on George Floyd's neck for more than 8 minutes.
"What was my client supposed to do but follow what his training officer said?" a defense lawyer, Earl Gray, asked during a court appearance for one of Chauvin's trainees, Thomas Lane. Lane is charged with aiding and abetting Floyd's murder.
In Cleveland, the cop who drove up to 12-year-old Tamir Rice on a cold November morning in 2014 was a trainer. Officer Frank Garmback was teaching Timothy Loehmann when a 911 dispatcher asked the pair whether they could check out a report of a man with a firearm outside a recreation center.
As they approached, Garmback warned, "Watch him, he's going to run,"according to Loehmann’s written statement released by local prosecutors. Loehmann got out of the car and shot and killed Tamir two seconds later. …
A grand jury declined to indict Garmback and Loehmann. Sgt. Jennifer Ciaccia, a police department spokeswoman, confirmed that Garmback is still on the force, but she said he no longer works as a trainer. Through his lawyer, Garmback declined to comment (Weichselbaum 1-2).
A police union has filed an appeal with the Ohio Supreme Court to reinstate former Cleveland Police Officer Timothy Loehmann, ...
The Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association (CPPA) filed the appeal Friday. Loehmann was fired in May 2017 after an internal review panel investigating the Tamir Rice shooting found he lied or omitted crucial information in his application's personal history statement.
…
Loehmann has not been charged in Tamir's death. Former Attorney General William Barr announced in December that the Justice Department would not pursue criminal charges in Tamir's death, saying there was not enough conclusive evidence against the police officers.
Tamir's family sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland on April 16 [2021] asking him to reopen the investigation into the boy's 2014 shooting death and to convene a grand jury to consider charges against the Cleveland police officers who killed him (Vera, Alonso, and Riess 1).
Ryan Getty, a former cop who has worked as a trainer and is now a criminologist at California State University, Sacramento … and other policing experts said the biggest failure of the [training] programs is that departments allow officers with questionable backgrounds to mentor new hires. Chauvin, for example, racked up at least a dozen complaints during his 19 years on the Minneapolis force without being disciplined.
"They pass on that socialization of 'I don't care what you learned in the academy; this is how you do it on the street,'" said Getty, who is writing a textbook on field training.
In his academic research on field training officers, Getty found that if young officers drew citizen complaints within their first two years on the job, it was likely that their trainers had histories of allegations filed against them. "There is a definite association between FTOs and their issues and the trainees' later success or deviance in their careers," Getty said.
…
Before recruits can work as officers, they attend police academies, which generally offer four to six months of classes. Then they become trainees on probation, who are easy to fire. Trainees usually don't chase violent 911 calls unless no other patrol officers are around, but as the shooting of Tamir Rice showed, they aren't exempt from responding to complex situations (Weichselbaum 2).
[You may view The Guardian’s showing of the video of the shooting by pasting the following on Google]
Tamir Rice: police release video of 12-year-old's fatal shooting ...
Works cited:
Burke, Minyvonne. “Officer Who Fatally Shot Tamir Rice Quits Ohio Police Department Days after He Was Hired.” NBC News, October 11, 2018. Net. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/...
Dewan, Shaila and Oppel Jr., Richard A. “In Tamir Rice Case, Many Errors by Cleveland Police, Then a Fatal One.” The New York Times, January 22, 2015. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/23/us...
McGraw, Daniel. “How Should Tamir Rice Be Remembered?” The Undefeated, August 23, 2016. Net. https://theundefeated.com/features/ho...
“Police Dispatcher in Tamir Rice Case Resigns.” USA Today, September 21, 2015. Net. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/n...
Rice, Samaria. “My 12-Year-Old Son, Tamir Rice, Was Killed by Police. I’m Not Allowed To Be Normal.” ABC News, July 13, 2020. Net. https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/News/12-ye...
Romo, Vanessa. “Justice Department Declines To Prosecute Cleveland Officers In Death of Tamir Rice.” NPR, December 29, 2020. Net. https://www.npr.org/2020/12/29/951277...
Vera, Amir, Alonso, Melissa, and Riess, Rebekah. “Ohio Police Union Appeals Firing of Ex-Officer Who Fatally Shot Tamir Rice.” CNN, updated April 28, 2021. Net. https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/28/us/tam...
Weichselbaum, Simone. “One Roadblock to Police Reform: Veteran Officers Who Train Recruits.” The Marshall Project, July 22, 2020. Net. https://www.themarshallproject.org/20...
April 29, 2021
Bad Apples -- August 9, 2014, Michael Brown
On Aug. 9, 2014, Michael Brown and a friend were walking in the middle of Canfield Drive, a two-lane street in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, Missouri, when a police officer drove by and told them to use the sidewalk.
After words were exchanged, the white officer confronted the 18-year-old Brown, who was black. The situation escalated, with the officer and Brown scuffling. The officer shot and killed Brown, who was unarmed.
A timeline of key events that followed the shooting:
AUG. 9, 2014: Brown’s bloodied body remains in the street for four hours in the summer heat. People in the neighborhood later lash out at police, saying they mistreated the body.
AUG. 10, 2014: After a candlelight vigil, people protesting Brown’s death smash car windows and carry away armloads of food, alcohol and other looted items from stores. Some protesters stand on police cars, taunting officers. A QuikTrip convenience store on West Florissant Avenue, just blocks from where Brown was shot, is looted and burned. Other businesses are damaged or destroyed. It’s the first of several nights of unrest. The protests help solidify the Black Lives Matter movement formed in the wake of the 2012 death of black teenager Trayvon Martin in Florida and the acquittal of the neighborhood watch volunteer who shot him.
AUG. 11, 2014: The FBI opens an investigation into Brown’s death, and two men who said they saw the shooting tell reporters that Brown had his hands raised when the officer fired repeatedly. That night, police in riot gear fire tear gas and rubber bullets to try to disperse a crowd of protesters.
AUG. 14, 2014: The Missouri State Highway Patrol takes control of security, relieving Ferguson and St. Louis County officers of their law enforcement authority after days of unrest. The shift in command comes after images from the protests show many officers equipped with military-style gear, including armored vehicles, body armor and assault rifles. In photos circulated online, officers are seen pointing their weapons at demonstrators.
AUG. 15, 2014: Police identify the officer who shot Brown as Darren Wilson, who had been with the department since 2011. They also release surveillance video that shows Brown grabbing large amounts of cigarillos from behind the counter of the Ferguson Market and pushing a worker who confronts him as he leaves the convenience store. Police say Brown took almost $50 worth of cigarillos. The release of the video upsets protesters.
…
AUG. 20, 2014: U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder visits Ferguson to offer assurances about the investigation into Brown’s death and to meet with investigators and Brown’s family. A grand jury begins hearing evidence to determine whether Wilson should be charged.
NOV. 24, 2014: St. Louis County prosecutor Bob McCulloch announces that the grand jury has decided not to indict Wilson. Protests that were passionate but peaceful earlier in the day turn violent. At least a dozen buildings and multiple police cars are burned, officers are hit by rocks and batteries, and reports of gunfire force some St. Louis-bound flights to be diverted.
NOV. 29, 2014: Wilson announces his resignation from the Ferguson Police Department effective immediately.
MARCH 4, 2015: The U.S. Department of Justice announces that it will not prosecute Wilson in Brown’s death but releases a scathing report that finds racial bias in the way police and courts in the community treat black people (Timeline 1-3).
The big question is whether Wilson legitimately believed, as police have said, that Brown posed a threat to his safety or his life. Some witnesses painted a different picture, saying Brown had his hands raised in surrender.
Wilson, who was in a patrol vehicle, initially stopped Brown for jaywalking, because he and a friend were walking in the middle of Canfield Drive, a quiet street located off busy West Florissant Avenue. Brown was not armed.
Brown’s friend, Dorian Johnson, and police officials agree that Wilson got out of the car and that he and Brown had a physical struggle, although which of them started it is at issue.
Two autopsies, one of them commissioned by the Brown family, found that six bullets struck Brown, all of them from the front. He had wounds to one hand, an arm, his chest and head. The St. Louis County coroner’s report said the hand wound showed traces of material that could have come from the barrel of the gun, suggesting that the shot was fired at close range. A third autopsy was ordered by the U.S. Justice Department but has not been made public.
When the fatal shot struck Brown on the top of the head, he was roughly 35 feet from Wilson’s vehicle, indicating that at some point he had moved away from it.
Police say that when Wilson got out of his SUV, Brown tried to shove him back into the vehicle and reached for the officer’s gun, prompting the first shots.
Johnson said that after telling the teens to get on the sidewalk, Wilson started to drive away, then reversed his vehicle and struck Brown with the SUV’s door. He said the officer then got out of the car, struggled with Brown and began to shoot.
Some witnesses said Brown was shot while fleeing from the officer, a scenario not supported by the autopsies. Some, including Johnson, said he ran but then turned and held his hands up in surrender.
Police said he turned back toward the car and charged the officer, who fired to protect himself.
Brown, who was 18, had recently graduated from high school and was set to begin his freshman year at Vatterott College. He was shot to death at around noon on Aug. 9. in front of his grandmother’s house. Shortly before the shooting, Brown had gotten into a scuffle with a store clerk over a box of cigars.
Wilson is a 28-year-old white police officer, who has been with the Ferguson Police Department for six years. He had no prior disciplinary record. When he stopped Brown, he was unaware of the cigar incident (Suggs 1-3).
When 18-year-old Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, police officers shared a video showing Brown with his hands around a shopkeeper's neck as he makes off with a carton of cigarillos.
Police called the incident a strong-arm robbery and argued that Brown had brought the same level of violence to his confrontation with officer Darren Wilson moments later.
But previously unreleased surveillance video casts doubt on whether Brown robbed the store shortly before he was fatally shot by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson.
Jason Pollock, the filmmaker who discovered the video, says the footage shows Brown exchanging drugs for a bag of cigarillos around 1 a.m. on Aug. 9, 2014, about 11 hours before he was killed.
The video doesn't clearly show what was exchanged but shows Brown leaving behind the cigarillos.
The new footage is a part of Pollock’s new documentary “Strange Fruit,” which debuted Saturday at the South By Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. The documentary suggests that Brown’s argument the next morning was over getting his things back.
…
Pollock says the video is proof that Brown did not rob the store.
“They wanted us to think Michael robbed the store because they needed us to think that Michael was aggressive. Michael was handed the bag in the video, the clerk puts it in a plastic bag and hands it over the counter to Michael Brown,” Pollock said. “That’s not stealing [from] the store.”
…
The convenience store, Ferguson Market and Liquor, strongly denies the documentary’s claims (Osunsami and Knox 1).
Three months after it began its work, the grand jury in Ferguson, Missouri, chose Monday not to indict white police officer Darren Wilson for killing black, unarmed teenager Michael Brown last August. In this, the grand jury of nine whites and three blacks was no different from grand juries all over the country that previously have excused police officers following shooting deaths like this.
Our nation’s legal standards, its broad definitions of the use of “deadly force,” make it extremely difficult for police officers ever to face criminal charges even when an unarmed citizen dies after an altercation like this.
St. Louis County prosecutor Bob McCulloch, a prosecutor from a police family, a man with a history that presaged this controversy, did not belabor this elemental point during his long statement Monday evening explaining the grand jury’s decision. Instead, he focused on two evidentiary themes. First, that eyewitness testimony from bystanders incriminating Wilson was ambiguous and conflicting. And, second, that this testimony also was inconsistent with the physical evidence, the forensic work, recovered from the crime scene. This evidence suggested that Brown was not fleeing Wilson, and did not necessarily have his hands in the air in surrender, when the fatal shots were fired on August 9th.
Instead, McCulloch said, several witnesses testified that Brown had charged at Wilson just before the police officer shot him to death. And Wilson himself, testifying for four hours, told grand jurors that he felt his life was threatened by Brown. When they first scuffled at the Wilson’s police car, the officer testified, he felt “like a 5-year-old holding on to Hulk Hogan.”
Later, as he and Brown confronted each other on that hot summer street, Wilson told grand jurors that Brown “looked at me and had the most intense aggressive face. The only way I can describe it, it looks like a demon, that’s how angry he looked.’
…
… This was not a typical grand jury proceeding in which only a few witnesses testify, the prosecutor tightly controls what grand jurors hear, and the suspect does not testify at length about why he should not be charged.
How do we know it is rare for a prosecutor to manage a grand jury in this fashion? We know because the grand jury process has been pro forma in most jurisdictions and because prosecutors almost always get an indictment from them when they want one. On the federal level, Five Thirty-Eight reported last night, “U.S. attorneys prosecuted 162,000 cases in 2010, the most recent year for which we have data. Grand juries declined to return an indictment in 11 of them.” That’s about 0.01 percent of the time (Cohen 1-2).
APRIL 23, 2015: Lawyers for Brown’s family sue the city of Ferguson, Wilson and Jackson.
…
JULY 10, 2015: [Governor] Nixon signs into law legislation limiting cities’ ability to profit from traffic tickets and court fines, the first significant step taken by state lawmakers to address concerns raised after Brown’s death. Among other things, the law lowers the percentage of revenue most cities can collect from traffic fines and fees from 30% to 20%.
…
JUNE 20, 2017: A federal judge in St. Louis approves a wrongful-death lawsuit settlement that awards Brown’s parents $1.5 million.
…
AUG. 7, 2018: In a stunning upset, Ferguson City Councilman Wesley Bell defeats 28-year incumbent McCulloch in the Democratic primary for St. Louis County prosecutor. Bell, who is black, was unopposed in the November election and took office in January 2019. McCulloch, who is white, was seen as an old-school, law-and-order prosecutor who drew criticism for his handling of the Wilson investigation. Bell ran on a platform of reforms, saying he would work to reduce incarcerations and start a unit to investigate shootings involving officers (Timeline 4-5).
A new review of the 2014 police shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, of 18-year-old Michael has concluded that no murder or manslaughter charges against former officer Darren Wilson are warranted.
The five-month secret review of the August 2014 fatal shooting led St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell to conclude he couldn't prove those allegations in a court of law, he said Thursday.
However, Bell said, "Our investigation does not exonerate Darren Wilson."
He said the reinvestigation into the actions of Wilson, who is white, for the death of Brown, who was Black — which sparked unrest in Ferguson long before America had learned the name of George Floyd — was necessary.
"Because of the significance of this case to this community and because the family asked, I believed it was necessary to conduct a reexamination of the evidence in the case and come to our own conclusion," Bell said.
Bell said thousands of pages of documents, including witness statements, forensic reports and other evidence, were examined in his review.
"The question for this office was a simple one: Could we prove beyond a reasonable doubt that when Darren Wilson shot Michael Brown he committed murder or manslaughter under Missouri law," the prosecutor said. "After an independent and in-depth review of the evidence we cannot conclude that he did" (Romero 1-2).
In the aftermath of the shooting, [Michael] Brown [Senior] said he was so angry that every time he spoke, he started feeling changes in his body. He eventually turned the anger into activism and today works with young people and counsels others who have lost loved ones to violence.
“I went through those stages [of anger], but what people don’t understand is that being angry wasn’t doing nothing but killing myself,” Brown said. “I can’t just stay angry … I knew I had to get somewhere with a little bit of peace or I would lose, my family would lose.”
Five years later, Brown said he is in a little better space. “I beat myself up for a bunch of years thinking it was my fault, because you vow when the child comes out of the womb that you will protect him,” he said.
“Michael’s legacy is through me. I am his legacy. We stand in the public, try to do the right thing, keep the work going. Try to pull families and communities together” Robertson and Salter 1-2).
[Paste the following link on Google to watch video of Michael Brown twice in the convenience store]
https://abcnews.go.com/US/surveillanc...
Works cited:
Cohen, Andrew. “Law and Disorder in Ferguson.” The Marshall Project, November 25, 2014. Net. https://www.themarshallproject.org/20...
Osunsami, Steve, and Knox, Matt. “Surveillance Video May Shed Light on Ferguson Police Shooting of Michael Brown.” ABC News, March 13, 2017. Net. https://abcnews.go.com/US/surveillanc...
Roberson, Jeff, and Salter, Jim. “Ferguson: Five Years On from the Shooting of Michael Brown.” The Guardian, August 10, 2019. Net. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...
Romero, Dennis. “No Charges for Officer Who Shot Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, after Follow-Up Probe.” NBC News, July 30, 2020, Net. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/...
Suggs, Ernie. “The Michael Brown Killing: What You Need to Know.” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Net. https://www.ajc.com/news/ferguson-bro...
”Timeline of Events in Shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson.” AP News, August 8, 2019. Net. https://apnews.com/article/9aa3203369...
After words were exchanged, the white officer confronted the 18-year-old Brown, who was black. The situation escalated, with the officer and Brown scuffling. The officer shot and killed Brown, who was unarmed.
A timeline of key events that followed the shooting:
AUG. 9, 2014: Brown’s bloodied body remains in the street for four hours in the summer heat. People in the neighborhood later lash out at police, saying they mistreated the body.
AUG. 10, 2014: After a candlelight vigil, people protesting Brown’s death smash car windows and carry away armloads of food, alcohol and other looted items from stores. Some protesters stand on police cars, taunting officers. A QuikTrip convenience store on West Florissant Avenue, just blocks from where Brown was shot, is looted and burned. Other businesses are damaged or destroyed. It’s the first of several nights of unrest. The protests help solidify the Black Lives Matter movement formed in the wake of the 2012 death of black teenager Trayvon Martin in Florida and the acquittal of the neighborhood watch volunteer who shot him.
AUG. 11, 2014: The FBI opens an investigation into Brown’s death, and two men who said they saw the shooting tell reporters that Brown had his hands raised when the officer fired repeatedly. That night, police in riot gear fire tear gas and rubber bullets to try to disperse a crowd of protesters.
AUG. 14, 2014: The Missouri State Highway Patrol takes control of security, relieving Ferguson and St. Louis County officers of their law enforcement authority after days of unrest. The shift in command comes after images from the protests show many officers equipped with military-style gear, including armored vehicles, body armor and assault rifles. In photos circulated online, officers are seen pointing their weapons at demonstrators.
AUG. 15, 2014: Police identify the officer who shot Brown as Darren Wilson, who had been with the department since 2011. They also release surveillance video that shows Brown grabbing large amounts of cigarillos from behind the counter of the Ferguson Market and pushing a worker who confronts him as he leaves the convenience store. Police say Brown took almost $50 worth of cigarillos. The release of the video upsets protesters.
…
AUG. 20, 2014: U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder visits Ferguson to offer assurances about the investigation into Brown’s death and to meet with investigators and Brown’s family. A grand jury begins hearing evidence to determine whether Wilson should be charged.
NOV. 24, 2014: St. Louis County prosecutor Bob McCulloch announces that the grand jury has decided not to indict Wilson. Protests that were passionate but peaceful earlier in the day turn violent. At least a dozen buildings and multiple police cars are burned, officers are hit by rocks and batteries, and reports of gunfire force some St. Louis-bound flights to be diverted.
NOV. 29, 2014: Wilson announces his resignation from the Ferguson Police Department effective immediately.
MARCH 4, 2015: The U.S. Department of Justice announces that it will not prosecute Wilson in Brown’s death but releases a scathing report that finds racial bias in the way police and courts in the community treat black people (Timeline 1-3).
The big question is whether Wilson legitimately believed, as police have said, that Brown posed a threat to his safety or his life. Some witnesses painted a different picture, saying Brown had his hands raised in surrender.
Wilson, who was in a patrol vehicle, initially stopped Brown for jaywalking, because he and a friend were walking in the middle of Canfield Drive, a quiet street located off busy West Florissant Avenue. Brown was not armed.
Brown’s friend, Dorian Johnson, and police officials agree that Wilson got out of the car and that he and Brown had a physical struggle, although which of them started it is at issue.
Two autopsies, one of them commissioned by the Brown family, found that six bullets struck Brown, all of them from the front. He had wounds to one hand, an arm, his chest and head. The St. Louis County coroner’s report said the hand wound showed traces of material that could have come from the barrel of the gun, suggesting that the shot was fired at close range. A third autopsy was ordered by the U.S. Justice Department but has not been made public.
When the fatal shot struck Brown on the top of the head, he was roughly 35 feet from Wilson’s vehicle, indicating that at some point he had moved away from it.
Police say that when Wilson got out of his SUV, Brown tried to shove him back into the vehicle and reached for the officer’s gun, prompting the first shots.
Johnson said that after telling the teens to get on the sidewalk, Wilson started to drive away, then reversed his vehicle and struck Brown with the SUV’s door. He said the officer then got out of the car, struggled with Brown and began to shoot.
Some witnesses said Brown was shot while fleeing from the officer, a scenario not supported by the autopsies. Some, including Johnson, said he ran but then turned and held his hands up in surrender.
Police said he turned back toward the car and charged the officer, who fired to protect himself.
Brown, who was 18, had recently graduated from high school and was set to begin his freshman year at Vatterott College. He was shot to death at around noon on Aug. 9. in front of his grandmother’s house. Shortly before the shooting, Brown had gotten into a scuffle with a store clerk over a box of cigars.
Wilson is a 28-year-old white police officer, who has been with the Ferguson Police Department for six years. He had no prior disciplinary record. When he stopped Brown, he was unaware of the cigar incident (Suggs 1-3).
When 18-year-old Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, police officers shared a video showing Brown with his hands around a shopkeeper's neck as he makes off with a carton of cigarillos.
Police called the incident a strong-arm robbery and argued that Brown had brought the same level of violence to his confrontation with officer Darren Wilson moments later.
But previously unreleased surveillance video casts doubt on whether Brown robbed the store shortly before he was fatally shot by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson.
Jason Pollock, the filmmaker who discovered the video, says the footage shows Brown exchanging drugs for a bag of cigarillos around 1 a.m. on Aug. 9, 2014, about 11 hours before he was killed.
The video doesn't clearly show what was exchanged but shows Brown leaving behind the cigarillos.
The new footage is a part of Pollock’s new documentary “Strange Fruit,” which debuted Saturday at the South By Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. The documentary suggests that Brown’s argument the next morning was over getting his things back.
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Pollock says the video is proof that Brown did not rob the store.
“They wanted us to think Michael robbed the store because they needed us to think that Michael was aggressive. Michael was handed the bag in the video, the clerk puts it in a plastic bag and hands it over the counter to Michael Brown,” Pollock said. “That’s not stealing [from] the store.”
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The convenience store, Ferguson Market and Liquor, strongly denies the documentary’s claims (Osunsami and Knox 1).
Three months after it began its work, the grand jury in Ferguson, Missouri, chose Monday not to indict white police officer Darren Wilson for killing black, unarmed teenager Michael Brown last August. In this, the grand jury of nine whites and three blacks was no different from grand juries all over the country that previously have excused police officers following shooting deaths like this.
Our nation’s legal standards, its broad definitions of the use of “deadly force,” make it extremely difficult for police officers ever to face criminal charges even when an unarmed citizen dies after an altercation like this.
St. Louis County prosecutor Bob McCulloch, a prosecutor from a police family, a man with a history that presaged this controversy, did not belabor this elemental point during his long statement Monday evening explaining the grand jury’s decision. Instead, he focused on two evidentiary themes. First, that eyewitness testimony from bystanders incriminating Wilson was ambiguous and conflicting. And, second, that this testimony also was inconsistent with the physical evidence, the forensic work, recovered from the crime scene. This evidence suggested that Brown was not fleeing Wilson, and did not necessarily have his hands in the air in surrender, when the fatal shots were fired on August 9th.
Instead, McCulloch said, several witnesses testified that Brown had charged at Wilson just before the police officer shot him to death. And Wilson himself, testifying for four hours, told grand jurors that he felt his life was threatened by Brown. When they first scuffled at the Wilson’s police car, the officer testified, he felt “like a 5-year-old holding on to Hulk Hogan.”
Later, as he and Brown confronted each other on that hot summer street, Wilson told grand jurors that Brown “looked at me and had the most intense aggressive face. The only way I can describe it, it looks like a demon, that’s how angry he looked.’
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… This was not a typical grand jury proceeding in which only a few witnesses testify, the prosecutor tightly controls what grand jurors hear, and the suspect does not testify at length about why he should not be charged.
How do we know it is rare for a prosecutor to manage a grand jury in this fashion? We know because the grand jury process has been pro forma in most jurisdictions and because prosecutors almost always get an indictment from them when they want one. On the federal level, Five Thirty-Eight reported last night, “U.S. attorneys prosecuted 162,000 cases in 2010, the most recent year for which we have data. Grand juries declined to return an indictment in 11 of them.” That’s about 0.01 percent of the time (Cohen 1-2).
APRIL 23, 2015: Lawyers for Brown’s family sue the city of Ferguson, Wilson and Jackson.
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JULY 10, 2015: [Governor] Nixon signs into law legislation limiting cities’ ability to profit from traffic tickets and court fines, the first significant step taken by state lawmakers to address concerns raised after Brown’s death. Among other things, the law lowers the percentage of revenue most cities can collect from traffic fines and fees from 30% to 20%.
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JUNE 20, 2017: A federal judge in St. Louis approves a wrongful-death lawsuit settlement that awards Brown’s parents $1.5 million.
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AUG. 7, 2018: In a stunning upset, Ferguson City Councilman Wesley Bell defeats 28-year incumbent McCulloch in the Democratic primary for St. Louis County prosecutor. Bell, who is black, was unopposed in the November election and took office in January 2019. McCulloch, who is white, was seen as an old-school, law-and-order prosecutor who drew criticism for his handling of the Wilson investigation. Bell ran on a platform of reforms, saying he would work to reduce incarcerations and start a unit to investigate shootings involving officers (Timeline 4-5).
A new review of the 2014 police shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, of 18-year-old Michael has concluded that no murder or manslaughter charges against former officer Darren Wilson are warranted.
The five-month secret review of the August 2014 fatal shooting led St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell to conclude he couldn't prove those allegations in a court of law, he said Thursday.
However, Bell said, "Our investigation does not exonerate Darren Wilson."
He said the reinvestigation into the actions of Wilson, who is white, for the death of Brown, who was Black — which sparked unrest in Ferguson long before America had learned the name of George Floyd — was necessary.
"Because of the significance of this case to this community and because the family asked, I believed it was necessary to conduct a reexamination of the evidence in the case and come to our own conclusion," Bell said.
Bell said thousands of pages of documents, including witness statements, forensic reports and other evidence, were examined in his review.
"The question for this office was a simple one: Could we prove beyond a reasonable doubt that when Darren Wilson shot Michael Brown he committed murder or manslaughter under Missouri law," the prosecutor said. "After an independent and in-depth review of the evidence we cannot conclude that he did" (Romero 1-2).
In the aftermath of the shooting, [Michael] Brown [Senior] said he was so angry that every time he spoke, he started feeling changes in his body. He eventually turned the anger into activism and today works with young people and counsels others who have lost loved ones to violence.
“I went through those stages [of anger], but what people don’t understand is that being angry wasn’t doing nothing but killing myself,” Brown said. “I can’t just stay angry … I knew I had to get somewhere with a little bit of peace or I would lose, my family would lose.”
Five years later, Brown said he is in a little better space. “I beat myself up for a bunch of years thinking it was my fault, because you vow when the child comes out of the womb that you will protect him,” he said.
“Michael’s legacy is through me. I am his legacy. We stand in the public, try to do the right thing, keep the work going. Try to pull families and communities together” Robertson and Salter 1-2).
[Paste the following link on Google to watch video of Michael Brown twice in the convenience store]
https://abcnews.go.com/US/surveillanc...
Works cited:
Cohen, Andrew. “Law and Disorder in Ferguson.” The Marshall Project, November 25, 2014. Net. https://www.themarshallproject.org/20...
Osunsami, Steve, and Knox, Matt. “Surveillance Video May Shed Light on Ferguson Police Shooting of Michael Brown.” ABC News, March 13, 2017. Net. https://abcnews.go.com/US/surveillanc...
Roberson, Jeff, and Salter, Jim. “Ferguson: Five Years On from the Shooting of Michael Brown.” The Guardian, August 10, 2019. Net. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...
Romero, Dennis. “No Charges for Officer Who Shot Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, after Follow-Up Probe.” NBC News, July 30, 2020, Net. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/...
Suggs, Ernie. “The Michael Brown Killing: What You Need to Know.” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Net. https://www.ajc.com/news/ferguson-bro...
”Timeline of Events in Shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson.” AP News, August 8, 2019. Net. https://apnews.com/article/9aa3203369...
