Harold Titus's Blog, page 12
April 25, 2021
Bad Apples -- July 17, 2014, Ramsey Orta
Ramsey Orta and Eric Garner were deciding where to eat when the police approached. Orta immediately raised his cellphone and hit record. He’d been doing that a lot lately. Many living in the Tompkinsville neighborhood of Staten Island felt they lived under constant surveillance by the 120th Precinct. Orta and Garner had often talked about how just leaving their homes meant expecting to be followed, stopped, searched. Orta knew from experience that anything could happen during these interactions. And so for him, it had become a form of self-defense to film the police.
Orta’s video — soon to be seen by the world — showed Garner trying to explain that he’d done nothing wrong. Then a police officer wrapped his arm around Garner’s neck, gripping him in a choke hold until he collapsed. The video showed Garner saying eleven times that he couldn’t breathe. It showed the officers ignoring Garner’s distress, pushing his head into the pavement, letting him lose consciousness there, die there.
Now, near midnight, Orta was in his apartment, the door locked behind him. His house was dark. His family was asleep. He went to the window, looking for the black Crown Vic that had tailed him as he’d walked home. He checked the security of the locks on the door, then checked again. He got into bed, but sleep wouldn’t come. Images from the day swirled above on his dark ceiling.
The police killed my friend, he thought.
Suddenly, Orta’s bedroom filled with light. Disoriented, he wondered if he’d fallen asleep without realizing it and had woken to the dawn. He rose. It wasn’t daylight but a spotlight blasting his home from outside. The metal bars on his windows cast back on him as a grid of shadows. He ran out to the street and saw police cars parked in front of his house, the silhouettes of faceless officers watching.
They’re here for me, Orta thought, because I have proof of what happened.
Orta believed the video would guarantee justice for his friend. He would be wrong. The officer who choked Garner, Daniel Pantaleo, would not be indicted by a grand jury. But in the weeks to come, the footage of Garner’s killing would travel far and wide, and the haunting echoes of “I Can’t Breathe” would become a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement, a phrase emblazoned across the chest of LeBron James, a lasting reminder of a plea for help ignored.
Someone will have to pay for this, Orta thought, looking at his phone, not realizing that someone would be him, not knowing that the cops would exact their revenge through a campaign of targeted harassment, that within a year he’d be in prison and facing constant abuse, his enduring punishment for daring to hold the police accountable. But looking out into the final dark minutes of July 17th, 2014, watching the police cars drive away, Orta believed he held an important key that would bring justice, one that would force change.
There is no way to ignore this video, he thought. And he felt something close to hope (Jones 1-2).
On Monday, Orta will begin a four-year prison sentence, after taking a plea deal in July for a weapons and drug case.
It is the result, he and his lawyers argue, of a police campaign to harm his life. After filming Garner’s death, they claim, he was increasingly harassed and targeted by police and was arrested at least eight times in fewer than two years.
Of several criminal cases against him, only two charges stuck. Two weeks after filming Garner’s death, Orta was arrested on charges of possessing a handgun and was later caught [allegedly] selling heroin to an undercover policeman.
…
In August 2014, Pat Lynch, president of New York’s biggest police union, said it “is criminals like Mr. Orta who carry illegal firearms who stand to benefit the most by demonising the good work of police officers” (Safdar 2).
In a statement released to the media last night, the NYPD announced that Ramsey Orta, 22, allegedly tried to hide a gun on a teen girl.
According to the NYPD, at 9:45 p.m. on August 2, members of the "Staten Island Narcotics Module" saw Orta talking to a 17-year-old girl at Bay Street and Victory Boulevard. Cops say the pair walked into "the Hotel Richmond, a known drug prone location, located at 71 Central Avenue. The two suspects are inside only for moments and then depart."
Then, police say, plainclothes cops with their shields out approached the two, but Orta slipped an item into the girl's waistband. The officers then "took control of the two" and found an unloaded .25 caliber Norton handgun on her.
Orta was charged with criminal possession of a weapon while the girl, Alba Lekaj, was charged with criminal possession of a weapon and unlawful possession of marijuana. Orta has been arrested numerous times, for assault, rape, robbery, menacing and more, and has "three other criminal cases pending against him."
Orta's family says he's been a target for the NYPD, after sharing the distressing video he took of police officers putting Eric Garner into a chokehold on July 17 (Chung “Man” 1-2).
Orta insisted the gun wasn’t his. "When they searched me, they didn't find nothing on me. And the same cop that searched me, he told me clearly himself, that karma's a bitch, what goes around comes around," Orta said, adding later, "I had nothing to do with this. I would be stupid to walk around with a gun after me being in the spotlight." He also explained what he was doing out:
My wife asked me to go get a Yoo-hoo and a Tylenol PM, so that's what I decided to do. I knew that they were following me from my house to KFC (on Victory Boulevard near Bay Street). When I went inside the bathroom in KFC and I came back out, they were still following me. So I walked up the hill towards Central Avenue, next thing I know, they jump out on me.
"They searched me, they didn't find nothing. They searched the girl, they found the gun on her. Then all of a sudden, they're telling me to turn around."
Orta's family also said the police have been following him around since his incriminating video was shown. His wife said, "He called me and said, 'babe, hurry up and come over here. They’re trying to pin something on me.' The day after they declare it a homicide, you find someone next to him with a gun, and you saw him pass it off? Out in public when he knows he’s in the public spotlight? It makes no sense."
The teen girl's mother says her daughter is innocent and that Orta got her in trouble (Chung “Ramsey” 1).
In the last year, Orta’s life has been upended.
He has been arrested three times since August 2014. The first, for criminal possession of a handgun he allegedly tried to give a 17-year-old, came a day after Garner’s death was ruled a homicide by the city’s medical examiner. In February, he was arrested again on multiple charges of selling and possessing drugs. The third came on June 30 when he was accused of selling MDMA to an undercover cop. A lab test later showed that the alleged MDMA was fake and the charges were reduced. ...
Orta, 23, is shy and speaks in a soft almost-mumble. He would be unassuming if not for his steady gaze, which makes you think he’s going to say more, though he rarely does. And he is tiny. Arrest records list him at 5’6” and 115 lbs., but that might be generous.
Orta was born in Manhattan and lived there until he was about 10 years old. Around age 12, his parents split up and he soon found himself helping raise his younger brother Jaime.
“He grew up fast,” says Emily Mercado, Orta’s mother. “He was like my little husband, telling me what to do, where I’m going.”
The family bounced around from New Jersey to Pennsylvania and then back to New York, relocating to Staten Island around the end of 2009. Back in New York, Orta says he worked mostly in delis stocking shelves and making sandwiches. Orta didn’t finish high school but later attended trade schools and studied carpentry.
He also had multiple run-ins with the law. Since 2009, Orta has reportedly been arrested dozens of times. In August, an unnamed police source told the Staten Island Advance that Orta had been arrested 26 times, with at least 10 of those cases sealed by the courts. His lawyers say his number of total arrests is far fewer (Sanburn 1-2).
“My grandfather and grandmother sold coke until the day they died. They ran prostitutes who stayed with us sometimes.” He recalls the women chasing him when he was a boy, threatening to pull down his pants to see if he was hung like his grandfather. He remembers that the apartment was always crowded, with strangers appearing at all hours, disappearing in back rooms, reemerging somehow changed. This was normal to him. It took him until he was a teen to understand exactly what he’d been born into. And then he started selling drugs himself. He’d moved PCP on Staten Island for a while, but quit after he’d tried it himself a few times with bad results.
“I like weed, I like ecstasy. That’s it now,” he says. “Nothing else.”
Orta’s family moved to Staten Island when he was thirteen. Before that, he grew up in the Baruch Housing Projects on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. As a kid, he played sports at the Boys’ Club on Pitt Street. One summer he hurt his back during a swimming competition. It seized completely and he couldn’t move. He began to sink and was certain he would drown. There were so many kids in the pool, he didn’t think anyone would notice him on the bottom. Someone from the crowd jumped fully clothed into the pool to pull Orta out. His mother gave him Vicodin for the pain, and when the pain subsided, an addiction had bloomed in its place.
“I lost the summer that way, on Vicodin,” he says.
Orta was nine years old. He started taking other pain pills, mixing them with Seroquel, which he’d been prescribed to treat his depression and mood disorder.
When he was ten, members of the Bloods recruited him into petty thefts. He was small and could kick out window air conditioning units and squeeze through the space they left. For a while, he tried to stay out of trouble by spending all his free time in the safety of the Boys’ Club, but it shut down in 2003 when Orta was eleven. When his family moved to Staten Island, he didn’t move with them. He was locked up in Spofford Juvenile Detention Center, a facility so notorious for detainee abuse that it was forced to close forever in 2011.
I ask him how he’d ended up in Spofford. “I brought a knife to school and held it to some kid’s neck,” he says.
Why? Had he threatened you?
“Nah, I never got bullied because I was a Blood. I’ve just always had one of those short-guy complexes. I used to think I had to let everyone know what I was about. So, no, that kid never messed with me. I just put my knife on him.” Orta was 13.
In Spofford, he learned skills that help him to survive in prison.
“You learn how to fight with the tools you’ve got,” he says. “Like, there’s one hot pot in the kitchen that boils water. If someone is fucking with you, you fill it with baby oil and throw it at them.”
Why baby oil?
He looks at me incredulously, my lack of imagination further proof of my privilege.
“Hot water will burn you,” he says. “But baby oil sticks to you, and when you try to wipe it off, your skin comes off, too.”
Ah.
“Look, the point is, I’m smart about certain things. I’ve been on the streets doing my dirt for a long time,” he says. “So you have to understand how ridiculous this gun charge is. There’s no chance I’m dumb enough to give a girl a gun out in the open like that. The cops had been following me every day since Eric died, shining lights in my house every night. You think I’m walking around with a stolen gun that now they say wasn’t even loaded?”
Orta says that when he was arrested on the gun charge, the officers told him it would be better to kill himself before they locked him up with their people. At the station, he began to have a panic attack and had to be taken to the Richmond hospital for a psych evaluation.
There was a phone call to his mother, allegedly from the hospital, telling her that he was a suicide risk.
But Orta believes that the call was really from the 120th Precinct, that they’d allowed him to go to the hospital to establish a paper trail, so that when they killed him, they could make it look like a suicide. Orta posted bail, and as soon as he returned home, he made a video saying that if he died, do not believe that he’d done it himself, and know it was murder (Jones 8-11).
From February to April, Orta was locked up in Rikers Island, New York City’s largest jail, awaiting bail following his arrest on drug charges.
At intake, everyone knew his name. He told me the COs taunted him about the Garner video. “You’re ours now,” he claims they said. “Not so tough without your camera.”
The threats continued. When his cell block was put on lockdown, his anxiety spiked.
Lockdown meant Orta was restricted from participating in the preparation of his own food. On March 3rd, 2015, Orta’s cell block was served a meal of corn, cabbage, bread, juice, and meatloaf. He didn’t touch it. He’d fallen ill a few times after eating the food at Rikers and was convinced he was being targeted and poisoned.
“Eat, inmate,” a CO commanded, banging Orta’s cell with a baton. The guards were all standing too close, watching too intently as the others ate. This kind of attention was unusual. He saw others from his cell block staring down into their meatloaf, forks frozen in midair.
“We’re not going anywhere until you eat,” a CO said and entered Orta’s cell. He hit Orta with his baton, hurled slurs, promised a citation for refusing orders. “How many days in SHU you want?”
Orta rattles his chair as he tells me this part of the story. “He tried to bend me up,” he says, then shows me how, miming his arms being twisted behind his back.
Some of the prisoners had eaten everything quickly, and now they had strange looks on their faces. Orta could see a man in a nearby cell. He opened his mouth and Orta leaned forward to hear what he had to say, but instead of words, blood flowed from the man’s parted lips. He was vomiting blood.
Others were vomiting blood; some were on the floor of their cells, clawing at their own bodies.
Later, in depositions, the affected would say their stomachs were on fire. Some felt pain in their chests and worried they were having heart attacks. Others were so dizzy they couldn’t stand. They writhed on the floor of their cells. Some claimed the guards walked by, watching, laughing, flipping them all the bird. The stench of vomit and feces permeated the cell.
No one was taken to the infirmary. Orta had wrapped up his meatloaf in a napkin, hoping it could be tested for the poison he was certain was there. When he looked closely at the meatloaf, he saw the top was a speckled bluish-green.
Court documents filed six days later alleged that the prisoners had suffered and continued to suffer from “nausea, vomiting, pain, dizziness, aches, headaches, stomach/intestinal pains, dehydration, diarrhea, nosebleeds, throwing up blood, diarrhea with blood, and/or an overwhelming sense of illness.” The symptoms were consistent with human consumption of rat poison, and when the tainted meatloaf was finally tested, the results found that the blue-green pellets visible in the meatloaf were brodifacoum, the active ingredient in rodenticide.
After this, Orta stopped eating. He refuses to eat anything other than what has been sent in packages from Deja or is available in his commissary. Deja tells me packages are often returned to her ripped open with items destroyed or missing.
Orta posted bail and pleaded “not guilty” on the gun charges.
In the early morning hours of February 10th, 2015, Orta’s apartment was raided. The police stated they had months-old recordings of him selling drugs to an undercover cop. They held that they’d captured nine sales, a charge that came with the possible sentence of ten years per sale (Jones 8-11).
On Feb. 10, Orta, his mother, and brother, Michael Batista, were arrested on multiple drug charges after police entered their home in the early morning hours. All three were charged with multiple felony and misdemeanor drug counts. Those cases are still pending. Orta’s mother says she’s been in therapy since the incident for what she describes as post-traumatic stress disorder.
“I don’t want to be around cops,” Emily Mercado says. “I stay indoors.”
Orta’s aunt, Lisa Mercado, who has often spoken on behalf of the family, says she too has been followed by the police and claims that Orta’s possessions were taken from his former Staten Island home after he moved. She says the family filed a police report but the cops never investigated.
“Only Ramsey’s stuff was missing,” she says ((Sanburn 4).
The police claimed to ...have Orta’s mother, Emily Mercado, on film aiding in the drug sales. She was also arrested in the February raid. At the arraignment, Mercado was traumatized, weeping. Orta was never shown the video and had initially wanted to fight the charges, but when the DA offered him a plea deal that included dropping all charges against his mother, he took it.
“She’d die in here,” he says. “But me, I know how to do the time. I’ve been locked up my whole life” (Jones 5-6).
We hear a voice say, “My girl.”
Deja doesn’t turn around but smiles and jams more quarters into the vending machine, faster now, punching buttons, piling food on a nearby table.
I know this voice, too. I’d heard it rise from behind the camera at the beginning of the Garner video to say, “Once again, police beating up on people.” At first that voice is weary, resigned — the scene he’s capturing is his everyday life. But it quickly changes, fills with concern, when Garner falls. Orta whispers, “He can’t breathe.”
Orta, the son of a Puerto Rican mother and an African American father, stands framed by a window of cross-hatched metal bars. He is cuffed at the wrists and ankles, smiling. Orta is shockingly thin. His cheekbones jut from his pale gray skin. His hair — buzzed short in pictures from before his arrest — sticks wildly from his head in clumps.
The guard who led him out says, “Jesus, Orta, couldn’t find a comb?”
“You won’t let me tie it up!” Orta replies.
Orta calls for Deja again. He looks sidewise at the correctional officers, and when he is sure they aren’t looking, he puckers his lips to fit them through the iron grid separating him from her, and they kiss. Soon she is back at the vending machine.
“She always does this,” he tells me. “I won’t eat in here, so she’s worried I’m starving.” The circles around his eyes are so dark, the whites of his eyes shine as if from the bottom of a hole.
“Do you want a sandwich?” Deja asks him.
The only time she can be certain he’s eating is when she buys his food herself during visits.
He agrees to a burger, and she buys three.
They are dispensed frozen and I offer to heat them in the microwave, wanting to give Orta and Deja a minute alone.
A correctional officer approaches and tells me the microwave is broken. I see its power cord pulled from the wall and jammed behind a toaster. I plug it in, push a few buttons, and it buzzes to life.
“I told you it’s broken,” the CO says.
I’d crossed an invisible line. The door of the microwave reflects back our distorted image.
I can see the CO standing behind me, waiting.
When I return with the still-frozen burgers, Orta explains: “They fuck with my food. They know I won’t eat what they give me, not since Rikers” (Jones 3-4).
Deja tells me packages are often returned to her ripped open with items destroyed or missing.
Orta claims he is constantly ticketed by the COs for petty or falsified offenses. One night he was having stomach troubles and requested a pass from the facility’s nurse to sleep on the bottom bunk, to be closer to the toilet. A CO woke him and ordered him to sleep on the top bunk. Orta explained that he had a sick pass, and the CO wrote him up for disobeying a direct order. Tickets like these trigger the loss of privileges, like the ability to receive outside packages of food. Or worse: the ticket that had landed him 60 days in solitary was for smoking a cigarette in the wrong part of the prison.
Orta says he’s been threatened, called racist names, beaten. He talks about these incidents in a measured, almost casual way. He’s been locked up before and possesses fluency in a prison’s violent rhythms. But there’s one form of harassment he describes at length and with visceral anguish. In the process of inspecting his cell, the COs routinely crush to dust his Pop-Tarts, chips, ramen packets. This is the food Deja sends him, the only food he feels safe eating (Jones 7).
Via New York’s Freedom of Information Law, I’m able to review the records of Orta’s citations and grievances filed while he was in custody. The stack follows a conspicuous pattern. Orta is cited for petty offenses until the number of tickets triggers the loss of privileges, including access to phone calls or the commissary, often for 25 or 30 days. As soon as the penalty expires and his privileges are restored, the ticketing cycle begins again.
“What you’re seeing with Ramsey — the incessant petty tickets — that is not something that we see frequently. That happens to people who are specifically targeted,” says Adriano De Gennaro of the Prisoners’ Rights Project of the New York City Legal Aid Society. “However, falsified tickets, inflated charges, petty tickets, that’s par for the course. The State Department of Corrections uses tickets as a cudgel against people who are in custody. But the sustained pattern of these petty tickets is at least somewhat unique to Ramsey.”
No matter how minimal the charge may be, these citations accumulate to devastating effect. Multiple tickets can mean a loss of Good Time, which can push back release.
Orta has lost his earliest release date, extending his sentence by a minimum of six months.
De Gennaro’s colleague Dori Lewis adds, “When investigations happen in response to grievances or claims of harassment, those investigations are conducted by security staff at the prison. Basically they’ll consist of asking the officer, ‘Hey, did you do this?’ and they’ll say, ‘No, I didn’t’ and that’s it. Investigation closed. Sometimes the grievances never even get submitted.”
Orta’s grievances have all been denied. He lists the names of dozens of other prisoners as witnesses to his harassment, but the official forms claim they all refused to participate in the grievance process.
“When the witnesses ‘refuse,’” Lewis says, “it’s hard to know if they were ever asked or if they refused out of the fear that if you testify against correctional staff that you’ll be harassed next.”
Grievances can be appealed to the superintendent of the facility, and in turn to higher-ups in Albany. But it’s unlikely that a new investigation would occur. The grievances are kicked back to the facility, and sometimes the staff in charge of investigating the incidents are the same ones involved in the incident. It’s a closed circle, a clenched fist (Jones 15-16).
The man who filmed police officer Daniel Pantaleo fatally choking Eric Garner on Staten Island in 2014 has been released from prison.
Ramsey Orta had been serving a four-year sentence on gun charge … just a month after Orta filmed Garner's death in July 2014.
…
… a Department of Corrections and Community Supervision spokesperson also confirmed his release. His prison sentence is officially over on July 11th [2020]; after that, Orta will remain under court supervision until January 2022," … (Chung “Filmed” 1).
[September 2020] Ramsey Orta, 29, the man who recorded Eric Garner’s death, was charged in Brooklyn Federal Court in a gun possession case, reported the N.Y. Daily News.
The report says Orta was hit with “felon in possession of a weapon” charges in a complaint filed in Brooklyn Federal Court.
Police allegedly stopped Orta as he was driving his BMW in Brooklyn on Wednesday on Roebling St. and S. 2nd St. Police allegedly found him with loose marijuana on his lap, the report says.
After a search, police allegedly uncovered a Smith & Wesson M&P 9mm caliber pistol with 12 bullets in it, the criminal complaint says (Porpora 1).
Works cited:
Chung, Jen. “Ramsey Orta, Who Filmed the Police Killing of Eric Garner, Released from Prison.” Gothamist, June 9, 2020. Net. https://gothamist.com/news/ramsey-ort...
Chung, Jen. “Man Who Filmed NYPD's Fatal Chokehold Arrested on Gun Charges.” Gothamist, August 4, 2014. Net. https://gothamist.com/news/man-who-fi...
Chung, Jen. “Ramsey Orta "100% Sure" Cops Arrested Him as Revenge for Filming Fatal Chokehold.” Gothamist, Updated July 24, 2017. Net. https://gothamist.com/news/ramsey-ort...
Jones, Chloe Cooper. “Fearing for His Live.” The Verge, March 13, 2019. Net. https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/13/18...
Porpora, Tracey. “Report: Ramsey Orta, Who Filmed Eric Garner’s Death, Charged with Gun Possession.” Silive.com. September 27, 2020. Net. https://www.silive.com/news/2020/09/r...
Safdar, Anealla. “NY Man Who Filmed Eric Garner’s Death Heading to Jail.” Aljazeera, October 1, 2016. Net. https://www.aljazeera.com/features/20...
Sanburn, Josh. “One Year after Filming Eric Garner’s Fatal Confrontation with Police, Ramsey Orta’s Life Has Been Upended.” Time, June 8, 2020. Net. https://time.com/ramsey-orta-eric-gar...
Orta’s video — soon to be seen by the world — showed Garner trying to explain that he’d done nothing wrong. Then a police officer wrapped his arm around Garner’s neck, gripping him in a choke hold until he collapsed. The video showed Garner saying eleven times that he couldn’t breathe. It showed the officers ignoring Garner’s distress, pushing his head into the pavement, letting him lose consciousness there, die there.
Now, near midnight, Orta was in his apartment, the door locked behind him. His house was dark. His family was asleep. He went to the window, looking for the black Crown Vic that had tailed him as he’d walked home. He checked the security of the locks on the door, then checked again. He got into bed, but sleep wouldn’t come. Images from the day swirled above on his dark ceiling.
The police killed my friend, he thought.
Suddenly, Orta’s bedroom filled with light. Disoriented, he wondered if he’d fallen asleep without realizing it and had woken to the dawn. He rose. It wasn’t daylight but a spotlight blasting his home from outside. The metal bars on his windows cast back on him as a grid of shadows. He ran out to the street and saw police cars parked in front of his house, the silhouettes of faceless officers watching.
They’re here for me, Orta thought, because I have proof of what happened.
Orta believed the video would guarantee justice for his friend. He would be wrong. The officer who choked Garner, Daniel Pantaleo, would not be indicted by a grand jury. But in the weeks to come, the footage of Garner’s killing would travel far and wide, and the haunting echoes of “I Can’t Breathe” would become a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement, a phrase emblazoned across the chest of LeBron James, a lasting reminder of a plea for help ignored.
Someone will have to pay for this, Orta thought, looking at his phone, not realizing that someone would be him, not knowing that the cops would exact their revenge through a campaign of targeted harassment, that within a year he’d be in prison and facing constant abuse, his enduring punishment for daring to hold the police accountable. But looking out into the final dark minutes of July 17th, 2014, watching the police cars drive away, Orta believed he held an important key that would bring justice, one that would force change.
There is no way to ignore this video, he thought. And he felt something close to hope (Jones 1-2).
On Monday, Orta will begin a four-year prison sentence, after taking a plea deal in July for a weapons and drug case.
It is the result, he and his lawyers argue, of a police campaign to harm his life. After filming Garner’s death, they claim, he was increasingly harassed and targeted by police and was arrested at least eight times in fewer than two years.
Of several criminal cases against him, only two charges stuck. Two weeks after filming Garner’s death, Orta was arrested on charges of possessing a handgun and was later caught [allegedly] selling heroin to an undercover policeman.
…
In August 2014, Pat Lynch, president of New York’s biggest police union, said it “is criminals like Mr. Orta who carry illegal firearms who stand to benefit the most by demonising the good work of police officers” (Safdar 2).
In a statement released to the media last night, the NYPD announced that Ramsey Orta, 22, allegedly tried to hide a gun on a teen girl.
According to the NYPD, at 9:45 p.m. on August 2, members of the "Staten Island Narcotics Module" saw Orta talking to a 17-year-old girl at Bay Street and Victory Boulevard. Cops say the pair walked into "the Hotel Richmond, a known drug prone location, located at 71 Central Avenue. The two suspects are inside only for moments and then depart."
Then, police say, plainclothes cops with their shields out approached the two, but Orta slipped an item into the girl's waistband. The officers then "took control of the two" and found an unloaded .25 caliber Norton handgun on her.
Orta was charged with criminal possession of a weapon while the girl, Alba Lekaj, was charged with criminal possession of a weapon and unlawful possession of marijuana. Orta has been arrested numerous times, for assault, rape, robbery, menacing and more, and has "three other criminal cases pending against him."
Orta's family says he's been a target for the NYPD, after sharing the distressing video he took of police officers putting Eric Garner into a chokehold on July 17 (Chung “Man” 1-2).
Orta insisted the gun wasn’t his. "When they searched me, they didn't find nothing on me. And the same cop that searched me, he told me clearly himself, that karma's a bitch, what goes around comes around," Orta said, adding later, "I had nothing to do with this. I would be stupid to walk around with a gun after me being in the spotlight." He also explained what he was doing out:
My wife asked me to go get a Yoo-hoo and a Tylenol PM, so that's what I decided to do. I knew that they were following me from my house to KFC (on Victory Boulevard near Bay Street). When I went inside the bathroom in KFC and I came back out, they were still following me. So I walked up the hill towards Central Avenue, next thing I know, they jump out on me.
"They searched me, they didn't find nothing. They searched the girl, they found the gun on her. Then all of a sudden, they're telling me to turn around."
Orta's family also said the police have been following him around since his incriminating video was shown. His wife said, "He called me and said, 'babe, hurry up and come over here. They’re trying to pin something on me.' The day after they declare it a homicide, you find someone next to him with a gun, and you saw him pass it off? Out in public when he knows he’s in the public spotlight? It makes no sense."
The teen girl's mother says her daughter is innocent and that Orta got her in trouble (Chung “Ramsey” 1).
In the last year, Orta’s life has been upended.
He has been arrested three times since August 2014. The first, for criminal possession of a handgun he allegedly tried to give a 17-year-old, came a day after Garner’s death was ruled a homicide by the city’s medical examiner. In February, he was arrested again on multiple charges of selling and possessing drugs. The third came on June 30 when he was accused of selling MDMA to an undercover cop. A lab test later showed that the alleged MDMA was fake and the charges were reduced. ...
Orta, 23, is shy and speaks in a soft almost-mumble. He would be unassuming if not for his steady gaze, which makes you think he’s going to say more, though he rarely does. And he is tiny. Arrest records list him at 5’6” and 115 lbs., but that might be generous.
Orta was born in Manhattan and lived there until he was about 10 years old. Around age 12, his parents split up and he soon found himself helping raise his younger brother Jaime.
“He grew up fast,” says Emily Mercado, Orta’s mother. “He was like my little husband, telling me what to do, where I’m going.”
The family bounced around from New Jersey to Pennsylvania and then back to New York, relocating to Staten Island around the end of 2009. Back in New York, Orta says he worked mostly in delis stocking shelves and making sandwiches. Orta didn’t finish high school but later attended trade schools and studied carpentry.
He also had multiple run-ins with the law. Since 2009, Orta has reportedly been arrested dozens of times. In August, an unnamed police source told the Staten Island Advance that Orta had been arrested 26 times, with at least 10 of those cases sealed by the courts. His lawyers say his number of total arrests is far fewer (Sanburn 1-2).
“My grandfather and grandmother sold coke until the day they died. They ran prostitutes who stayed with us sometimes.” He recalls the women chasing him when he was a boy, threatening to pull down his pants to see if he was hung like his grandfather. He remembers that the apartment was always crowded, with strangers appearing at all hours, disappearing in back rooms, reemerging somehow changed. This was normal to him. It took him until he was a teen to understand exactly what he’d been born into. And then he started selling drugs himself. He’d moved PCP on Staten Island for a while, but quit after he’d tried it himself a few times with bad results.
“I like weed, I like ecstasy. That’s it now,” he says. “Nothing else.”
Orta’s family moved to Staten Island when he was thirteen. Before that, he grew up in the Baruch Housing Projects on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. As a kid, he played sports at the Boys’ Club on Pitt Street. One summer he hurt his back during a swimming competition. It seized completely and he couldn’t move. He began to sink and was certain he would drown. There were so many kids in the pool, he didn’t think anyone would notice him on the bottom. Someone from the crowd jumped fully clothed into the pool to pull Orta out. His mother gave him Vicodin for the pain, and when the pain subsided, an addiction had bloomed in its place.
“I lost the summer that way, on Vicodin,” he says.
Orta was nine years old. He started taking other pain pills, mixing them with Seroquel, which he’d been prescribed to treat his depression and mood disorder.
When he was ten, members of the Bloods recruited him into petty thefts. He was small and could kick out window air conditioning units and squeeze through the space they left. For a while, he tried to stay out of trouble by spending all his free time in the safety of the Boys’ Club, but it shut down in 2003 when Orta was eleven. When his family moved to Staten Island, he didn’t move with them. He was locked up in Spofford Juvenile Detention Center, a facility so notorious for detainee abuse that it was forced to close forever in 2011.
I ask him how he’d ended up in Spofford. “I brought a knife to school and held it to some kid’s neck,” he says.
Why? Had he threatened you?
“Nah, I never got bullied because I was a Blood. I’ve just always had one of those short-guy complexes. I used to think I had to let everyone know what I was about. So, no, that kid never messed with me. I just put my knife on him.” Orta was 13.
In Spofford, he learned skills that help him to survive in prison.
“You learn how to fight with the tools you’ve got,” he says. “Like, there’s one hot pot in the kitchen that boils water. If someone is fucking with you, you fill it with baby oil and throw it at them.”
Why baby oil?
He looks at me incredulously, my lack of imagination further proof of my privilege.
“Hot water will burn you,” he says. “But baby oil sticks to you, and when you try to wipe it off, your skin comes off, too.”
Ah.
“Look, the point is, I’m smart about certain things. I’ve been on the streets doing my dirt for a long time,” he says. “So you have to understand how ridiculous this gun charge is. There’s no chance I’m dumb enough to give a girl a gun out in the open like that. The cops had been following me every day since Eric died, shining lights in my house every night. You think I’m walking around with a stolen gun that now they say wasn’t even loaded?”
Orta says that when he was arrested on the gun charge, the officers told him it would be better to kill himself before they locked him up with their people. At the station, he began to have a panic attack and had to be taken to the Richmond hospital for a psych evaluation.
There was a phone call to his mother, allegedly from the hospital, telling her that he was a suicide risk.
But Orta believes that the call was really from the 120th Precinct, that they’d allowed him to go to the hospital to establish a paper trail, so that when they killed him, they could make it look like a suicide. Orta posted bail, and as soon as he returned home, he made a video saying that if he died, do not believe that he’d done it himself, and know it was murder (Jones 8-11).
From February to April, Orta was locked up in Rikers Island, New York City’s largest jail, awaiting bail following his arrest on drug charges.
At intake, everyone knew his name. He told me the COs taunted him about the Garner video. “You’re ours now,” he claims they said. “Not so tough without your camera.”
The threats continued. When his cell block was put on lockdown, his anxiety spiked.
Lockdown meant Orta was restricted from participating in the preparation of his own food. On March 3rd, 2015, Orta’s cell block was served a meal of corn, cabbage, bread, juice, and meatloaf. He didn’t touch it. He’d fallen ill a few times after eating the food at Rikers and was convinced he was being targeted and poisoned.
“Eat, inmate,” a CO commanded, banging Orta’s cell with a baton. The guards were all standing too close, watching too intently as the others ate. This kind of attention was unusual. He saw others from his cell block staring down into their meatloaf, forks frozen in midair.
“We’re not going anywhere until you eat,” a CO said and entered Orta’s cell. He hit Orta with his baton, hurled slurs, promised a citation for refusing orders. “How many days in SHU you want?”
Orta rattles his chair as he tells me this part of the story. “He tried to bend me up,” he says, then shows me how, miming his arms being twisted behind his back.
Some of the prisoners had eaten everything quickly, and now they had strange looks on their faces. Orta could see a man in a nearby cell. He opened his mouth and Orta leaned forward to hear what he had to say, but instead of words, blood flowed from the man’s parted lips. He was vomiting blood.
Others were vomiting blood; some were on the floor of their cells, clawing at their own bodies.
Later, in depositions, the affected would say their stomachs were on fire. Some felt pain in their chests and worried they were having heart attacks. Others were so dizzy they couldn’t stand. They writhed on the floor of their cells. Some claimed the guards walked by, watching, laughing, flipping them all the bird. The stench of vomit and feces permeated the cell.
No one was taken to the infirmary. Orta had wrapped up his meatloaf in a napkin, hoping it could be tested for the poison he was certain was there. When he looked closely at the meatloaf, he saw the top was a speckled bluish-green.
Court documents filed six days later alleged that the prisoners had suffered and continued to suffer from “nausea, vomiting, pain, dizziness, aches, headaches, stomach/intestinal pains, dehydration, diarrhea, nosebleeds, throwing up blood, diarrhea with blood, and/or an overwhelming sense of illness.” The symptoms were consistent with human consumption of rat poison, and when the tainted meatloaf was finally tested, the results found that the blue-green pellets visible in the meatloaf were brodifacoum, the active ingredient in rodenticide.
After this, Orta stopped eating. He refuses to eat anything other than what has been sent in packages from Deja or is available in his commissary. Deja tells me packages are often returned to her ripped open with items destroyed or missing.
Orta posted bail and pleaded “not guilty” on the gun charges.
In the early morning hours of February 10th, 2015, Orta’s apartment was raided. The police stated they had months-old recordings of him selling drugs to an undercover cop. They held that they’d captured nine sales, a charge that came with the possible sentence of ten years per sale (Jones 8-11).
On Feb. 10, Orta, his mother, and brother, Michael Batista, were arrested on multiple drug charges after police entered their home in the early morning hours. All three were charged with multiple felony and misdemeanor drug counts. Those cases are still pending. Orta’s mother says she’s been in therapy since the incident for what she describes as post-traumatic stress disorder.
“I don’t want to be around cops,” Emily Mercado says. “I stay indoors.”
Orta’s aunt, Lisa Mercado, who has often spoken on behalf of the family, says she too has been followed by the police and claims that Orta’s possessions were taken from his former Staten Island home after he moved. She says the family filed a police report but the cops never investigated.
“Only Ramsey’s stuff was missing,” she says ((Sanburn 4).
The police claimed to ...have Orta’s mother, Emily Mercado, on film aiding in the drug sales. She was also arrested in the February raid. At the arraignment, Mercado was traumatized, weeping. Orta was never shown the video and had initially wanted to fight the charges, but when the DA offered him a plea deal that included dropping all charges against his mother, he took it.
“She’d die in here,” he says. “But me, I know how to do the time. I’ve been locked up my whole life” (Jones 5-6).
We hear a voice say, “My girl.”
Deja doesn’t turn around but smiles and jams more quarters into the vending machine, faster now, punching buttons, piling food on a nearby table.
I know this voice, too. I’d heard it rise from behind the camera at the beginning of the Garner video to say, “Once again, police beating up on people.” At first that voice is weary, resigned — the scene he’s capturing is his everyday life. But it quickly changes, fills with concern, when Garner falls. Orta whispers, “He can’t breathe.”
Orta, the son of a Puerto Rican mother and an African American father, stands framed by a window of cross-hatched metal bars. He is cuffed at the wrists and ankles, smiling. Orta is shockingly thin. His cheekbones jut from his pale gray skin. His hair — buzzed short in pictures from before his arrest — sticks wildly from his head in clumps.
The guard who led him out says, “Jesus, Orta, couldn’t find a comb?”
“You won’t let me tie it up!” Orta replies.
Orta calls for Deja again. He looks sidewise at the correctional officers, and when he is sure they aren’t looking, he puckers his lips to fit them through the iron grid separating him from her, and they kiss. Soon she is back at the vending machine.
“She always does this,” he tells me. “I won’t eat in here, so she’s worried I’m starving.” The circles around his eyes are so dark, the whites of his eyes shine as if from the bottom of a hole.
“Do you want a sandwich?” Deja asks him.
The only time she can be certain he’s eating is when she buys his food herself during visits.
He agrees to a burger, and she buys three.
They are dispensed frozen and I offer to heat them in the microwave, wanting to give Orta and Deja a minute alone.
A correctional officer approaches and tells me the microwave is broken. I see its power cord pulled from the wall and jammed behind a toaster. I plug it in, push a few buttons, and it buzzes to life.
“I told you it’s broken,” the CO says.
I’d crossed an invisible line. The door of the microwave reflects back our distorted image.
I can see the CO standing behind me, waiting.
When I return with the still-frozen burgers, Orta explains: “They fuck with my food. They know I won’t eat what they give me, not since Rikers” (Jones 3-4).
Deja tells me packages are often returned to her ripped open with items destroyed or missing.
Orta claims he is constantly ticketed by the COs for petty or falsified offenses. One night he was having stomach troubles and requested a pass from the facility’s nurse to sleep on the bottom bunk, to be closer to the toilet. A CO woke him and ordered him to sleep on the top bunk. Orta explained that he had a sick pass, and the CO wrote him up for disobeying a direct order. Tickets like these trigger the loss of privileges, like the ability to receive outside packages of food. Or worse: the ticket that had landed him 60 days in solitary was for smoking a cigarette in the wrong part of the prison.
Orta says he’s been threatened, called racist names, beaten. He talks about these incidents in a measured, almost casual way. He’s been locked up before and possesses fluency in a prison’s violent rhythms. But there’s one form of harassment he describes at length and with visceral anguish. In the process of inspecting his cell, the COs routinely crush to dust his Pop-Tarts, chips, ramen packets. This is the food Deja sends him, the only food he feels safe eating (Jones 7).
Via New York’s Freedom of Information Law, I’m able to review the records of Orta’s citations and grievances filed while he was in custody. The stack follows a conspicuous pattern. Orta is cited for petty offenses until the number of tickets triggers the loss of privileges, including access to phone calls or the commissary, often for 25 or 30 days. As soon as the penalty expires and his privileges are restored, the ticketing cycle begins again.
“What you’re seeing with Ramsey — the incessant petty tickets — that is not something that we see frequently. That happens to people who are specifically targeted,” says Adriano De Gennaro of the Prisoners’ Rights Project of the New York City Legal Aid Society. “However, falsified tickets, inflated charges, petty tickets, that’s par for the course. The State Department of Corrections uses tickets as a cudgel against people who are in custody. But the sustained pattern of these petty tickets is at least somewhat unique to Ramsey.”
No matter how minimal the charge may be, these citations accumulate to devastating effect. Multiple tickets can mean a loss of Good Time, which can push back release.
Orta has lost his earliest release date, extending his sentence by a minimum of six months.
De Gennaro’s colleague Dori Lewis adds, “When investigations happen in response to grievances or claims of harassment, those investigations are conducted by security staff at the prison. Basically they’ll consist of asking the officer, ‘Hey, did you do this?’ and they’ll say, ‘No, I didn’t’ and that’s it. Investigation closed. Sometimes the grievances never even get submitted.”
Orta’s grievances have all been denied. He lists the names of dozens of other prisoners as witnesses to his harassment, but the official forms claim they all refused to participate in the grievance process.
“When the witnesses ‘refuse,’” Lewis says, “it’s hard to know if they were ever asked or if they refused out of the fear that if you testify against correctional staff that you’ll be harassed next.”
Grievances can be appealed to the superintendent of the facility, and in turn to higher-ups in Albany. But it’s unlikely that a new investigation would occur. The grievances are kicked back to the facility, and sometimes the staff in charge of investigating the incidents are the same ones involved in the incident. It’s a closed circle, a clenched fist (Jones 15-16).
The man who filmed police officer Daniel Pantaleo fatally choking Eric Garner on Staten Island in 2014 has been released from prison.
Ramsey Orta had been serving a four-year sentence on gun charge … just a month after Orta filmed Garner's death in July 2014.
…
… a Department of Corrections and Community Supervision spokesperson also confirmed his release. His prison sentence is officially over on July 11th [2020]; after that, Orta will remain under court supervision until January 2022," … (Chung “Filmed” 1).
[September 2020] Ramsey Orta, 29, the man who recorded Eric Garner’s death, was charged in Brooklyn Federal Court in a gun possession case, reported the N.Y. Daily News.
The report says Orta was hit with “felon in possession of a weapon” charges in a complaint filed in Brooklyn Federal Court.
Police allegedly stopped Orta as he was driving his BMW in Brooklyn on Wednesday on Roebling St. and S. 2nd St. Police allegedly found him with loose marijuana on his lap, the report says.
After a search, police allegedly uncovered a Smith & Wesson M&P 9mm caliber pistol with 12 bullets in it, the criminal complaint says (Porpora 1).
Works cited:
Chung, Jen. “Ramsey Orta, Who Filmed the Police Killing of Eric Garner, Released from Prison.” Gothamist, June 9, 2020. Net. https://gothamist.com/news/ramsey-ort...
Chung, Jen. “Man Who Filmed NYPD's Fatal Chokehold Arrested on Gun Charges.” Gothamist, August 4, 2014. Net. https://gothamist.com/news/man-who-fi...
Chung, Jen. “Ramsey Orta "100% Sure" Cops Arrested Him as Revenge for Filming Fatal Chokehold.” Gothamist, Updated July 24, 2017. Net. https://gothamist.com/news/ramsey-ort...
Jones, Chloe Cooper. “Fearing for His Live.” The Verge, March 13, 2019. Net. https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/13/18...
Porpora, Tracey. “Report: Ramsey Orta, Who Filmed Eric Garner’s Death, Charged with Gun Possession.” Silive.com. September 27, 2020. Net. https://www.silive.com/news/2020/09/r...
Safdar, Anealla. “NY Man Who Filmed Eric Garner’s Death Heading to Jail.” Aljazeera, October 1, 2016. Net. https://www.aljazeera.com/features/20...
Sanburn, Josh. “One Year after Filming Eric Garner’s Fatal Confrontation with Police, Ramsey Orta’s Life Has Been Upended.” Time, June 8, 2020. Net. https://time.com/ramsey-orta-eric-gar...
April 22, 2021
Bad Apples -- July 17, 2014 -- Eric Garner
On July 17, 2014, two New York Police Department officers confront Eric Garner, a 43-year-old African American father of six, for illegally selling cigarettes. Garner dies after losing consciousness as a police officer locks him in an illegal chokehold, and within hours, a video of the incident begins to spark outrage across the country.
Garner was known as a "neighborhood peacemaker" in his Staten Island community, and was also well-known to the police for selling cigarettes illegally near the ferry terminal on Staten Island.
Officers Daniel Pantaleo and Justin D'Amico, called to the scene because of a fight that Garner reportedly broke up, exchanged words with Garner about his cigarettes before Pantaleo reached around Garner's neck and put him in a chokehold, despite such a maneuver being against NYPD rules.
Pinned to the ground by the officers, Garner repeatedly told them, "I can't breathe." Eventually, he lost consciousness. He was pronounced dead at a hospital roughly an hour later, and the medical examiner ruled his death a homicide by suffocation.
Footage of the incident quickly went viral. There were protests in the days following Garner's death, but it was a grand jury's decision not to indict Pantaleo on December 3 that sparked large demonstrations in New York City and elsewhere across the country.
Garner's last words, "I can't breathe," became a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement. The police officer whose chokehold led to Garner’s death in 2014 was fired from the Police Department in 2019 and stripped of his pension benefits.
The following year, when New York State repealed its ban on publicizing police disciplinary records, it was revealed that Pantaleo had been investigated for misconduct seven times in the five years before Garner's death (Editors 1-2).
Now, more detailed information.
On July 17, 2014, at approximately 3:30 p.m., Garner was approached by a plainclothes police officer, Justin D'Amico, in front of a beauty supply store at 202 Bay Street in Tompinsville, Staten Island. According to bystanders (including a friend of Garner, Ramsey Orta, who recorded the incident on his cell phone) Garner had just broken up a fight, which may have drawn the attention of the police. Officers confronted Garner and accused him of selling "loosers" (single cigarettes without a tax stamp) in violation of New York state law. Garner is heard on the video saying the following:
Get away [garbled] for what? Every time you see me, you want to mess with me. I'm tired of it. It stops today. Why would you...? Everyone standing here will tell you I didn't do nothing. I did not sell nothing. Because every time you see me, you want to harass me. You want to stop me [garbled] selling cigarettes. I'm minding my business, officer, I'm minding my business. Please just leave me alone. I told you the last time, please just leave me alone.
When Pantaleo approached Garner from behind and attempted to handcuff him, Garner pulled his arms away, saying, "Don't touch me, please." Pantaleo then placed his arm around Garner's neck and pulled him backward in an attempt to bring him to the ground; in the process, Pantaleo and Garner slammed into a glass window, which did not break. Garner went to his knees and forearms and did not say anything for a few seconds.
At that point, three uniformed officers and the two plainclothes officers had surrounded him. After 15 seconds, the video shows Pantaleo removing his arm from around Garner's neck; Pantaleo then used his hands to push Garner's face into the sidewalk.
Garner is heard saying "I can't breathe" eleven times while lying face down on the sidewalk.
The arrest was supervised by a female African-American NYPD sergeant, Kizzy Adonis, who did not intercede. Adonis was quoted in the original police report as stating, "The perpetrator's condition did not seem serious and he did not appear to get worse."
A police sergeant called an ambulance and indicated that Mr. Garner was having trouble breathing, but reportedly added that he "did not appear to be in great distress". Garner lay motionless, handcuffed, and unresponsive for several minutes before an ambulance arrived, as shown in a second video. After Garner lost consciousness, officers turned him onto his side to ease his breathing. Garner remained lying on the sidewalk for seven minutes.
When an ambulance arrived, two medics and two EMTs inside the ambulance did not place Garner on oxygen, administer any emergency medical aid or promptly place him on a stretcher. According to police, Garner had a heart attack while being transported to Richmond University Medical Center. He was pronounced dead at the hospital one hour later (Killing 3).
The officer's lawyer contends his client used approved tactics to arrest Garner, but earlier this month NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Trials Rosemarie Maldonado ruled that Mr Pantaleo had used a chokehold - which is banned by the police department.
As the officers continued to restrain Garner, the asthmatic was heard repeatedly saying: "I can't breathe."
Mr O'Neill said Mr Pantaleo's decision to maintain the chokehold on the ground is what led to his firing.
The 43-year-old father of six, who weighed more than 350lb (160kg), appeared to lose consciousness and later was pronounced dead in the hospital.
A city medical examiner ruled the chokehold contributed to Garner's death.
In 2015, the city of New York reached a settlement with the family for $5.9m (£4.8m) after they brought a wrongful-death lawsuit arguing that Garner was not given sufficient medical aid by emergency officials.
…
The president of the police union, Patrick Lynch, pilloried NYPD as "rudderless and frozen".
"The leadership has abandoned and left our police officers on the street without backing," said Mr Lynch (BBC 1).
Federal prosecutors will not charge the New York police officer implicated in the chokehold death of Eric Garner, an African American man killed almost five years ago.
The decision announced by the US attorney Richard Donoghue on Tuesday was another blow to the Garner family, figureheads in the Black Lives Matter movement, who have campaigned to hold the NYPD accountable.
US justice department sources said the final call on the non-indictment was made by the attorney general, William Barr.
Garner’s death, on 17 July 2014, became a focal point for national conversation on race and policing. Garner’s last words, “I can’t breathe”, were chanted by protesters across the US.
On Tuesday, Garner’s mother, Gwen Carr, said: “Five years ago my son said ‘I can’t breathe’ 11 times. Today we can’t breathe because they [the federal government] have let us down.”
The arrest was captured on cellphone video which showed Garner repeating the phrase 11 times as Officer Daniel Pantaleo pulled him to the ground in what has been described as a banned chokehold.
The incident was ruled a homicide by the investigating medical examiner but in December 2014 a grand jury in Staten Island declined to charge Pantaleo in a separate case investigated by local prosecutors.
Federal prosecutors have long been considering whether to bring civil rights charges against Pantaleo in a case that has spanned the Obama and Trump administrations and four attorneys general.
The decision comes a day before the statute of limitations was due to expire.
Reports indicated that civil rights prosecutors recommended bringing a case against Pantaleo in 2018 but were blocked by senior justice department officials. Those reports came under Trump’s first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, amid a reversal of an Obama-era push to hold police accountable for excessive force and racially biased policing.
Donoghue, US attorney for the eastern district of New York, made the highly unusual move of announcing the decision and providing details of the underlying reasoning.
At a news conference in Brooklyn, he told reporters there was “insufficient evidence” to meet the high bar of a federal civil rights prosecution.
…
To charge Pantaleo under federal statute, prosecutors would have had to prove not only that he had used objectively unreasonable force but also that he had wilfully violated the law. Donoghue said that while his department had interviewed in excess of four dozen witnesses, the video of Garner’s death provided the central evidence.
He said prosecutors believed the video showed that Pantaleo attempted to perform two approved restraints on Garner before he placed Garner in “what appeared to be a chokehold” for seven seconds as the two fell to the floor.
Pivotally, Donogue said: “Officer Pantaleo was not engaged in a chokehold on Mr Garner when he said he can’t breathe.”
…
New York’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, issued a statement shortly before the decision was formally announced. “Years ago, we put our faith in the federal government to act,” he said. “We won’t make that mistake again.”
The decision not to indict Pantaleo means the Garner family’s only recourse is now a secretive internal investigation into the death, which only began last year as the De Blasio administration waited for news from federal prosecutors.
The administrative trial was concluded last month. A number of witnesses to the incident, the medical examiner and senior NYPD officers testified against Pantaleo.
Pantaleo has remained employed since Garner’s death, working desk duty and earning a salary of more than $100,000.
Speaking to the Guardian during Pantaleo’s administrative trial, Garner’s mother Gwen Carr expressed exasperation.
“There is no justice at all for Eric,” she said. “The harshest punishment is firing. They murdered him and if there was going to be justice, it would have been at the point when he said ‘I can’t breathe’” (Laughland 1-2).
The history of allegations made against Pantaleo was released Friday by New York City's Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB), an independent oversight agency that reviews complaints against police officers.
Seventeen complaints against Pantaleo were filed with the agency from 2009 to 2014, the year Garner was killed. They resulted in eight cases being opened against Pantaleo, which included the case involving Garner's death. …
One case that the CCRB substantiated was from an incident in 2011 where Pantaleo allegedly abused his power when conducting a vehicle stop and search. It resulted in Pantaleo receiving "instructions" as a penalty, according to the disciplinary record.
Another substantiated case against Pantaleo from 2012 alleged that he abused his power when stopping and searching a person. That case resulted in a departmental disciplinary trial where Pantaleo was found guilty and was penalized by having to forfeit two vacation days, according to the disciplinary record (Moghe 2).
A state appeals court on Thursday upheld the New York Police Department’s decision to fire an officer for the 2014 chokehold death of Eric Garner.
A five-judge panel of the state Supreme Court’s Appellate Division ruled that there was substantial evidence showing that Daniel Pantaleo acted recklessly and that firing him was an appropriate outcome.
Pantaleo went to court seeking to be reinstated after then-police commissioner James O’Neill fired him in August 2019 following a department disciplinary trial. His lawyer argued that termination was an excessive punishment and that was “shocking to one’s sense of fairness.”
The appellate panel rejected that, writing that there was “substantial evidence” to support the conclusion that Pantaleo “recklessly caused injury to Eric Garner by maintaining a prohibited chokehold for 9 to 10 seconds after exigent circumstances were no longer present, thereby disregarding the risk of injury.”
The head of the city’s police watchdog agency, the Civilian Complaint Review board, commended the appeals court for upholding Pantaleo’s firing.
“Daniel Pantaleo should never be able to patrol New York City streets again, and now New Yorkers can rest assured that he won’t,” CCRB chairperson Fred Davie said.
…
A grand jury declined to bring criminal charges against Pantaleo and the NYPD held off on starting its internal disciplinary process for several years, with officials saying they did not want to interfere with a federal civil rights investigation that ultimately yielded no charges (Sisak 1).
[Click the following to see the video of Eric Garner’s arrest]
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/v...
Works cited:
BBC. Eric Garner: NY officer in 'I Can't Breathe' Death Fired.” BBC News, August 19, 2019. Net. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-can...
History.com Editors. “Eric Garner Dies in NYPD Chokehold.” A&E Television Networks, July 15, 2020. Net. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-h...
“Killing of Eric Garner.” Wikipedia. Net. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing...
Laughland, Oliver. “Eric Garner: No Charges against White Police Officer over Chokehold Death.” The Guardian, July 16, 2019. Net. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...
Moghe, Sonia. “Disciplinary Record of Ex-Officer Who Held Eric Garner in Chokehold Is Finally Released.” CNN, June 23, 2020. Net. https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/23/us/eri...
Sisak, Michael R. “Court Upholds Firing of NYPD Officer in Eric Garner’s Death.” AP News, March 25, 2021. Net. https://apnews.com/article/new-york-d...
Garner was known as a "neighborhood peacemaker" in his Staten Island community, and was also well-known to the police for selling cigarettes illegally near the ferry terminal on Staten Island.
Officers Daniel Pantaleo and Justin D'Amico, called to the scene because of a fight that Garner reportedly broke up, exchanged words with Garner about his cigarettes before Pantaleo reached around Garner's neck and put him in a chokehold, despite such a maneuver being against NYPD rules.
Pinned to the ground by the officers, Garner repeatedly told them, "I can't breathe." Eventually, he lost consciousness. He was pronounced dead at a hospital roughly an hour later, and the medical examiner ruled his death a homicide by suffocation.
Footage of the incident quickly went viral. There were protests in the days following Garner's death, but it was a grand jury's decision not to indict Pantaleo on December 3 that sparked large demonstrations in New York City and elsewhere across the country.
Garner's last words, "I can't breathe," became a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement. The police officer whose chokehold led to Garner’s death in 2014 was fired from the Police Department in 2019 and stripped of his pension benefits.
The following year, when New York State repealed its ban on publicizing police disciplinary records, it was revealed that Pantaleo had been investigated for misconduct seven times in the five years before Garner's death (Editors 1-2).
Now, more detailed information.
On July 17, 2014, at approximately 3:30 p.m., Garner was approached by a plainclothes police officer, Justin D'Amico, in front of a beauty supply store at 202 Bay Street in Tompinsville, Staten Island. According to bystanders (including a friend of Garner, Ramsey Orta, who recorded the incident on his cell phone) Garner had just broken up a fight, which may have drawn the attention of the police. Officers confronted Garner and accused him of selling "loosers" (single cigarettes without a tax stamp) in violation of New York state law. Garner is heard on the video saying the following:
Get away [garbled] for what? Every time you see me, you want to mess with me. I'm tired of it. It stops today. Why would you...? Everyone standing here will tell you I didn't do nothing. I did not sell nothing. Because every time you see me, you want to harass me. You want to stop me [garbled] selling cigarettes. I'm minding my business, officer, I'm minding my business. Please just leave me alone. I told you the last time, please just leave me alone.
When Pantaleo approached Garner from behind and attempted to handcuff him, Garner pulled his arms away, saying, "Don't touch me, please." Pantaleo then placed his arm around Garner's neck and pulled him backward in an attempt to bring him to the ground; in the process, Pantaleo and Garner slammed into a glass window, which did not break. Garner went to his knees and forearms and did not say anything for a few seconds.
At that point, three uniformed officers and the two plainclothes officers had surrounded him. After 15 seconds, the video shows Pantaleo removing his arm from around Garner's neck; Pantaleo then used his hands to push Garner's face into the sidewalk.
Garner is heard saying "I can't breathe" eleven times while lying face down on the sidewalk.
The arrest was supervised by a female African-American NYPD sergeant, Kizzy Adonis, who did not intercede. Adonis was quoted in the original police report as stating, "The perpetrator's condition did not seem serious and he did not appear to get worse."
A police sergeant called an ambulance and indicated that Mr. Garner was having trouble breathing, but reportedly added that he "did not appear to be in great distress". Garner lay motionless, handcuffed, and unresponsive for several minutes before an ambulance arrived, as shown in a second video. After Garner lost consciousness, officers turned him onto his side to ease his breathing. Garner remained lying on the sidewalk for seven minutes.
When an ambulance arrived, two medics and two EMTs inside the ambulance did not place Garner on oxygen, administer any emergency medical aid or promptly place him on a stretcher. According to police, Garner had a heart attack while being transported to Richmond University Medical Center. He was pronounced dead at the hospital one hour later (Killing 3).
The officer's lawyer contends his client used approved tactics to arrest Garner, but earlier this month NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Trials Rosemarie Maldonado ruled that Mr Pantaleo had used a chokehold - which is banned by the police department.
As the officers continued to restrain Garner, the asthmatic was heard repeatedly saying: "I can't breathe."
Mr O'Neill said Mr Pantaleo's decision to maintain the chokehold on the ground is what led to his firing.
The 43-year-old father of six, who weighed more than 350lb (160kg), appeared to lose consciousness and later was pronounced dead in the hospital.
A city medical examiner ruled the chokehold contributed to Garner's death.
In 2015, the city of New York reached a settlement with the family for $5.9m (£4.8m) after they brought a wrongful-death lawsuit arguing that Garner was not given sufficient medical aid by emergency officials.
…
The president of the police union, Patrick Lynch, pilloried NYPD as "rudderless and frozen".
"The leadership has abandoned and left our police officers on the street without backing," said Mr Lynch (BBC 1).
Federal prosecutors will not charge the New York police officer implicated in the chokehold death of Eric Garner, an African American man killed almost five years ago.
The decision announced by the US attorney Richard Donoghue on Tuesday was another blow to the Garner family, figureheads in the Black Lives Matter movement, who have campaigned to hold the NYPD accountable.
US justice department sources said the final call on the non-indictment was made by the attorney general, William Barr.
Garner’s death, on 17 July 2014, became a focal point for national conversation on race and policing. Garner’s last words, “I can’t breathe”, were chanted by protesters across the US.
On Tuesday, Garner’s mother, Gwen Carr, said: “Five years ago my son said ‘I can’t breathe’ 11 times. Today we can’t breathe because they [the federal government] have let us down.”
The arrest was captured on cellphone video which showed Garner repeating the phrase 11 times as Officer Daniel Pantaleo pulled him to the ground in what has been described as a banned chokehold.
The incident was ruled a homicide by the investigating medical examiner but in December 2014 a grand jury in Staten Island declined to charge Pantaleo in a separate case investigated by local prosecutors.
Federal prosecutors have long been considering whether to bring civil rights charges against Pantaleo in a case that has spanned the Obama and Trump administrations and four attorneys general.
The decision comes a day before the statute of limitations was due to expire.
Reports indicated that civil rights prosecutors recommended bringing a case against Pantaleo in 2018 but were blocked by senior justice department officials. Those reports came under Trump’s first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, amid a reversal of an Obama-era push to hold police accountable for excessive force and racially biased policing.
Donoghue, US attorney for the eastern district of New York, made the highly unusual move of announcing the decision and providing details of the underlying reasoning.
At a news conference in Brooklyn, he told reporters there was “insufficient evidence” to meet the high bar of a federal civil rights prosecution.
…
To charge Pantaleo under federal statute, prosecutors would have had to prove not only that he had used objectively unreasonable force but also that he had wilfully violated the law. Donoghue said that while his department had interviewed in excess of four dozen witnesses, the video of Garner’s death provided the central evidence.
He said prosecutors believed the video showed that Pantaleo attempted to perform two approved restraints on Garner before he placed Garner in “what appeared to be a chokehold” for seven seconds as the two fell to the floor.
Pivotally, Donogue said: “Officer Pantaleo was not engaged in a chokehold on Mr Garner when he said he can’t breathe.”
…
New York’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, issued a statement shortly before the decision was formally announced. “Years ago, we put our faith in the federal government to act,” he said. “We won’t make that mistake again.”
The decision not to indict Pantaleo means the Garner family’s only recourse is now a secretive internal investigation into the death, which only began last year as the De Blasio administration waited for news from federal prosecutors.
The administrative trial was concluded last month. A number of witnesses to the incident, the medical examiner and senior NYPD officers testified against Pantaleo.
Pantaleo has remained employed since Garner’s death, working desk duty and earning a salary of more than $100,000.
Speaking to the Guardian during Pantaleo’s administrative trial, Garner’s mother Gwen Carr expressed exasperation.
“There is no justice at all for Eric,” she said. “The harshest punishment is firing. They murdered him and if there was going to be justice, it would have been at the point when he said ‘I can’t breathe’” (Laughland 1-2).
The history of allegations made against Pantaleo was released Friday by New York City's Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB), an independent oversight agency that reviews complaints against police officers.
Seventeen complaints against Pantaleo were filed with the agency from 2009 to 2014, the year Garner was killed. They resulted in eight cases being opened against Pantaleo, which included the case involving Garner's death. …
One case that the CCRB substantiated was from an incident in 2011 where Pantaleo allegedly abused his power when conducting a vehicle stop and search. It resulted in Pantaleo receiving "instructions" as a penalty, according to the disciplinary record.
Another substantiated case against Pantaleo from 2012 alleged that he abused his power when stopping and searching a person. That case resulted in a departmental disciplinary trial where Pantaleo was found guilty and was penalized by having to forfeit two vacation days, according to the disciplinary record (Moghe 2).
A state appeals court on Thursday upheld the New York Police Department’s decision to fire an officer for the 2014 chokehold death of Eric Garner.
A five-judge panel of the state Supreme Court’s Appellate Division ruled that there was substantial evidence showing that Daniel Pantaleo acted recklessly and that firing him was an appropriate outcome.
Pantaleo went to court seeking to be reinstated after then-police commissioner James O’Neill fired him in August 2019 following a department disciplinary trial. His lawyer argued that termination was an excessive punishment and that was “shocking to one’s sense of fairness.”
The appellate panel rejected that, writing that there was “substantial evidence” to support the conclusion that Pantaleo “recklessly caused injury to Eric Garner by maintaining a prohibited chokehold for 9 to 10 seconds after exigent circumstances were no longer present, thereby disregarding the risk of injury.”
The head of the city’s police watchdog agency, the Civilian Complaint Review board, commended the appeals court for upholding Pantaleo’s firing.
“Daniel Pantaleo should never be able to patrol New York City streets again, and now New Yorkers can rest assured that he won’t,” CCRB chairperson Fred Davie said.
…
A grand jury declined to bring criminal charges against Pantaleo and the NYPD held off on starting its internal disciplinary process for several years, with officials saying they did not want to interfere with a federal civil rights investigation that ultimately yielded no charges (Sisak 1).
[Click the following to see the video of Eric Garner’s arrest]
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/v...
Works cited:
BBC. Eric Garner: NY officer in 'I Can't Breathe' Death Fired.” BBC News, August 19, 2019. Net. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-can...
History.com Editors. “Eric Garner Dies in NYPD Chokehold.” A&E Television Networks, July 15, 2020. Net. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-h...
“Killing of Eric Garner.” Wikipedia. Net. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing...
Laughland, Oliver. “Eric Garner: No Charges against White Police Officer over Chokehold Death.” The Guardian, July 16, 2019. Net. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...
Moghe, Sonia. “Disciplinary Record of Ex-Officer Who Held Eric Garner in Chokehold Is Finally Released.” CNN, June 23, 2020. Net. https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/23/us/eri...
Sisak, Michael R. “Court Upholds Firing of NYPD Officer in Eric Garner’s Death.” AP News, March 25, 2021. Net. https://apnews.com/article/new-york-d...
April 18, 2021
Bad Apples -- September 14, 2013 -- Jonathan Ferrell
If after Trayvon Martin, Oscar Grant, and Darius Simmons, you thought that you could be sickened by racist violence but no longer shocked, you need to know the story of Jonathan Ferrell. This past weekend, as the country remembered the fiftieth anniversary of the 16th St. Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham that took the lives of four little girls, another murder draped in racism took place, and the details, even in these jaded times, are shocking.
Jonathan Ferrell, a 24-year-old former football player at Florida A&M University crashed his car in Charlotte, North Carolina. The wreck was so awful that Ferrell, according to police reports, had to climb out of his back window. He somehow stumbled in the middle of the night to the closest home and pounded on the door—“banging on the door viciously,” in the bizarre phrasing of Charlotte police chief Rodney Monroe—and begged for help. According to police reports, the person inside didn’t call an ambulance but hit her alarm panic button, indicating to police that a home invasion was in progress. As the Charlotte PD approached, Ferrell continued to “attempt to gain the attention of the homeowner.” When they arrived, Ferrell “charged” toward them. One of the three officers tasered Ferrell. When that did not stop his “advance”, 27-year-old Officer Randall Kerrick opened fire, hitting Jonathan Ferrell ten times – initial media reports said three times – killing him at the scene.
Officer Kerrick was the only policeman to take out his gun and fire, which raises questions about their description of Ferrell as “charging” towards them after being tasered. According to The Charlotte Observer, police actually said initially that Kerrick’s actions were “appropriate and lawful.” Yet the brazenness of the shooting, the absence of any evidence Ferrell was under the influence of anything other than a possible concussion, and the fact that there was really no way to spin this, meant that Kerrick was quickly arrested and charged with voluntary manslaughter. According to North Carolina law, “voluntary manslaughter” means that Kerrick acted with “imperfect self-defense.”
The police statement said that “the evidence revealed that Mr. Ferrell did advance on Officer Kerrick and the investigation showed that the subsequent shooting of Mr. Ferrell was excessive. Our investigation has shown that Officer Kerrick did not have a lawful right to discharge his weapon during this encounter.”
Jonathan Ferrell was a member of Florida A&M’s 2010 championship team. He was going to turn 25 in October and was engaged to be married. He was called “the shepherd” for the way he looked after those around him. His mother Georgia and twin brother Willie Ferrell, who also played on Florida A&M team, spoke to CNN this morning, their shocked sadness on full display. His college coach, Earl Holmes, was “stunned”, saying, “I was saddened when they told me. They told me he was murdered. I said, ‘What? Murder? That doesn’t sound like him. Not the Jonathan I remembered.’ The Jonathan I remembered was a soft-spoken kid, quiet and to himself…. A lot of times bad things happen to good people.”
But they don’t just “happen.” One of the reasons there was so much media and mainstream outrage around the murder of Trayvon Martin was because he wasn’t killed at the hands of police. When the police kill an unarmed black or brown male, the media, the political establishment, and even many mainstream civil rights organizations are inclined to give them a major benefit of the doubt. One can ask the families of Ramarley Graham or Sean Bell if that sounds about right. Being stopped by police for DWB (Driving While Black) is outrage enough. Being killed by police for SHWB (Seeking Help While Black) demands a response (Zirin 1-3).
Occasionally breaking down in tears, the North Carolina cop charged with killing unarmed former Florida A&M University football player Jonathan Ferrell testified Thursday that he opened fire because he feared the young man was going to take away his gun.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Officer Randall "Wes" Kerrick is charged with voluntary manslaughter in the Sept. 14, 2013, killing of Ferrell, who had wrecked his car, gone to a nearby house and banged on the door, apparently for help.
… Ferrell was struck by 10 of 12 shots fired by Kerrick, whose attorneys argue that he was acting in self-defense. …
Kerrick testified that he left the home to back up Officer Thornell Little, who went to check on "grunting and screaming" noises that they had heard coming from the road.
Little had his Taser drawn, but the suspect continued to advance, Kerrick said, according to NBC station WCNC of Charlotte. Kerrick said he pulled his gun to back up Little because the Taser didn't stop Ferrell.
Kerrick testified that he feared Ferrell might harm him and Little. As Ferrell began approaching, Kerrick backed up and yelled commands for him to stop and to get on the ground.
But "he wouldn't stop," Kerrick said. "He kept trying to get my gun."
Little also took the stand, testifying Thursday morning that Ferrell was erratic and that both officers felt under threat when Ferrell began running toward them. He said Ferrell yelled twice at the cops to shoot him.
Ferrell then charged at Kerrick at "full speed, like a bull rush, like a bum-rush type of run," Little said. Then "I saw a muzzle flash from Officer Kerrick's weapon," he said (Johnson 1-2).
In North Carolina in 2015, police officer Randall Kerrick went on trial for voluntary manslaughter in the shooting of an unarmed black man named Jonathan Ferrell. The case hinged on a dashcam video, which depicted the moments leading up to the shooting. …
…
From her podcast, Embedded, our co-host Kelly McEvers has the story ...
KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: Like many police shootings these days, a lot of what we know about this case comes from a [dash cam] video. ...
MCEVERS: And here's what we know. A white woman has called 911 and said a black man is trying to break into her house. The dispatcher says the suspect has tried to kick in the woman's door.
MCEVERS: The officer pulls up near the woman's house. His headlights shine on a black man in a green shirt and light-colored pants. …
MCEVERS: The officer pulls up near the woman's house. His headlights shine on a black man in a green shirt and light-colored pants. His name is Jonathan Ferrell. He used to play college football. On the night of this video, he was out late with friends and crashed his car in the woods.
In the video, at first, you see Jonathan Ferrell walking. Then you see both his hands go to his waist like he might be pulling up his pants. Then you see a red dot on his chest. We later learn it's from another officer's Taser. Then Jonathan Ferrell starts to run and runs right off camera, so now all that's left is audio. You hear a third officer, Randall Wes Kerrick, who is white, tell Jonathan Ferrell to stop...
RANDALL KERRICK: Get on the ground. Get on the ground.
MCEVERS: ...And then hear this.
(SOUNDBITE OF GUNSHOTS)
MCEVERS: Twelve gunshots - 10 of them hit Jonathan Ferrell.
MCEVERS: Officers handcuff him, tell him not to move.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: Don't move. Don't move.
MCEVERS: And then he dies.
MCEVERS: The video ultimately leads investigators to agree this shooting was not justified, mainly because Jonathan Ferrell was unarmed. Officer Wes Kerrick is charged with voluntary manslaughter, and the case goes to trial nearly two years later. The prosecution says Jonathan Ferrell got in a car wreck that night and was looking for help at the door of the woman who later called 911. And when he saw that Taser beam on his chest, he was trying to run away from the cops. The defense says he was trying to break into the woman's house and that when he saw those Taser beams, he was charging at the cops. After 11 days, the jury goes to deliberate.
BRUCE RAFFE: We were six to six at one point.
MCEVERS: Bruce Raffe was the foreman of the jury. He says they watched the video several times at the trial and again in deliberations.
RAFFE: We all saw the same thing, but there were six opinions one way. There were six another. And we were sitting in that jury deliberation room. It was no bigger than this living room. It's hot. We're arguing. It's going nowhere. And so the more it went on - this went on for days.
MCEVERS: Raffe, who is white, says he knew from the very beginning of the trial he would vote to acquit Officer West Kerrick because here's what he thought about Jonathan Ferrell when he saw that video.
RAFFE: A young man, distraught, disheveled, confused, angry, if you will, making a very aggressive move towards these police officers after disobeying commands. He had many choices in this video, and it was clear from the very first time I viewed it. Stop. Sit down. Put your hands up. Do any of those things, other than what you chose to do, which was to charge Officer Kerrick.
MCEVERS: So Raffe convinces two more jurors to side with him. That means eight jurors - most of them white - want to acquit Officer Wes Kerrick. And four jurors - most of them people of color - say they want to convict Kerrick. Bruce Raffe says his decision was not about race. He says if his own son did what Jonathan Ferrell did, he would expect him to be shot, too. Moses Wilson, who is black, was on the other side. He says it was unfair the defense tried to put Jonathan Ferrell on trial.
MOSES WILSON: This is an old trick from defense attorneys. He wasn't supposed to be here. He might have had a few drinks where he was. The police responded to what he caused. This was early in the morning. This was far from where he lived. This was this, this was that, which caused me at the end to write on the board - just what did he do to deserve to be shot so many times? And the defense for Kerrick could not come up with anything that he had done.
MCEVERS: Moses Wilson says he thinks some people voted the way they did because of their racial biases.
WILSON: That is the deepest and the darkest of reasons, and it will haunt whoever did it for the rest of their lives. That's the truth (Mcevers 1-3).
…
Wilson pointed to the three elements of voluntary manslaughter ..., including whether Kerrick exceeded matching the threat to him by something far more excessive than what was needed to end the threat.
“That’s where we had our problems,” he said.
He said the entire incident amounted to “a night of mistakes” on both sides, but he said the most egregious was that Kerrick didn’t do what he was supposed to do as a police officer.
“You are not the judge. You are not the jury,” he said. “You’re the person who comes to investigate and decide whether a person should be arrested and sent elsewhere” (Associated 2).
MCEVERS: I want to know what it felt like to be sitting in that jury room, so sure of your version of what happened when the person next to you thinks exactly the opposite thing.
…
MCEVERS: So I asked Bruce Raffe about this.
RAFFE: I'm wondering what they're not seeing, what they didn't hear. Why aren't they siding with me on this decision? And I feel very confident that the decision I was making and the decisions that I was formulating to know that Officer Kerrick was not guilty - I had a hard time understanding why others didn't.
MCEVERS: So after three days of trying, the jury deadlocks 8-4.
…
MCEVERS: But the prosecution decides not to retry the case. Officer Kerrick later settles with the city for back pay, and as part of that settlement, he resigns from the police department. What we still wanted to know is this - how can people see the same thing and think so differently? And what does that mean will happen in other cases like these? So we put these questions to a lawyer named Charles Monnett. He represented Jonathan Ferrell's family in a civil case against the city of Charlotte.
CHARLES MONNETT: Confirmation bias is what that's called. People see what they want to see. And they take their previous beliefs, and they use the film to confirm whatever they are. Almost no one can see those videos from a neutral perspective.
… the city settled Monnett's case and paid the Ferrell family $2.25 million (Mcevers 3-4).
Every year since 2013, when a Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer fatally shot Jonathan Ferrell, an unarmed Black man, people have gathered to make sure his name is not forgotten.
Monday, the seventh anniversary of his death, was no different. People knelt in Marshall Park as the sun set, writing Ferrell’s name in chalk on the pavement.
Some in the crowd of 50 people may not have known the 24-year-old’s story before the event, said Kass Ottley, leader of Seeking Justice CLT. The nonprofit advocacy group hosted Monday’s event.
But that’s why Ottley continues to hold vigils every year.
“If they don’t remember what happened to Jonathan Ferrell, it’s going to happen again,” Ottley told The Observer in an interview. “I’m just worried every day there is going to be another Jonathan.”
…
Local NAACP leader Corine Mack described Ferrell as “a son, a brother, a cousin, a student and a rising football star.” She encouraged those in the crowd to keep pushing for change.
“He was a dark-skinned, well-built Black man whose skin became his only criminality,” Mack said. “We can’t stop. We can’t give up. No matter how much they hurt us, it’s our responsibility to stand at this point in time so our children and their children will get justice.”
Ottley … questioned whether anything has changed in Charlotte since his death. She also drew comparisons between his death and George Floyd’s, who died at the hands of Minneapolis police in May.
“We watched them criminalize him,” Ottley said. “Until we unite and really get together and start holding our public officials accountable and start holding the police department accountable and showing up, nothing’s going to change” (Bose 1-2).
Works cited:
Associated Press in Charlotte, North Carolina. “’What Did Jonathan Ferrell Do?': Juror Says Defense Put Victim on Trial.” The Guardian, August 23, 2015. Net. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...
Bose, Devna. “A CMPD Officer Killed Jonathan Ferrell in 2013. Charlotte Hasn’t Forgotten.” The Charlotte Observer, September 14, 2020. Net. https://www.charlotteobserver.com/new...
Johnson, Alex. “Officer in Jonathan Ferrell Killing: 'He Kept Trying to Get My Gun'. NBC News, August 13, 2015. Net. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/...
Mcevers, Kelly. “Charlotte Police Shooting Underlines Divide over Video Evidence.” NPR, March 9, 2017. Net. https://www.npr.org/2017/03/09/519499...
Zirin, Dave. “Jonathan Ferrell, Former Football Player, Killed by Police after Seeking Help Following Car Wreck.” The Nation, September 16, 2013. Net. https://www.thenation.com/article/arc...
Jonathan Ferrell, a 24-year-old former football player at Florida A&M University crashed his car in Charlotte, North Carolina. The wreck was so awful that Ferrell, according to police reports, had to climb out of his back window. He somehow stumbled in the middle of the night to the closest home and pounded on the door—“banging on the door viciously,” in the bizarre phrasing of Charlotte police chief Rodney Monroe—and begged for help. According to police reports, the person inside didn’t call an ambulance but hit her alarm panic button, indicating to police that a home invasion was in progress. As the Charlotte PD approached, Ferrell continued to “attempt to gain the attention of the homeowner.” When they arrived, Ferrell “charged” toward them. One of the three officers tasered Ferrell. When that did not stop his “advance”, 27-year-old Officer Randall Kerrick opened fire, hitting Jonathan Ferrell ten times – initial media reports said three times – killing him at the scene.
Officer Kerrick was the only policeman to take out his gun and fire, which raises questions about their description of Ferrell as “charging” towards them after being tasered. According to The Charlotte Observer, police actually said initially that Kerrick’s actions were “appropriate and lawful.” Yet the brazenness of the shooting, the absence of any evidence Ferrell was under the influence of anything other than a possible concussion, and the fact that there was really no way to spin this, meant that Kerrick was quickly arrested and charged with voluntary manslaughter. According to North Carolina law, “voluntary manslaughter” means that Kerrick acted with “imperfect self-defense.”
The police statement said that “the evidence revealed that Mr. Ferrell did advance on Officer Kerrick and the investigation showed that the subsequent shooting of Mr. Ferrell was excessive. Our investigation has shown that Officer Kerrick did not have a lawful right to discharge his weapon during this encounter.”
Jonathan Ferrell was a member of Florida A&M’s 2010 championship team. He was going to turn 25 in October and was engaged to be married. He was called “the shepherd” for the way he looked after those around him. His mother Georgia and twin brother Willie Ferrell, who also played on Florida A&M team, spoke to CNN this morning, their shocked sadness on full display. His college coach, Earl Holmes, was “stunned”, saying, “I was saddened when they told me. They told me he was murdered. I said, ‘What? Murder? That doesn’t sound like him. Not the Jonathan I remembered.’ The Jonathan I remembered was a soft-spoken kid, quiet and to himself…. A lot of times bad things happen to good people.”
But they don’t just “happen.” One of the reasons there was so much media and mainstream outrage around the murder of Trayvon Martin was because he wasn’t killed at the hands of police. When the police kill an unarmed black or brown male, the media, the political establishment, and even many mainstream civil rights organizations are inclined to give them a major benefit of the doubt. One can ask the families of Ramarley Graham or Sean Bell if that sounds about right. Being stopped by police for DWB (Driving While Black) is outrage enough. Being killed by police for SHWB (Seeking Help While Black) demands a response (Zirin 1-3).
Occasionally breaking down in tears, the North Carolina cop charged with killing unarmed former Florida A&M University football player Jonathan Ferrell testified Thursday that he opened fire because he feared the young man was going to take away his gun.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Officer Randall "Wes" Kerrick is charged with voluntary manslaughter in the Sept. 14, 2013, killing of Ferrell, who had wrecked his car, gone to a nearby house and banged on the door, apparently for help.
… Ferrell was struck by 10 of 12 shots fired by Kerrick, whose attorneys argue that he was acting in self-defense. …
Kerrick testified that he left the home to back up Officer Thornell Little, who went to check on "grunting and screaming" noises that they had heard coming from the road.
Little had his Taser drawn, but the suspect continued to advance, Kerrick said, according to NBC station WCNC of Charlotte. Kerrick said he pulled his gun to back up Little because the Taser didn't stop Ferrell.
Kerrick testified that he feared Ferrell might harm him and Little. As Ferrell began approaching, Kerrick backed up and yelled commands for him to stop and to get on the ground.
But "he wouldn't stop," Kerrick said. "He kept trying to get my gun."
Little also took the stand, testifying Thursday morning that Ferrell was erratic and that both officers felt under threat when Ferrell began running toward them. He said Ferrell yelled twice at the cops to shoot him.
Ferrell then charged at Kerrick at "full speed, like a bull rush, like a bum-rush type of run," Little said. Then "I saw a muzzle flash from Officer Kerrick's weapon," he said (Johnson 1-2).
In North Carolina in 2015, police officer Randall Kerrick went on trial for voluntary manslaughter in the shooting of an unarmed black man named Jonathan Ferrell. The case hinged on a dashcam video, which depicted the moments leading up to the shooting. …
…
From her podcast, Embedded, our co-host Kelly McEvers has the story ...
KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: Like many police shootings these days, a lot of what we know about this case comes from a [dash cam] video. ...
MCEVERS: And here's what we know. A white woman has called 911 and said a black man is trying to break into her house. The dispatcher says the suspect has tried to kick in the woman's door.
MCEVERS: The officer pulls up near the woman's house. His headlights shine on a black man in a green shirt and light-colored pants. …
MCEVERS: The officer pulls up near the woman's house. His headlights shine on a black man in a green shirt and light-colored pants. His name is Jonathan Ferrell. He used to play college football. On the night of this video, he was out late with friends and crashed his car in the woods.
In the video, at first, you see Jonathan Ferrell walking. Then you see both his hands go to his waist like he might be pulling up his pants. Then you see a red dot on his chest. We later learn it's from another officer's Taser. Then Jonathan Ferrell starts to run and runs right off camera, so now all that's left is audio. You hear a third officer, Randall Wes Kerrick, who is white, tell Jonathan Ferrell to stop...
RANDALL KERRICK: Get on the ground. Get on the ground.
MCEVERS: ...And then hear this.
(SOUNDBITE OF GUNSHOTS)
MCEVERS: Twelve gunshots - 10 of them hit Jonathan Ferrell.
MCEVERS: Officers handcuff him, tell him not to move.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: Don't move. Don't move.
MCEVERS: And then he dies.
MCEVERS: The video ultimately leads investigators to agree this shooting was not justified, mainly because Jonathan Ferrell was unarmed. Officer Wes Kerrick is charged with voluntary manslaughter, and the case goes to trial nearly two years later. The prosecution says Jonathan Ferrell got in a car wreck that night and was looking for help at the door of the woman who later called 911. And when he saw that Taser beam on his chest, he was trying to run away from the cops. The defense says he was trying to break into the woman's house and that when he saw those Taser beams, he was charging at the cops. After 11 days, the jury goes to deliberate.
BRUCE RAFFE: We were six to six at one point.
MCEVERS: Bruce Raffe was the foreman of the jury. He says they watched the video several times at the trial and again in deliberations.
RAFFE: We all saw the same thing, but there were six opinions one way. There were six another. And we were sitting in that jury deliberation room. It was no bigger than this living room. It's hot. We're arguing. It's going nowhere. And so the more it went on - this went on for days.
MCEVERS: Raffe, who is white, says he knew from the very beginning of the trial he would vote to acquit Officer West Kerrick because here's what he thought about Jonathan Ferrell when he saw that video.
RAFFE: A young man, distraught, disheveled, confused, angry, if you will, making a very aggressive move towards these police officers after disobeying commands. He had many choices in this video, and it was clear from the very first time I viewed it. Stop. Sit down. Put your hands up. Do any of those things, other than what you chose to do, which was to charge Officer Kerrick.
MCEVERS: So Raffe convinces two more jurors to side with him. That means eight jurors - most of them white - want to acquit Officer Wes Kerrick. And four jurors - most of them people of color - say they want to convict Kerrick. Bruce Raffe says his decision was not about race. He says if his own son did what Jonathan Ferrell did, he would expect him to be shot, too. Moses Wilson, who is black, was on the other side. He says it was unfair the defense tried to put Jonathan Ferrell on trial.
MOSES WILSON: This is an old trick from defense attorneys. He wasn't supposed to be here. He might have had a few drinks where he was. The police responded to what he caused. This was early in the morning. This was far from where he lived. This was this, this was that, which caused me at the end to write on the board - just what did he do to deserve to be shot so many times? And the defense for Kerrick could not come up with anything that he had done.
MCEVERS: Moses Wilson says he thinks some people voted the way they did because of their racial biases.
WILSON: That is the deepest and the darkest of reasons, and it will haunt whoever did it for the rest of their lives. That's the truth (Mcevers 1-3).
…
Wilson pointed to the three elements of voluntary manslaughter ..., including whether Kerrick exceeded matching the threat to him by something far more excessive than what was needed to end the threat.
“That’s where we had our problems,” he said.
He said the entire incident amounted to “a night of mistakes” on both sides, but he said the most egregious was that Kerrick didn’t do what he was supposed to do as a police officer.
“You are not the judge. You are not the jury,” he said. “You’re the person who comes to investigate and decide whether a person should be arrested and sent elsewhere” (Associated 2).
MCEVERS: I want to know what it felt like to be sitting in that jury room, so sure of your version of what happened when the person next to you thinks exactly the opposite thing.
…
MCEVERS: So I asked Bruce Raffe about this.
RAFFE: I'm wondering what they're not seeing, what they didn't hear. Why aren't they siding with me on this decision? And I feel very confident that the decision I was making and the decisions that I was formulating to know that Officer Kerrick was not guilty - I had a hard time understanding why others didn't.
MCEVERS: So after three days of trying, the jury deadlocks 8-4.
…
MCEVERS: But the prosecution decides not to retry the case. Officer Kerrick later settles with the city for back pay, and as part of that settlement, he resigns from the police department. What we still wanted to know is this - how can people see the same thing and think so differently? And what does that mean will happen in other cases like these? So we put these questions to a lawyer named Charles Monnett. He represented Jonathan Ferrell's family in a civil case against the city of Charlotte.
CHARLES MONNETT: Confirmation bias is what that's called. People see what they want to see. And they take their previous beliefs, and they use the film to confirm whatever they are. Almost no one can see those videos from a neutral perspective.
… the city settled Monnett's case and paid the Ferrell family $2.25 million (Mcevers 3-4).
Every year since 2013, when a Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer fatally shot Jonathan Ferrell, an unarmed Black man, people have gathered to make sure his name is not forgotten.
Monday, the seventh anniversary of his death, was no different. People knelt in Marshall Park as the sun set, writing Ferrell’s name in chalk on the pavement.
Some in the crowd of 50 people may not have known the 24-year-old’s story before the event, said Kass Ottley, leader of Seeking Justice CLT. The nonprofit advocacy group hosted Monday’s event.
But that’s why Ottley continues to hold vigils every year.
“If they don’t remember what happened to Jonathan Ferrell, it’s going to happen again,” Ottley told The Observer in an interview. “I’m just worried every day there is going to be another Jonathan.”
…
Local NAACP leader Corine Mack described Ferrell as “a son, a brother, a cousin, a student and a rising football star.” She encouraged those in the crowd to keep pushing for change.
“He was a dark-skinned, well-built Black man whose skin became his only criminality,” Mack said. “We can’t stop. We can’t give up. No matter how much they hurt us, it’s our responsibility to stand at this point in time so our children and their children will get justice.”
Ottley … questioned whether anything has changed in Charlotte since his death. She also drew comparisons between his death and George Floyd’s, who died at the hands of Minneapolis police in May.
“We watched them criminalize him,” Ottley said. “Until we unite and really get together and start holding our public officials accountable and start holding the police department accountable and showing up, nothing’s going to change” (Bose 1-2).
Works cited:
Associated Press in Charlotte, North Carolina. “’What Did Jonathan Ferrell Do?': Juror Says Defense Put Victim on Trial.” The Guardian, August 23, 2015. Net. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...
Bose, Devna. “A CMPD Officer Killed Jonathan Ferrell in 2013. Charlotte Hasn’t Forgotten.” The Charlotte Observer, September 14, 2020. Net. https://www.charlotteobserver.com/new...
Johnson, Alex. “Officer in Jonathan Ferrell Killing: 'He Kept Trying to Get My Gun'. NBC News, August 13, 2015. Net. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/...
Mcevers, Kelly. “Charlotte Police Shooting Underlines Divide over Video Evidence.” NPR, March 9, 2017. Net. https://www.npr.org/2017/03/09/519499...
Zirin, Dave. “Jonathan Ferrell, Former Football Player, Killed by Police after Seeking Help Following Car Wreck.” The Nation, September 16, 2013. Net. https://www.thenation.com/article/arc...
April 11, 2021
Bad Apples -- May 31, 2012 -- Darius Simmons
On 31 May, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a 13-year-old boy named Darius Simmons was allegedly shot to death by 75-year-old John Henry Spooner, right in front of the boy's mother, Patricia Larry. Spooner had confronted Darius as he was taking out the trash and accused the kid of stealing from his home. When Ms Larry attempted to defend her son verbally against the accusation, Spooner drew a 9mm handgun.
Darius, who had been in school at the time of the theft and who was, by all accounts, a well-behaved, outgoing sixth-grader, denied any wrongdoing. Spooner, unconvinced, reportedly raised his firearm and shot Darius in the chest at close range. Though fatally wounded, Darius attempted to escape and turned to run, while Spooner continued to unload, aiming for the boy's back. Darius collapsed on the pavement and Larry, who had watched this episode unfold in horror, ran to her child to see if he had a pulse. Darius was dead.
Spooner was known by his neighbors, police, and local elected officials as a gun collector. In a recently reported burglary, Spooner claimed that four shotguns were taken. The police had already done an investigation, several days prior, to burglaries at Spooner's residence. They had interviewed Darius Simmons' family, and concluded that no one from his household was involved. Larry, Darius's mother, had lived in that home for only a month.
After police arrived, Darius's body remained on the sidewalk, while his mother was questioned in a squad car for approximately two hours. During the investigation of the shooting, they searched Larry's home again. Finding nothing relevant to the homicide, they nevertheless proceeded to arrest Darius's older brother on account of truancy tickets.
In contrast, members of Spooner's family were reportedly allowed to re-enter their home and remove "items" – despite it being part of the crime scene. Spooner himself was granted bail for $300,000 (meaning that only $30,000 would have to be posted for him to be freed). Appearing in court Monday 11 June, Spooner pleaded not guilty to first-degree intentional homicide (Powell 1).
Darius Simmons' mother testified Tuesday that she watched from her front porch as John Henry Spooner gunned down her son.
"As I turned around, Mr. Spooner was standing there in front of Darius," Patricia Larry said. "He got a gun, and he pointed it at Darius."
She said Spooner, 76, demanded that Simmons put his hands up, and the 13-year-old complied. Larry said she asked the defendant why "he had that gun on (her) baby."
"He told Darius that he's going to teach him not to steal," she said. "And he shot him."
...
Larry continued, struggling to choke back tears as she described the aftermath of the shooting.
"I ran off the porch to my son," she said. "I checked for a pulse. I checked both of his wrists. He didn't have a pulse so I went to his neck, and it was very faint.... I pulled up his shirt and I could see that he had a bullet hole."
She said her son was unarmed and did nothing to provoke Spooner (Stanley-Becker 1).
When Milwaukee Police Department (“MPD”) officers arrived on the scene to investigate, they kept Darius’ mother in the back of an MPD squad car for more than 90 minutes as Darius lay dying in the street and as he was later taken to the hospital. Community members have expressed outrage that the MPD did not allow Darius’ mother to be with her son during the last minutes of his life. The MPD defended their actions, claiming that the homicide investigation trumped any concerns over showing compassion to Darius’ mother.
In response to the community’s concern over this incident, the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission (“FPC”) conducted a review of the MPD’s handling of the investigation. While the FPC determined that the MPD officers involved did not technically violate any rules or procedures, the FPC recommended that the MPD develop new procedures and training so that police officers are more sensitive to how their actions may be viewed by the community. The MPD also acknowledged that it could have been more sensitive to Darius’ mother during the homicide investigation (Milwaukee 1).
The first officers arrived at the scene of the shooting at 9:52 a.m. May 31. Simmons was taken to Children's Hospital of Wisconsin. His mother, Patricia Larry, was taken to a squad car shortly after 10 a.m. She was not interviewed by a detective until 10:50 a.m.
She asked if she could go to the hospital to be with her son but agreed to remain on the scene until the interviews were completed. Larry spent about an hour-and-a-half in two squad cars, arriving at the hospital at 11:58 a.m. Her son was pronounced dead almost an hour earlier, at 11:10 a.m.
Questioning of witnesses to the shooting followed customary protocols for homicide investigations, even when witnesses include the mother of a victim, the report says.
Detectives said that allowing Larry to go to the hospital before being interviewed could jeopardize their investigation and damage the criminal case against Spooner. They mistakenly believed, however, that Milwaukee Fire Department protocol prohibited Larry from riding with her son in the ambulance to the hospital.
And though investigators were not required to interview Larry at the scene before taking her to the hospital, they had discretion over where and when the interview would be conducted.
The report says investigators failed to consider the unique circumstances surrounding the shooting - primarily that a mother witnessed her son being shot to death - which led to community frustration over the investigation.
"Community members presumed that malice and prejudice were overwhelming reasons for the failure to consider" those circumstances, the report says.
Among other conclusions in the report:
• Police did not consider options to a scene interview of Larry, and allowing her to go to the hospital immediately would not have jeopardized their investigation.
• Larry provided written consent for officers to search her home for Spooner's stolen property, which was not found.
• Simmons' brother, who is not identified in the report, was arrested at the scene for five outstanding municipal warrants, but it was not appropriate for police to detain him for the 10 hours he was in custody because of the unusual circumstances surrounding his arrest.
• Allowing Spooner's family to retrieve firearms from his house before the weapons could be inventoried by police exposed officers to accusations of preferential treatment and the appearance of race playing a factor in their investigation.
"The mere appearance of preferential treatment, even in just a single instance, can greatly influence the public's perception and trust of the police department," the report says.
The report recommends that police review allocation of personnel at homicide scenes and improve oversight of discretionary decisions (Garza 1).
The twice-delayed trial comes on the heels of the Saturday acquittal of George Zimmerman in the killing of Trayvon Martin. Spooner's case has drawn attention for its perceived similarities to the Zimmerman case, in which the neighborhood watchman was alleged to have racially profiled 17-year-old Martin.
Jury selection for the Spooner trial focused Monday on eliminating potential jurors whose consideration of the case might be influenced by their reactions to the Zimmerman verdict. The final jury of 12 with two alternates comprises 10 men and four women. One is black.
In opening statements Tuesday, no one disputed that Spooner shot and killed Simmons on May 31, 2012.
What is in dispute is why Spooner did so, and whether he was in a mental condition to be held responsible for his actions. Spooner has confessed to shooting Simmons, saying in statements to police on the scene that he had reached a "breaking point" after his house was burglarized two days earlier. He suspected his teenage neighbor of carrying out the heist and gunned him down in front of his mother.
"The best piece of evidence you're going to see in this case is the murder," Assistant District Attorney Mark Williams said, referring to a videotape of the incident that left Simmons dead. "You're going to see the terror in Darius' face, and you're going to see how cold-blooded and callous Mr. Spooner was."
The prosecution displayed that evidence Tuesday afternoon — a video recording of the encounter between the defendant and the victim in front of their homes and the subsequent shooting — recorded on one of Spooner's private surveillance cameras.
Simmons is the first to enter the video, seen retrieving a garbage receptacle from the sidewalk. Spooner then exits his front door and confronts his neighbor. As Spooner brandishes his weapon, Simmons backpedals and Spooner shoots him. The victim then runs away in the opposite direction, as the defendant takes another shot at him, this time from behind, but misses.
Simmons' 18-year-old brother, Theodore Larry, testified Tuesday afternoon that he came downstairs on the morning of May 31, 2012, to find his mother in the frame of their front door, with Spooner on the sidewalk pointing a gun at the doorway.
"I've never seen my mom like that," Theodore Larry recalled on the witness stand. "My mom told me (Spooner) had shot my little brother. She said, 'You ain't going out there.'"
Larry said he ran out his back door and found his brother lying on the curb around the block. He was crying as he took his lifeless brother in his arms, he said.
Both mother and brother watched Tuesday's proceedings from the courtroom gallery and were joined by a contingent of family members, friends and a pastor from All Peoples Church.
When Williams displayed a photo of the victim's gunshot wound, Simmons' brother and another family member left the courtroom in anguish. An autopsy revealed that the bullet exited Simmons' back.
Defense Attorney Franklyn Gimbel said he would not dispute the prosecution's factual narrative but would question whether his client had the intent to kill the victim. If convicted of homicide, Spooner will enter a plea of not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect. In addition to alleged mental illness, the 76-year-old is in poor physical shape, suffering from pneumonia, Gimbel said.
"What you will have to decide is whether the behavior of John Spooner was such that he had the intent to kill this young man," Gimbel said in his opening remarks Tuesday morning. "He did not."
Alderman Bob Donovan was called to testify about a conversation he had with Spooner over breakfast at George Webb Restaurant the morning of the shooting. Just hours before he killed Simmons, Donovan said, Spooner uttered an ambiguous statement that might have forecast his lethal actions.
That morning, Donovan testified, the defendant expressed dissatisfaction with how the police were handling the break-in at his home that left windows shattered and four of his shotguns missing.
"There are other ways of handling these things," Spooner said, according to Donovan.
Before recessing Tuesday afternoon, the prosecution played an interview with Spooner recorded five hours after the shooting. The video shows Charles Mueller, a homicide detective for the Milwaukee Police Department, questioning Spooner. The video will aid in Spooner's insanity plea, Gimbel said in the hallway outside the courtroom. He said his client is unlikely to testify on his own behalf.
In the interview, Spooner detailed his medical conditions, including depression and anxiety. "Am I depressed now? No," he said.
When Mueller asked him why he shot his teenage neighbor, Spooner said he "wanted him to give (him his) shotguns back."
Mueller testified that Spooner was "cooperative and matter-of-fact" and that "he seemed very unconcerned about what had just occurred."
Milwaukee Police Officer Michael Urbaniak testified that the defendant made several statements to him at the scene of the shooting, including acknowledging that "they are going to throw the book at me because I shot the kid," and commenting on his own poor health, saying, "I really don't have much longer to live on this Earth" (Stanley-Becker “Darius” 2-4).
John Henry Spooner, 76, told a stunned courtroom Thursday that justice was served when he shot and killed his 13-year-old neighbor.
If his gun hadn't jammed, Spooner said, he would have shot Darius Simmons' brother, too.
"I wouldn't call it revenge; I would call it justice," Spooner said to audible gasps from the courtroom gallery, where Simmons' mother, Patricia Larry, sat watching with friends and religious leaders. ...
"Something snapped," Spooner recalled from the stand Thursday, describing his certainty that his neighbors — Simmons and his 18-year-old brother, Theodore Larry — had burglarized his home and stolen four of his shotguns two days before he confronted his teenage neighbor.
Convicted Wednesday of first-degree intentional homicide for fatally shooting Simmons, Spooner took the witness stand Thursday afternoon to testify in his own defense in the insanity portion of his trial. …
… Confronted by Spooner, the teen told him he had not taken the guns.
"I wanted those shotguns back. They were a big part of my life," Spooner said. "If what I did was in cold blood, what do you think about these kids robbing a sick old man?"
His attorney, Franklyn Gimbel, asked: "Did you intend to kill Darius Simmons?"
"I don't know," Spooner replied. "I was going after something important, and it was mine. What more can I say?"
…
Assistant District Attorney Mark Williams asked Spooner if he felt bad for shooting Simmons.
"Not that bad," Spooner replied.
He said he intended to frighten the victim but was moved to pull the trigger when Simmons' mother indicated that she was calling the police, thus "brushing him off," he said, with a sweeping motion of his fingers in the air. "I don't like that."
Williams urged Spooner to say whether he intended to kill Simmons and to explain why he attempted to shoot at him a second and third time. He missed on the second attempt and the gun jammed on the third.
"I don't know," Spooner answered repeatedly, closing his eyes and bowing his head.
Jonathan Safran, an attorney representing Simmons' family, said Spooner's testimony indicated the "level of depth of evil this man has" (Stanley Becker “John” 1-2).
A jury found Spooner guilty of first-degree intentional homicide last week, a conviction carrying a mandatory life sentence. The judge could have allowed for the possibility of parole after 20 years, but rejected that option, citing Spooner’s lack of remorse and desire to also kill the teen’s brother.
Spooner, who has lung cancer and other physical ailments, will spend the rest of his life in prison (Associated 1).
There are many ways to view this latest chapter of American race relations. One dimension of the story is that Larry had moved to this so-called white section of Milwaukee because she wanted to give her family better educational opportunities and the chance to escape the risks of inner-city violence (in a manner not unlike the way the parents of Trayvon Martin had moved to that gated community where he was murdered). I understand this because my mother did the very same thing with me when I was Darius's age. I was certainly called the N-word by the good white folks who "welcomed" us to the neighborhood, but no one thought to pull a gun and shoot me.
Another way to view this is that Milwaukee, like most urban centers in America, is scarred with violence. Blacks and Latinos piled into ghetto dwellings, with limited educational, employment, and life choices, do definitely commit horrific acts of violence against each other. I see this every day in my own neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. But because such violence does occur does not mean that a George Zimmerman, in Florida, or a John Henry Spooner, in Wisconsin, has a right to arm himself to the teeth and become a de facto law enforcer, who demonizes every single black or Latino young male they encounter.
Rather than address the root causes of crime and violence in America, we point fingers, we cast blame randomly: we shoot to kill, we ask questions later. But that is the climate of America: if you are a black or brown person, you are a criminal suspect – the culprit for every societal ill – even if you have nothing to do with those problems.
In Wisconsin, Republican Governor Scott Walker has just survived a bitterly divisive recall election, occasioned by his controversial anti-union law. This same Governor Walker also approved a conceal-and-carry gun law in his state – as if the vigilante tendency needed any encouragement.
Finally, it pains me to see yet another mother, another black mother, posing with a picture of a dead son, gunned down before he had a chance to live. No doubt, she will have to [did] listen to the arguments of Spooner's attorneys, casting him as a victim of crime. Perhaps she will even be forced to hear doubt cast on her dead son's reputation.
We have been here before. And we will be here again. Unless we Americans can have real, honest, and serious conversations about race and racism in the US, we are condemned to repeat the dehumanising lies that poison our community relations and cause the endless-seeming cycle of deaths like Darius Simmons's (Powell 2-3)
Works cited:
The Associated Press. “JUSTICE: Wis. Man Who Killed Teen Neighbor Gets Life in Prison.” Black America, July 23, 2013. Net. https://blackamericaweb.com/2013/07/2...
Garza, Jesse. “Report Criticizes Police Department Response in Fatal Shooting.” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, October 5, 2012. Net. http://archive.jsonline.com/news/crim...
“Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission Issues Public Statement Regarding Darius Simmons Investigation.” Samster Konkel Safron Lawyers, June 12, 2012. Net. https://skslawyers.com/2012/06/milwau...
Powell, Kevin. “The Fatal Racism that Shot Darius Simmons to Death.” The Guardian, June 11, 2012. Net. https://www.theguardian.com/commentis...
Stanley-Becker, Issac. “Darius Simmons' Mother Describes Watching John Spooner Gun Down Son.” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, July 13, 2003. Net. https://archive.jsonline.com/news/cri...
Stanley-Becker, Issac. “John Spooner: 'I Wouldn't Call It Revenge; I Would Call It Justice'.” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, July 18, 2013. Net. http://archive.jsonline.com/news/crim...
Darius, who had been in school at the time of the theft and who was, by all accounts, a well-behaved, outgoing sixth-grader, denied any wrongdoing. Spooner, unconvinced, reportedly raised his firearm and shot Darius in the chest at close range. Though fatally wounded, Darius attempted to escape and turned to run, while Spooner continued to unload, aiming for the boy's back. Darius collapsed on the pavement and Larry, who had watched this episode unfold in horror, ran to her child to see if he had a pulse. Darius was dead.
Spooner was known by his neighbors, police, and local elected officials as a gun collector. In a recently reported burglary, Spooner claimed that four shotguns were taken. The police had already done an investigation, several days prior, to burglaries at Spooner's residence. They had interviewed Darius Simmons' family, and concluded that no one from his household was involved. Larry, Darius's mother, had lived in that home for only a month.
After police arrived, Darius's body remained on the sidewalk, while his mother was questioned in a squad car for approximately two hours. During the investigation of the shooting, they searched Larry's home again. Finding nothing relevant to the homicide, they nevertheless proceeded to arrest Darius's older brother on account of truancy tickets.
In contrast, members of Spooner's family were reportedly allowed to re-enter their home and remove "items" – despite it being part of the crime scene. Spooner himself was granted bail for $300,000 (meaning that only $30,000 would have to be posted for him to be freed). Appearing in court Monday 11 June, Spooner pleaded not guilty to first-degree intentional homicide (Powell 1).
Darius Simmons' mother testified Tuesday that she watched from her front porch as John Henry Spooner gunned down her son.
"As I turned around, Mr. Spooner was standing there in front of Darius," Patricia Larry said. "He got a gun, and he pointed it at Darius."
She said Spooner, 76, demanded that Simmons put his hands up, and the 13-year-old complied. Larry said she asked the defendant why "he had that gun on (her) baby."
"He told Darius that he's going to teach him not to steal," she said. "And he shot him."
...
Larry continued, struggling to choke back tears as she described the aftermath of the shooting.
"I ran off the porch to my son," she said. "I checked for a pulse. I checked both of his wrists. He didn't have a pulse so I went to his neck, and it was very faint.... I pulled up his shirt and I could see that he had a bullet hole."
She said her son was unarmed and did nothing to provoke Spooner (Stanley-Becker 1).
When Milwaukee Police Department (“MPD”) officers arrived on the scene to investigate, they kept Darius’ mother in the back of an MPD squad car for more than 90 minutes as Darius lay dying in the street and as he was later taken to the hospital. Community members have expressed outrage that the MPD did not allow Darius’ mother to be with her son during the last minutes of his life. The MPD defended their actions, claiming that the homicide investigation trumped any concerns over showing compassion to Darius’ mother.
In response to the community’s concern over this incident, the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission (“FPC”) conducted a review of the MPD’s handling of the investigation. While the FPC determined that the MPD officers involved did not technically violate any rules or procedures, the FPC recommended that the MPD develop new procedures and training so that police officers are more sensitive to how their actions may be viewed by the community. The MPD also acknowledged that it could have been more sensitive to Darius’ mother during the homicide investigation (Milwaukee 1).
The first officers arrived at the scene of the shooting at 9:52 a.m. May 31. Simmons was taken to Children's Hospital of Wisconsin. His mother, Patricia Larry, was taken to a squad car shortly after 10 a.m. She was not interviewed by a detective until 10:50 a.m.
She asked if she could go to the hospital to be with her son but agreed to remain on the scene until the interviews were completed. Larry spent about an hour-and-a-half in two squad cars, arriving at the hospital at 11:58 a.m. Her son was pronounced dead almost an hour earlier, at 11:10 a.m.
Questioning of witnesses to the shooting followed customary protocols for homicide investigations, even when witnesses include the mother of a victim, the report says.
Detectives said that allowing Larry to go to the hospital before being interviewed could jeopardize their investigation and damage the criminal case against Spooner. They mistakenly believed, however, that Milwaukee Fire Department protocol prohibited Larry from riding with her son in the ambulance to the hospital.
And though investigators were not required to interview Larry at the scene before taking her to the hospital, they had discretion over where and when the interview would be conducted.
The report says investigators failed to consider the unique circumstances surrounding the shooting - primarily that a mother witnessed her son being shot to death - which led to community frustration over the investigation.
"Community members presumed that malice and prejudice were overwhelming reasons for the failure to consider" those circumstances, the report says.
Among other conclusions in the report:
• Police did not consider options to a scene interview of Larry, and allowing her to go to the hospital immediately would not have jeopardized their investigation.
• Larry provided written consent for officers to search her home for Spooner's stolen property, which was not found.
• Simmons' brother, who is not identified in the report, was arrested at the scene for five outstanding municipal warrants, but it was not appropriate for police to detain him for the 10 hours he was in custody because of the unusual circumstances surrounding his arrest.
• Allowing Spooner's family to retrieve firearms from his house before the weapons could be inventoried by police exposed officers to accusations of preferential treatment and the appearance of race playing a factor in their investigation.
"The mere appearance of preferential treatment, even in just a single instance, can greatly influence the public's perception and trust of the police department," the report says.
The report recommends that police review allocation of personnel at homicide scenes and improve oversight of discretionary decisions (Garza 1).
The twice-delayed trial comes on the heels of the Saturday acquittal of George Zimmerman in the killing of Trayvon Martin. Spooner's case has drawn attention for its perceived similarities to the Zimmerman case, in which the neighborhood watchman was alleged to have racially profiled 17-year-old Martin.
Jury selection for the Spooner trial focused Monday on eliminating potential jurors whose consideration of the case might be influenced by their reactions to the Zimmerman verdict. The final jury of 12 with two alternates comprises 10 men and four women. One is black.
In opening statements Tuesday, no one disputed that Spooner shot and killed Simmons on May 31, 2012.
What is in dispute is why Spooner did so, and whether he was in a mental condition to be held responsible for his actions. Spooner has confessed to shooting Simmons, saying in statements to police on the scene that he had reached a "breaking point" after his house was burglarized two days earlier. He suspected his teenage neighbor of carrying out the heist and gunned him down in front of his mother.
"The best piece of evidence you're going to see in this case is the murder," Assistant District Attorney Mark Williams said, referring to a videotape of the incident that left Simmons dead. "You're going to see the terror in Darius' face, and you're going to see how cold-blooded and callous Mr. Spooner was."
The prosecution displayed that evidence Tuesday afternoon — a video recording of the encounter between the defendant and the victim in front of their homes and the subsequent shooting — recorded on one of Spooner's private surveillance cameras.
Simmons is the first to enter the video, seen retrieving a garbage receptacle from the sidewalk. Spooner then exits his front door and confronts his neighbor. As Spooner brandishes his weapon, Simmons backpedals and Spooner shoots him. The victim then runs away in the opposite direction, as the defendant takes another shot at him, this time from behind, but misses.
Simmons' 18-year-old brother, Theodore Larry, testified Tuesday afternoon that he came downstairs on the morning of May 31, 2012, to find his mother in the frame of their front door, with Spooner on the sidewalk pointing a gun at the doorway.
"I've never seen my mom like that," Theodore Larry recalled on the witness stand. "My mom told me (Spooner) had shot my little brother. She said, 'You ain't going out there.'"
Larry said he ran out his back door and found his brother lying on the curb around the block. He was crying as he took his lifeless brother in his arms, he said.
Both mother and brother watched Tuesday's proceedings from the courtroom gallery and were joined by a contingent of family members, friends and a pastor from All Peoples Church.
When Williams displayed a photo of the victim's gunshot wound, Simmons' brother and another family member left the courtroom in anguish. An autopsy revealed that the bullet exited Simmons' back.
Defense Attorney Franklyn Gimbel said he would not dispute the prosecution's factual narrative but would question whether his client had the intent to kill the victim. If convicted of homicide, Spooner will enter a plea of not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect. In addition to alleged mental illness, the 76-year-old is in poor physical shape, suffering from pneumonia, Gimbel said.
"What you will have to decide is whether the behavior of John Spooner was such that he had the intent to kill this young man," Gimbel said in his opening remarks Tuesday morning. "He did not."
Alderman Bob Donovan was called to testify about a conversation he had with Spooner over breakfast at George Webb Restaurant the morning of the shooting. Just hours before he killed Simmons, Donovan said, Spooner uttered an ambiguous statement that might have forecast his lethal actions.
That morning, Donovan testified, the defendant expressed dissatisfaction with how the police were handling the break-in at his home that left windows shattered and four of his shotguns missing.
"There are other ways of handling these things," Spooner said, according to Donovan.
Before recessing Tuesday afternoon, the prosecution played an interview with Spooner recorded five hours after the shooting. The video shows Charles Mueller, a homicide detective for the Milwaukee Police Department, questioning Spooner. The video will aid in Spooner's insanity plea, Gimbel said in the hallway outside the courtroom. He said his client is unlikely to testify on his own behalf.
In the interview, Spooner detailed his medical conditions, including depression and anxiety. "Am I depressed now? No," he said.
When Mueller asked him why he shot his teenage neighbor, Spooner said he "wanted him to give (him his) shotguns back."
Mueller testified that Spooner was "cooperative and matter-of-fact" and that "he seemed very unconcerned about what had just occurred."
Milwaukee Police Officer Michael Urbaniak testified that the defendant made several statements to him at the scene of the shooting, including acknowledging that "they are going to throw the book at me because I shot the kid," and commenting on his own poor health, saying, "I really don't have much longer to live on this Earth" (Stanley-Becker “Darius” 2-4).
John Henry Spooner, 76, told a stunned courtroom Thursday that justice was served when he shot and killed his 13-year-old neighbor.
If his gun hadn't jammed, Spooner said, he would have shot Darius Simmons' brother, too.
"I wouldn't call it revenge; I would call it justice," Spooner said to audible gasps from the courtroom gallery, where Simmons' mother, Patricia Larry, sat watching with friends and religious leaders. ...
"Something snapped," Spooner recalled from the stand Thursday, describing his certainty that his neighbors — Simmons and his 18-year-old brother, Theodore Larry — had burglarized his home and stolen four of his shotguns two days before he confronted his teenage neighbor.
Convicted Wednesday of first-degree intentional homicide for fatally shooting Simmons, Spooner took the witness stand Thursday afternoon to testify in his own defense in the insanity portion of his trial. …
… Confronted by Spooner, the teen told him he had not taken the guns.
"I wanted those shotguns back. They were a big part of my life," Spooner said. "If what I did was in cold blood, what do you think about these kids robbing a sick old man?"
His attorney, Franklyn Gimbel, asked: "Did you intend to kill Darius Simmons?"
"I don't know," Spooner replied. "I was going after something important, and it was mine. What more can I say?"
…
Assistant District Attorney Mark Williams asked Spooner if he felt bad for shooting Simmons.
"Not that bad," Spooner replied.
He said he intended to frighten the victim but was moved to pull the trigger when Simmons' mother indicated that she was calling the police, thus "brushing him off," he said, with a sweeping motion of his fingers in the air. "I don't like that."
Williams urged Spooner to say whether he intended to kill Simmons and to explain why he attempted to shoot at him a second and third time. He missed on the second attempt and the gun jammed on the third.
"I don't know," Spooner answered repeatedly, closing his eyes and bowing his head.
Jonathan Safran, an attorney representing Simmons' family, said Spooner's testimony indicated the "level of depth of evil this man has" (Stanley Becker “John” 1-2).
A jury found Spooner guilty of first-degree intentional homicide last week, a conviction carrying a mandatory life sentence. The judge could have allowed for the possibility of parole after 20 years, but rejected that option, citing Spooner’s lack of remorse and desire to also kill the teen’s brother.
Spooner, who has lung cancer and other physical ailments, will spend the rest of his life in prison (Associated 1).
There are many ways to view this latest chapter of American race relations. One dimension of the story is that Larry had moved to this so-called white section of Milwaukee because she wanted to give her family better educational opportunities and the chance to escape the risks of inner-city violence (in a manner not unlike the way the parents of Trayvon Martin had moved to that gated community where he was murdered). I understand this because my mother did the very same thing with me when I was Darius's age. I was certainly called the N-word by the good white folks who "welcomed" us to the neighborhood, but no one thought to pull a gun and shoot me.
Another way to view this is that Milwaukee, like most urban centers in America, is scarred with violence. Blacks and Latinos piled into ghetto dwellings, with limited educational, employment, and life choices, do definitely commit horrific acts of violence against each other. I see this every day in my own neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. But because such violence does occur does not mean that a George Zimmerman, in Florida, or a John Henry Spooner, in Wisconsin, has a right to arm himself to the teeth and become a de facto law enforcer, who demonizes every single black or Latino young male they encounter.
Rather than address the root causes of crime and violence in America, we point fingers, we cast blame randomly: we shoot to kill, we ask questions later. But that is the climate of America: if you are a black or brown person, you are a criminal suspect – the culprit for every societal ill – even if you have nothing to do with those problems.
In Wisconsin, Republican Governor Scott Walker has just survived a bitterly divisive recall election, occasioned by his controversial anti-union law. This same Governor Walker also approved a conceal-and-carry gun law in his state – as if the vigilante tendency needed any encouragement.
Finally, it pains me to see yet another mother, another black mother, posing with a picture of a dead son, gunned down before he had a chance to live. No doubt, she will have to [did] listen to the arguments of Spooner's attorneys, casting him as a victim of crime. Perhaps she will even be forced to hear doubt cast on her dead son's reputation.
We have been here before. And we will be here again. Unless we Americans can have real, honest, and serious conversations about race and racism in the US, we are condemned to repeat the dehumanising lies that poison our community relations and cause the endless-seeming cycle of deaths like Darius Simmons's (Powell 2-3)
Works cited:
The Associated Press. “JUSTICE: Wis. Man Who Killed Teen Neighbor Gets Life in Prison.” Black America, July 23, 2013. Net. https://blackamericaweb.com/2013/07/2...
Garza, Jesse. “Report Criticizes Police Department Response in Fatal Shooting.” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, October 5, 2012. Net. http://archive.jsonline.com/news/crim...
“Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission Issues Public Statement Regarding Darius Simmons Investigation.” Samster Konkel Safron Lawyers, June 12, 2012. Net. https://skslawyers.com/2012/06/milwau...
Powell, Kevin. “The Fatal Racism that Shot Darius Simmons to Death.” The Guardian, June 11, 2012. Net. https://www.theguardian.com/commentis...
Stanley-Becker, Issac. “Darius Simmons' Mother Describes Watching John Spooner Gun Down Son.” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, July 13, 2003. Net. https://archive.jsonline.com/news/cri...
Stanley-Becker, Issac. “John Spooner: 'I Wouldn't Call It Revenge; I Would Call It Justice'.” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, July 18, 2013. Net. http://archive.jsonline.com/news/crim...
April 8, 2021
Bad Apples, February 2, 2012, Ramarley Graham, Part Two
In real life, on-duty police officers rarely, if ever, pull the trigger. In 2015, the NYPD’s 36,000 officers fired their weapons a total of 67 times. Before joining the SNEU, [Richard] Haste worked foot patrol and then “midnight conditions,” cruising Wakefield in an unmarked sedan in the middle of the night. Last March, Haste’s complaint record was leaked to the press. Six official complaints had been made against him: abuse during a frisking, use of physical force, use of pepper spray, and three incidents of verbal discourtesy. None of the incidents resulted in anything more than mediation. Just 7 percent of NYPD officers have received six or more complaints. But Haste argues that it would be extremely rare for a cop with 175 arrests in three years not to have complaints on his record.
Haste’s parents divorced when he was 5, and he spent most of his childhood in Pelham Bay, a white working-class neighborhood four miles southeast of Wakefield. Haste was an outsider in school, he says, but during his junior year in high school, he became an auxiliary officer with the NYPD, inspired by cultural touchstones of the ’80s and ’90s like Rambo, Top Gun, and G.I. Joe. He committed to the Marines before graduating from high school, and after two years on bases in Okinawa and California, he was honorably discharged because of an injury. He moved back to New York and was eventually accepted into the force, his dream job.
Not long after the shooting, Haste started to feel acute stress. He’d begun to be recognized in public and was receiving enough credible death threats that the NYPD installed a panic button in his home. He saw a department-appointed psychologist, but union representatives told him he couldn’t trust anybody. As Internal Affairs investigated him, his co-workers, who were also his best friends, stopped talking to him. After a brief suspension, he was assigned to the Fleet Services division in Queens, where he spent his days babysitting gas pumps. He stopped sleeping, and when he did, he saw Graham in his dreams, dead on a gurney, the scars of the medical examiner’s Y-incision on his chest.
The Bronx district attorney convened a grand jury, and on June 13, 2012, Haste’s 31st birthday, he was indicted on first- and second-degree manslaughter charges. The arraignment was the first time Constance Malcolm and Frank Graham had seen Haste in person; they wept as Haste quietly pleaded not guilty. After posting bail, he emerged from the Bronx Hall of Justice to the applause of fellow police officers, a scene that would make one City Council member wonder later to me, “Is there something about the culture of the Police Department that hardens your heart?”
Underlying that culture is an understanding that police officers who pull the trigger in the line of duty have the nearly absolute deference of the criminal-justice system. Historically, the U.S. hasn’t kept official numbers on officer-involved shootings, but it’s estimated police shoot and kill about 1,000 people a year. Philip Stinson, a former police officer and associate professor at Bowling Green State University, tracks incidents of police misconduct. According to his database, which dates back to 2005, Haste is one of only 82 on-duty officers who have shot and killed someone to be charged with murder or manslaughter. A mere 29 of those were convicted of manslaughter or a lesser charge, and just one has been convicted of murder.
…
In May 2013, nearly a year after Haste’s arraignment, the judge who presided over the grand jury called a conference and announced that the assistant district attorney had erred when he instructed jurors not to consider Haste’s “state of mind,” including the fact that Horne had told him Graham had a gun. And so the judge threw out the initial indictment. From the second row of the courtroom, Malcolm began yelling at the judge. “He killed my child. What more can you do to me?”
Less than two months later, the Bronx district attorney convened a second grand jury, confident that, absent any major prosecutorial gaffe, he could secure a reindictment. The second grand jury, like the first, reflected the demographics of the Bronx, which, to Haste’s supporters, meant reindictment was inevitable. Haste testified for five hours. [Attorney] London believed his client was better prepared for his second testimony. “When they asked Officer Haste, ‘What were you thinking right before you shot the one bullet?,’ he said things like, ‘I envisioned Thanksgiving and everyone is there but me.’ ”
The grand jury declined to reindict, a decision that shocked both London and the Bronx DA’s office. Hours after the second grand jury’s decision went public, then–U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara announced that his office would review the case to see if Graham’s civil rights had been violated. Under Obama, the Department of Justice had aggressively pursued civil-rights investigations into police agencies that had exhibited patterns of abuse, but it rarely opened cases against individuals; more often than not, it took positions that strengthened officers’ right to use deadly force. A year passed without word from the DOJ. In August 2014, Constance Malcolm and Frank Graham delivered 33,000 signatures gathered in an online petition to the U.S. Attorney’s office demanding an indictment. On February 2, 2016, the four-year anniversary of Ramarley’s death, Malcolm and Graham, joined by some 50 activists, slept on the steps of the U.S. Attorney’s office in the bitter cold. Bharara agreed to meet with Malcolm, but, in early March, he told her that there wasn’t enough evidence to prosecute. To make such a case against a police officer, the prosecution must prove a “willful deprivation of rights,” an extremely high burden of proof. Later that day, Bharara issued a statement: “Neither accident, mistake, fear, negligence nor bad judgment is sufficient to establish a federal criminal civil-rights violation.”
Malcolm, who moved here from Jamaica as a 13-year-old in the mid-’80s, speaks with a slight patois and occasionally slips into the present tense when talking about the past. The effect, when she talks about Ramarley, is that Malcolm’s grief isn’t lost in translation but magnified by it. “Ramarley’s actually kind of shy,” she says. She still hasn’t figured out how to respond to people who ask how many children she has, and she still lives in the apartment where her son was killed, with Chinnor and Hartley.
The family avoids speaking about Ramarley at home, but as a leader in the movement for police reform, Malcolm has found a way to talk about her son almost daily. In the week after the shooting alone, she met with politicians, Commissioner Kelly, and activists from police-reform organizations; made an appearance at Al Sharpton’s National Action Network; and led hundreds of protesters in a march to the 47th Precinct. She’s also taken to mentoring mothers of other unarmed black men killed by police, the “little girls’ group that we didn’t ask for.” After Ramarley was killed, Malcolm, who works as a nurse’s aide, took more than a year off from her job. She was diagnosed with post-traumatic-stress disorder. Chinnor, now 11, went to therapy for a while. “I don’t know if he’ll ever be a normal kid, seeing what he saw,” Malcolm says.
We talked for an hour before Malcolm calmly walked me down the hallway where Haste and Graham first encountered each other and into the “famous bathroom,” as she called it. Standing next to the bathtub, Malcolm showed me how, if Ramarley’s boot had been sticking out of the bathroom door when he died, as multiple witnesses attest, she thinks he would have been standing too far from the toilet for anyone to reasonably claim that he’d been throwing a bag of weed into the bowl.
Malcolm believes that officers may have planted the weed to fortify Haste’s account.
Malcolm talks about her suspicion as an afterthought; she knows there’s no way to prove a cover-up, and even if there were, her legal recourse has all but dried up. In 2015, the city settled a civil suit with the family for $3.9 million. Malcolm calls it “blood money.” It sits in an account she says she’s never touched. After the suit was settled, with no hope of a state or federal trial, she focused on the fight to get Haste off the police force, a goal so narrow that it was mostly symbolic, as well as on getting more information about what had happened that day. She still knew shockingly little. … (Walsh 5).
In March 2016, federal prosecutors declined to file civil rights charges, closing the pathway to criminal indictment. Haste did, however, have a departmental trial this past January.
Haste’s disciplinary trial consisted of five days of testimony from 11 witnesses: NYPD investigators, inspectors, trainers and the other officers from the Street Narcotics Enforcement Unit (SNEU) he was a member of. Noticeably absent from the witness list were any civilians, including Graham’s grandmother and Dixon, the downstairs neighbor.
Without civilian testimony, the NYPD shaped the entire narrative, consistently referring to Graham as “the perp” and an “imminent threat.” They cast him “walking with a purpose” and placing his hands in his waistband as suspicious, furtive, criminal behavior. The defense, multiple police witnesses and even the prosecution repeatedly suggested that Graham had been armed. Defense attorney Stuart London, contracted by the NYPD police union, insinuated that Graham was responsible for his own demise by not complying with Haste’s command to show his hands.
…
“A longstanding tradition in the police department is the ‘evolving narrative,’ which is more widely known as ‘testilying,’” said Vince Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in an interview. “[Police officers] will often tell one story to their colleagues and supervisors immediately after an incident, and another as evidence emerges that pokes holes in their original narratives.” Though the “evolving narrative” practice is widely known, says Warren, “cops are also generally considered to be more credible than other witnesses when there are discrepancies.”
Malcolm says Haste’s departmental trial was difficult for her to witness. “It was hard to sit there and listen to them talking and how they were characterizing my son…basically like he’s a thug,” Malcolm told Colorlines. “This person they were describing wasn’t my son.”
Also painful for the family was the extent to which the police narrative erased Graham’s grandmother and little brother. Family members called out, “[Patricia Hartley] is right here!” when Haste testified that he didn’t know who was in the house when he shot Graham. “I can’t take these lies!” Hartley exclaimed during Haste’s testimony.
“In the trial, you hear about Ramarley and Richard Haste, you hear nothing about my mom and my [younger] son. And they were in the house,” says Malcolm. “It was my mom that was screaming in the court, because she felt like she didn’t exist. And they were telling that story that wasn’t true.”
The erasure of civilian witnesses also meant that the danger and abuse Hartley faced were not addressed. “He could have shot [my mother,]” says Malcolm, who believes that Haste should also have faced endangerment charges. “You didn’t hear that in the trial.”
One particular absurdity may explain the court’s omissions: Haste was not facing discipline for killing an unarmed teenager. The NYPD Firearms Discharge Review Board had already determined that the shooting itself was justified, which had the effect of taking that charge off the table. He was instead tried for using poor tactical judgment leading up the fatal shot (Marlowe and Myers 5-6).
Haste said he asked [his attorney] London what had changed since May 2015, when the department had floated him a deal that opened a return to active duty. (The offer was quickly rescinded when the NYPD official who made it found out Haste was under federal investigation.) “[London’s] answer was simply, ‘They’re caving into political pressure from activist groups,’ ” Haste told me. Upset by the way tabloids had portrayed him, Haste wanted a chance to tell the public what he’d told the second grand jury, his final-frame analysis. He chose the trial.
…
Firing Haste would require some litigatory gymnastics. The NYPD needed to craft an argument that was the perfect negative of final-frame analysis, in that it would have to prove that his actions leading up to the shooting merited dismissal regardless of the consequences, as the Firearms Discharge Review Board investigation had already cleared Haste for pulling the trigger. … the NYPD chose “poor tactical judgment,” a catchall charge they could apply to any number of the choices Haste made that day. …
The departmental trial was held over five days at police headquarters late this past January, during which both the defense and prosecution picked apart everything the SNEU did wrong that day: Haste didn’t have the 20 hours of classroom training required of all SNEU members; there weren’t enough officers on duty; Haste should have been in uniform. But the heart of the department’s argument against its own officer was based on the moment Graham entered his home, which transformed Haste’s pursuit into a “barricaded job,” at which point an officer is required to call for an Emergency Services Unit. Instead, Haste chose to enter the home of a possibly armed suspect without calling for backup. Taken together, those actions, the department charged, constituted “poor tactical judgment.” The head of the Police Academy’s specialized training said that he’d never seen such egregious tactical violations.
Meanwhile, Mcloughlin and Morris testified on Haste’s behalf. Morris, the team leader, backed up Haste, saying he trusted him to make the right decisions. (The NYPD asserts that blame should also be placed on Morris for failing to control his team; both he and Mcloughlin will face their own departmental trials.)
On March 24, a Friday, Haste was told that the judge had recommended dismissal, and O’Neill planned on following through with her recommendation. That Sunday, Haste submitted his resignation. …
Last year, Haste graduated from Pace with a bachelor’s degree in liberal studies, with a concentration in criminal justice, and he has applied to jobs at federal and local law-enforcement agencies; a few have called him back. He believes Malcolm has every right to be angry and always felt that she deserved an open investigation, one in which he was free to answer any questions she had for him. But he stands by his final-frame analysis — even if the department that trained him, that shaped his worldview in the course of that training, has forsaken him. Haste still thinks pulling the trigger was the right thing to do. Ramarley Graham no longer shows up in his dreams.
The day after Haste resigned, Malcolm held a press conference outside police headquarters in downtown Manhattan. She stepped up to the microphone wearing a gray scarf and a white T-shirt that said WHERE IS MY JUSTICE? above a picture of Ramarley’s face. She had gotten some version of the accountability she had sought — after all, Haste was off the force, disgraced, and there was a credible argument to be made that it was Malcolm’s own activism that forced the issue. Yet the closure she imagined a resolution would bring seems, if anything, farther away than ever. Federal suits against the officers who killed Garner and Rice are now being handled by a Justice Department that has already moved to cut back the Obama administration’s police-reform initiatives. Still, Malcolm needs to believe that her son’s life force didn’t stop when and where that hollow-point bullet did. “This was the perfect case to show us that our young men and women matter,” she said, looking out at the crowd. “Ramarley’s life matters” (Walsh 6-8).
What makes Graham’s case endemic is what it says about the NYPD’s culture. The family’s civil suit notes street stops increased seven-fold between 2002 and 2012, disproportionately targeting non-White neighborhoods. When it came to bias influenced by race, gender and age, “Ramarley fit to a tee.”
Allegations of racial bias were substantiated in the landmark 2013 decision in Floyd v. the City of New York, which found that the NYPD had a pattern of racial profiling and used monthly quota systems to push cops to conduct stops, searches and summons. Graham’s civil suit surfaced one method that officers used to fulfill their quotas—a practice known as “next up.”
“The defendants engaged in a system or practice wherein officers would rotate arrests and who would catch them. That way all members of the ‘team’ would meet their numbers,” the lawsuit states, continuing that, “On February 2, 2012, at approximately 3:00 p.m., Haste was ‘next up.’”
“Quotas and how they are incentivized have the effect of generating police activity even when none is called for,” says CCR’s Warren. Even worse, says Warren, is that “next up” encourages team members to compete. “Incentives like this create solutions in search of problems. And the ‘problems’ are members of Black and Brown communities.”
Adding to the dangerous backdrop of Graham’s fatal shooting was what a 2015 investigation by the city’s Office of the Inspector General described as a “vague and imprecise” use-of-force policy and officers who were not sufficiently trained to de-escalate situations.
The study named race as a factor in who was on the receiving end of the NYPD’s use of force. Over half of complaints about excessive force were from Blacks, who represent less than a quarter of the city’s population. And, in more than 35 percent of substantiated complaints of unwarranted excessive force, the NYPD failed to discipline the cops responsible.
Police unions also contribute to the corrosive climate. In a January 13, 2017, investigative report, Reuters found that 82 cities hold police union contracts that protect officers with complaints lodged against them. In 46 of those cities, including New York City, the protection involves erasing disciplinary records. NYPD officers who undergo a disciplinary trial resulting in a verdict other than “guilty” may petition to have their record expunged after two years.
All this plays into a culture of policing where, according to the civil suit, police officers felt that they were free to conduct baseless stop-and-frisks, enter civilians’ homes without probable cause, use unnecessary and excessive force, intimidate witnesses, and engage in a conspiracy, or “blue wall of silence,” to file false reports or give false statements. Cops, alleged the suit, used catchall phrases such as “furtive movements,” or “displayed what appeared to be a gun” to justify unconstitutional conduct that went unpunished by their supervisors.
This is the police culture that prompted Haste and his colleagues to tail Graham, kick down his door and fatally shoot him. It is the same culture that Malcolm encountered watching Haste testify without observing any sign of remorse. “That was his opportunity to say, ‘I’m sorry,’ and he never really did that. Instead, he justified killing my son,” she told Colorlines (Marlowe and Myers 7-8).
Works cited:
Marlowe, Jen and Myers, Amy. “ 1 Teen, 6 Cops, 1 Bullet and 5 Years of a Black Family Screaming for Justice.” Colorlines, April 12, 2017. Net. https://www.colorlines.com/articles/1...
Walsh, James D. “The Bullet, the Cop, the Boy.” New York Magazine Intelligencer, June 2017. Net. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/...
Haste’s parents divorced when he was 5, and he spent most of his childhood in Pelham Bay, a white working-class neighborhood four miles southeast of Wakefield. Haste was an outsider in school, he says, but during his junior year in high school, he became an auxiliary officer with the NYPD, inspired by cultural touchstones of the ’80s and ’90s like Rambo, Top Gun, and G.I. Joe. He committed to the Marines before graduating from high school, and after two years on bases in Okinawa and California, he was honorably discharged because of an injury. He moved back to New York and was eventually accepted into the force, his dream job.
Not long after the shooting, Haste started to feel acute stress. He’d begun to be recognized in public and was receiving enough credible death threats that the NYPD installed a panic button in his home. He saw a department-appointed psychologist, but union representatives told him he couldn’t trust anybody. As Internal Affairs investigated him, his co-workers, who were also his best friends, stopped talking to him. After a brief suspension, he was assigned to the Fleet Services division in Queens, where he spent his days babysitting gas pumps. He stopped sleeping, and when he did, he saw Graham in his dreams, dead on a gurney, the scars of the medical examiner’s Y-incision on his chest.
The Bronx district attorney convened a grand jury, and on June 13, 2012, Haste’s 31st birthday, he was indicted on first- and second-degree manslaughter charges. The arraignment was the first time Constance Malcolm and Frank Graham had seen Haste in person; they wept as Haste quietly pleaded not guilty. After posting bail, he emerged from the Bronx Hall of Justice to the applause of fellow police officers, a scene that would make one City Council member wonder later to me, “Is there something about the culture of the Police Department that hardens your heart?”
Underlying that culture is an understanding that police officers who pull the trigger in the line of duty have the nearly absolute deference of the criminal-justice system. Historically, the U.S. hasn’t kept official numbers on officer-involved shootings, but it’s estimated police shoot and kill about 1,000 people a year. Philip Stinson, a former police officer and associate professor at Bowling Green State University, tracks incidents of police misconduct. According to his database, which dates back to 2005, Haste is one of only 82 on-duty officers who have shot and killed someone to be charged with murder or manslaughter. A mere 29 of those were convicted of manslaughter or a lesser charge, and just one has been convicted of murder.
…
In May 2013, nearly a year after Haste’s arraignment, the judge who presided over the grand jury called a conference and announced that the assistant district attorney had erred when he instructed jurors not to consider Haste’s “state of mind,” including the fact that Horne had told him Graham had a gun. And so the judge threw out the initial indictment. From the second row of the courtroom, Malcolm began yelling at the judge. “He killed my child. What more can you do to me?”
Less than two months later, the Bronx district attorney convened a second grand jury, confident that, absent any major prosecutorial gaffe, he could secure a reindictment. The second grand jury, like the first, reflected the demographics of the Bronx, which, to Haste’s supporters, meant reindictment was inevitable. Haste testified for five hours. [Attorney] London believed his client was better prepared for his second testimony. “When they asked Officer Haste, ‘What were you thinking right before you shot the one bullet?,’ he said things like, ‘I envisioned Thanksgiving and everyone is there but me.’ ”
The grand jury declined to reindict, a decision that shocked both London and the Bronx DA’s office. Hours after the second grand jury’s decision went public, then–U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara announced that his office would review the case to see if Graham’s civil rights had been violated. Under Obama, the Department of Justice had aggressively pursued civil-rights investigations into police agencies that had exhibited patterns of abuse, but it rarely opened cases against individuals; more often than not, it took positions that strengthened officers’ right to use deadly force. A year passed without word from the DOJ. In August 2014, Constance Malcolm and Frank Graham delivered 33,000 signatures gathered in an online petition to the U.S. Attorney’s office demanding an indictment. On February 2, 2016, the four-year anniversary of Ramarley’s death, Malcolm and Graham, joined by some 50 activists, slept on the steps of the U.S. Attorney’s office in the bitter cold. Bharara agreed to meet with Malcolm, but, in early March, he told her that there wasn’t enough evidence to prosecute. To make such a case against a police officer, the prosecution must prove a “willful deprivation of rights,” an extremely high burden of proof. Later that day, Bharara issued a statement: “Neither accident, mistake, fear, negligence nor bad judgment is sufficient to establish a federal criminal civil-rights violation.”
Malcolm, who moved here from Jamaica as a 13-year-old in the mid-’80s, speaks with a slight patois and occasionally slips into the present tense when talking about the past. The effect, when she talks about Ramarley, is that Malcolm’s grief isn’t lost in translation but magnified by it. “Ramarley’s actually kind of shy,” she says. She still hasn’t figured out how to respond to people who ask how many children she has, and she still lives in the apartment where her son was killed, with Chinnor and Hartley.
The family avoids speaking about Ramarley at home, but as a leader in the movement for police reform, Malcolm has found a way to talk about her son almost daily. In the week after the shooting alone, she met with politicians, Commissioner Kelly, and activists from police-reform organizations; made an appearance at Al Sharpton’s National Action Network; and led hundreds of protesters in a march to the 47th Precinct. She’s also taken to mentoring mothers of other unarmed black men killed by police, the “little girls’ group that we didn’t ask for.” After Ramarley was killed, Malcolm, who works as a nurse’s aide, took more than a year off from her job. She was diagnosed with post-traumatic-stress disorder. Chinnor, now 11, went to therapy for a while. “I don’t know if he’ll ever be a normal kid, seeing what he saw,” Malcolm says.
We talked for an hour before Malcolm calmly walked me down the hallway where Haste and Graham first encountered each other and into the “famous bathroom,” as she called it. Standing next to the bathtub, Malcolm showed me how, if Ramarley’s boot had been sticking out of the bathroom door when he died, as multiple witnesses attest, she thinks he would have been standing too far from the toilet for anyone to reasonably claim that he’d been throwing a bag of weed into the bowl.
Malcolm believes that officers may have planted the weed to fortify Haste’s account.
Malcolm talks about her suspicion as an afterthought; she knows there’s no way to prove a cover-up, and even if there were, her legal recourse has all but dried up. In 2015, the city settled a civil suit with the family for $3.9 million. Malcolm calls it “blood money.” It sits in an account she says she’s never touched. After the suit was settled, with no hope of a state or federal trial, she focused on the fight to get Haste off the police force, a goal so narrow that it was mostly symbolic, as well as on getting more information about what had happened that day. She still knew shockingly little. … (Walsh 5).
In March 2016, federal prosecutors declined to file civil rights charges, closing the pathway to criminal indictment. Haste did, however, have a departmental trial this past January.
Haste’s disciplinary trial consisted of five days of testimony from 11 witnesses: NYPD investigators, inspectors, trainers and the other officers from the Street Narcotics Enforcement Unit (SNEU) he was a member of. Noticeably absent from the witness list were any civilians, including Graham’s grandmother and Dixon, the downstairs neighbor.
Without civilian testimony, the NYPD shaped the entire narrative, consistently referring to Graham as “the perp” and an “imminent threat.” They cast him “walking with a purpose” and placing his hands in his waistband as suspicious, furtive, criminal behavior. The defense, multiple police witnesses and even the prosecution repeatedly suggested that Graham had been armed. Defense attorney Stuart London, contracted by the NYPD police union, insinuated that Graham was responsible for his own demise by not complying with Haste’s command to show his hands.
…
“A longstanding tradition in the police department is the ‘evolving narrative,’ which is more widely known as ‘testilying,’” said Vince Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in an interview. “[Police officers] will often tell one story to their colleagues and supervisors immediately after an incident, and another as evidence emerges that pokes holes in their original narratives.” Though the “evolving narrative” practice is widely known, says Warren, “cops are also generally considered to be more credible than other witnesses when there are discrepancies.”
Malcolm says Haste’s departmental trial was difficult for her to witness. “It was hard to sit there and listen to them talking and how they were characterizing my son…basically like he’s a thug,” Malcolm told Colorlines. “This person they were describing wasn’t my son.”
Also painful for the family was the extent to which the police narrative erased Graham’s grandmother and little brother. Family members called out, “[Patricia Hartley] is right here!” when Haste testified that he didn’t know who was in the house when he shot Graham. “I can’t take these lies!” Hartley exclaimed during Haste’s testimony.
“In the trial, you hear about Ramarley and Richard Haste, you hear nothing about my mom and my [younger] son. And they were in the house,” says Malcolm. “It was my mom that was screaming in the court, because she felt like she didn’t exist. And they were telling that story that wasn’t true.”
The erasure of civilian witnesses also meant that the danger and abuse Hartley faced were not addressed. “He could have shot [my mother,]” says Malcolm, who believes that Haste should also have faced endangerment charges. “You didn’t hear that in the trial.”
One particular absurdity may explain the court’s omissions: Haste was not facing discipline for killing an unarmed teenager. The NYPD Firearms Discharge Review Board had already determined that the shooting itself was justified, which had the effect of taking that charge off the table. He was instead tried for using poor tactical judgment leading up the fatal shot (Marlowe and Myers 5-6).
Haste said he asked [his attorney] London what had changed since May 2015, when the department had floated him a deal that opened a return to active duty. (The offer was quickly rescinded when the NYPD official who made it found out Haste was under federal investigation.) “[London’s] answer was simply, ‘They’re caving into political pressure from activist groups,’ ” Haste told me. Upset by the way tabloids had portrayed him, Haste wanted a chance to tell the public what he’d told the second grand jury, his final-frame analysis. He chose the trial.
…
Firing Haste would require some litigatory gymnastics. The NYPD needed to craft an argument that was the perfect negative of final-frame analysis, in that it would have to prove that his actions leading up to the shooting merited dismissal regardless of the consequences, as the Firearms Discharge Review Board investigation had already cleared Haste for pulling the trigger. … the NYPD chose “poor tactical judgment,” a catchall charge they could apply to any number of the choices Haste made that day. …
The departmental trial was held over five days at police headquarters late this past January, during which both the defense and prosecution picked apart everything the SNEU did wrong that day: Haste didn’t have the 20 hours of classroom training required of all SNEU members; there weren’t enough officers on duty; Haste should have been in uniform. But the heart of the department’s argument against its own officer was based on the moment Graham entered his home, which transformed Haste’s pursuit into a “barricaded job,” at which point an officer is required to call for an Emergency Services Unit. Instead, Haste chose to enter the home of a possibly armed suspect without calling for backup. Taken together, those actions, the department charged, constituted “poor tactical judgment.” The head of the Police Academy’s specialized training said that he’d never seen such egregious tactical violations.
Meanwhile, Mcloughlin and Morris testified on Haste’s behalf. Morris, the team leader, backed up Haste, saying he trusted him to make the right decisions. (The NYPD asserts that blame should also be placed on Morris for failing to control his team; both he and Mcloughlin will face their own departmental trials.)
On March 24, a Friday, Haste was told that the judge had recommended dismissal, and O’Neill planned on following through with her recommendation. That Sunday, Haste submitted his resignation. …
Last year, Haste graduated from Pace with a bachelor’s degree in liberal studies, with a concentration in criminal justice, and he has applied to jobs at federal and local law-enforcement agencies; a few have called him back. He believes Malcolm has every right to be angry and always felt that she deserved an open investigation, one in which he was free to answer any questions she had for him. But he stands by his final-frame analysis — even if the department that trained him, that shaped his worldview in the course of that training, has forsaken him. Haste still thinks pulling the trigger was the right thing to do. Ramarley Graham no longer shows up in his dreams.
The day after Haste resigned, Malcolm held a press conference outside police headquarters in downtown Manhattan. She stepped up to the microphone wearing a gray scarf and a white T-shirt that said WHERE IS MY JUSTICE? above a picture of Ramarley’s face. She had gotten some version of the accountability she had sought — after all, Haste was off the force, disgraced, and there was a credible argument to be made that it was Malcolm’s own activism that forced the issue. Yet the closure she imagined a resolution would bring seems, if anything, farther away than ever. Federal suits against the officers who killed Garner and Rice are now being handled by a Justice Department that has already moved to cut back the Obama administration’s police-reform initiatives. Still, Malcolm needs to believe that her son’s life force didn’t stop when and where that hollow-point bullet did. “This was the perfect case to show us that our young men and women matter,” she said, looking out at the crowd. “Ramarley’s life matters” (Walsh 6-8).
What makes Graham’s case endemic is what it says about the NYPD’s culture. The family’s civil suit notes street stops increased seven-fold between 2002 and 2012, disproportionately targeting non-White neighborhoods. When it came to bias influenced by race, gender and age, “Ramarley fit to a tee.”
Allegations of racial bias were substantiated in the landmark 2013 decision in Floyd v. the City of New York, which found that the NYPD had a pattern of racial profiling and used monthly quota systems to push cops to conduct stops, searches and summons. Graham’s civil suit surfaced one method that officers used to fulfill their quotas—a practice known as “next up.”
“The defendants engaged in a system or practice wherein officers would rotate arrests and who would catch them. That way all members of the ‘team’ would meet their numbers,” the lawsuit states, continuing that, “On February 2, 2012, at approximately 3:00 p.m., Haste was ‘next up.’”
“Quotas and how they are incentivized have the effect of generating police activity even when none is called for,” says CCR’s Warren. Even worse, says Warren, is that “next up” encourages team members to compete. “Incentives like this create solutions in search of problems. And the ‘problems’ are members of Black and Brown communities.”
Adding to the dangerous backdrop of Graham’s fatal shooting was what a 2015 investigation by the city’s Office of the Inspector General described as a “vague and imprecise” use-of-force policy and officers who were not sufficiently trained to de-escalate situations.
The study named race as a factor in who was on the receiving end of the NYPD’s use of force. Over half of complaints about excessive force were from Blacks, who represent less than a quarter of the city’s population. And, in more than 35 percent of substantiated complaints of unwarranted excessive force, the NYPD failed to discipline the cops responsible.
Police unions also contribute to the corrosive climate. In a January 13, 2017, investigative report, Reuters found that 82 cities hold police union contracts that protect officers with complaints lodged against them. In 46 of those cities, including New York City, the protection involves erasing disciplinary records. NYPD officers who undergo a disciplinary trial resulting in a verdict other than “guilty” may petition to have their record expunged after two years.
All this plays into a culture of policing where, according to the civil suit, police officers felt that they were free to conduct baseless stop-and-frisks, enter civilians’ homes without probable cause, use unnecessary and excessive force, intimidate witnesses, and engage in a conspiracy, or “blue wall of silence,” to file false reports or give false statements. Cops, alleged the suit, used catchall phrases such as “furtive movements,” or “displayed what appeared to be a gun” to justify unconstitutional conduct that went unpunished by their supervisors.
This is the police culture that prompted Haste and his colleagues to tail Graham, kick down his door and fatally shoot him. It is the same culture that Malcolm encountered watching Haste testify without observing any sign of remorse. “That was his opportunity to say, ‘I’m sorry,’ and he never really did that. Instead, he justified killing my son,” she told Colorlines (Marlowe and Myers 7-8).
Works cited:
Marlowe, Jen and Myers, Amy. “ 1 Teen, 6 Cops, 1 Bullet and 5 Years of a Black Family Screaming for Justice.” Colorlines, April 12, 2017. Net. https://www.colorlines.com/articles/1...
Walsh, James D. “The Bullet, the Cop, the Boy.” New York Magazine Intelligencer, June 2017. Net. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/...
April 4, 2021
Bad Apples -- February 2, 2012 -- Remarley Graham, Part One
A few months before his big brother, Ramarley Graham, was shot to death by a New York Police Department (NYPD) officer, 6-year-old Chinnor Campbell was being bullied in school. His 18-year-old brother showed him how to put up his hands to defend himself and demonstrated how to punch using a pillow. “You’ve got to fight back, or people will keep bullying you,” Ramarley coached.
Their mother, Constance Malcolm, says these lessons were typical of their relationship: “Ramarley would take him to the park, pick him up from school, just do what a big brother would do with his little brother.”
Chinnor didn’t have his big brother’s guidance for much longer. On February 2, 2012, a White NYPD officer named Richard Haste entered Graham’s Bronx apartment and fired a fatal shot into his chest. He was only feet away, as was their maternal grandmother, Patricia Hartley.
Graham would be turning 24 today (April 12) if Haste and his colleagues had not followed him home from a bodega they were surveilling, kicked in the door and fatally shot him.
Local media have covered Graham’s case consistently, due in large part to his family’s sustained activism. But his shooting did not receive the level of nationwide attention that later police killings of Black men and boys would. Graham was slain 2 1/2 years before the Ferguson protests would place a renewed spotlight on police violence and direct action against it. That quirk of time means that many people don’t know who he is (Marlowe and Myers 1).
Ramarley Graham was born on April 12, 1993 to Constance Malcolm and Franclot Graham in The Bronx, New York. At the time of his death he was a student at the Young Scholars Academy of The Bronx where he aspired to travel the world and become a veterinarian. Graham died on February 2, 2012, at the age of 18 after being shot by a New York Police Department officer in his grandmother’s bathroom.
Ramarley Graham was spotted adjusting the waistband of his pants during a NYPD narcotics squad surveillance of a bodega near his home. Officers assumed Graham was concealing a gun. When plainclothes officers approached Graham, they reported that he ran to the home of Patricia Hartley, his grandmother, a few blocks away. Surveillance footage from outside the front entrance to Hartley’s building, however, shows Graham calmly walking up to the door and entering without urgency.
The same surveillance footage shows two officers running up to the building with their guns drawn just moments after Graham enters. As the two officers try to force their way through the locked door, other NYPD officers gained entrance through the rear of the building and opened the front door. One officer ran upstairs to Hartley’s apartment and broke down the door without a search warrant or announcing that he was a police officer.
Plainclothes Officer Richard Haste then ran into the apartment and discovered Graham in the bathroom attempting to flush a bag of marijuana down the toilet. Without any orders to comply, Graham was shot once in the chest in front of his little brother, Chinoor Campbell, and grandmother. Haste later reported that Graham reached into his waistband for a gun but no weapon was found in the Hartley apartment. Twenty minutes after the shooting, Graham was removed on a gurney from Hartley’s home by police officers. His family suspected he had already died but he was officially pronounced dead at 3:53 PM at the Montefiore Medical Center.
Patricia Hartley was arrested, detained, and questioned by NYPD about the series of events that occurred in her home for seven hours at the local precinct after watching her grandson, Graham, die at the hands of Haste. Graham’s body was also misidentified after his death, which prevented his parents from seeing his body for four days after his murder.
In 2012, a grand jury voted to indict Haste, but the indictment was tossed out due to a prosecutorial mistake. A second grand jury declined to indict Haste, allowing him to walk free. After further investigation during a departmental trial in March 2017, Haste was found guilty on all charges and turned in his badge and gun before Deputy Commissioner of Trials, Rosemarie Maldonado, asked Police Commissioner, James O’Neill, to fire him. Although Haste is no longer employed by NYPD, many people are still fighting to see justice for Ramarley Graham (White 1-2).
Ramarley Graham often picked up his 6-year-old half-brother, Chinnor, from school. At home, Graham would help Chinnor with his homework, show him how to do push-ups, and teach him to defend himself from kids who picked on him for being soft. (Ramarley was gentle, too, his friends told me, so he knew how that went.) They’d watch Animal Planet, play video games, or go to the park. But that February 2, Patricia Hartley, the boys’ grandmother, went to get Chinnor instead. Graham was with his friends, Jahmoy McKenzie and Travis Breckenridge, at McKenzie’s house. They smoked a little weed and, knowing McKenzie’s mother would be home soon, moved on, stopping at a bodega. Then Graham headed home to change — he had plans to see girls later.
Wakefield hangs above the city about as far north in the Bronx as one can go before crossing into Westchester. It’s a largely West Indian neighborhood where businesses on White Plains Road, the main thoroughfare, proudly display the Jamaican flag. It was along that avenue, under the elevated tracks of the 2 and 5 trains, that officers Tyrone Horne and Andrew Jarvis first saw something they regarded as suspicious. They were part of a Street Narcotics Enforcement Unit, staking out corners and trap houses. By 2012, most of the city’s precincts had eliminated their SNEUs, as street deals had declined, but not in the 47th Precinct; the department thought that a SNEU could still make “quality arrests” in the North Bronx. Sitting in a parked Lexus, Horne and Jarvis, who are both black, watched three black male teenagers walk into and then quickly out of a bodega.
According to internal documents from the NYPD’s Firearm Discharge Review Board investigation obtained by New York, Horne was the first to see what he thought was the butt of a gun sticking out from one teen’s waistband. Later, Horne would tell investigators that Graham looked suspicious because he’d been “walking with a purpose,” and Jarvis would confirm that he saw a gun. They relayed the sighting to the others on the team before following the teens up White Plains Road.
Sergeant Scott Morris, the officer in charge of the SNEU, was sitting in an unmarked sedan a few blocks away. Morris asked Horne and Jarvis to confirm what they had seen. “I definitely see the gun,” came Horne’s reply, according to another officer’s statement. “It’s under his shirt.”
Haste, then 30, perked up when he heard Horne say “gun.” In a series of interviews, Haste described the incident and subsequent fallout to me in great detail. He was parked nearby at the steering wheel of the “p-van” (prisoner van), a 12-passenger Ford Econoline. Haste, who had been in the SNEU for just two months, had worked in the 47th Precinct since graduating from the Police Academy three years earlier and had impressed his superiors by racking up 175 arrests. He told me that he chose to join the SNEU after learning the department didn’t have much use for a white guy as an undercover cop. For the same reason, Haste rarely manned the SNEU’s observation post — he’d stick out too much — and when he did, he’d dress as an MTA employee. Mostly he drove the p-van.
Excited to make an arrest, Haste drove toward Graham. Halfway down a residential street, Haste and his partner, John Mcloughlin, stopped the van and ran at the teenager, who had peeled off from his friends. Video surveillance taken from a camera outside Graham’s building shows him glancing over his shoulder in Haste’s direction before quickly walking into the house. Even before the door closes, Haste, dressed in a blue NYPD windbreaker, runs toward him. But by the time he gets to the door, it’s locked. Haste tries to kick in the door, but it doesn’t budge. A few minutes later, the first-floor tenant lets Haste in through the back door. Haste and Mcloughlin climbed up to the second floor, where Haste said he knocked before his partner kicked in the door to Graham’s apartment.
Inside, Haste saw Graham at the end of a narrow hallway. Gun drawn, Haste said he yelled blanket commands: “Police!” “Show me your hands!” According to Haste, Graham, with his hands in his waistband, hurried into the bathroom while yelling, “Fuck you, suck my dick.” Haste approached the bathroom and peered in to see Graham facing him with his hands still in his pants. Haste says he yelled, “Gun!” and pulled the trigger. He doesn’t remember seeing Graham fall to the floor. Haste also never saw the teenager throw pot — which is what newspapers would report he’d been reaching for in his pants — into the toilet (a bag was found in the bowl). All he remembers is Mcloughlin yanking on the back of his bulletproof vest and yelling, “Are you hit?” Haste tensed his muscles. He was fine. As another officer escorted him out, with Graham’s blood on his khaki pants, Haste passed Morris, whose eyes searched Haste’s face for an explanation. “I thought he was reaching,” Haste said, according to Morris’s statement.
Haste told me that one of his first thoughts after pulling the trigger was Shit, I’m jammed up, copspeak for police who are sidelined. Still unsure if Graham was dead or alive, Haste knew he was about to be overwhelmed by an investigation. And he was: A member of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association approached Haste and told him to talk to Horne, who was suddenly unsure if he’d said he saw a gun or he thought he saw a gun.
Horne’s equivocation floored Haste, but he feared talking to him would be a red flag for the Internal Affairs Bureau. He did it anyway. “I made it very clear: ‘I’m not here to tell you what you did or you didn’t see,’ ” Haste says he told Horne. “ ‘All I’m saying is that we all heard the same thing as far as I know. If you’re afraid of saying what you saw, you say something you believed to be a gun.’ ”
Multiple people told me Horne — who declined interview requests — would continue to argue that he’d always said he “thought” he saw a gun and distance himself from Haste more than the other SNEU members. By then, Haste knew Graham hadn’t been reaching for a firearm, but he was sure the NYPD would find one in the apartment. After two days of searching, the only gun recovered was a toy replica out back (Walsh 2-4).
In a 2013 civil suit against the City of New York, Graham’s grandmother gave her account of the shooting and its immediate aftermath. His mom provided additional details to Colorlines in a January 2017 telephone interview. Here is their version of what happened:
Hartley had just brought Chinnor home from school and was in the living room while he changed out of his school clothes. She heard commotion outside their apartment and walked toward the front door to see what was going on. Graham was behind her.
Hartley jumped back, and Officer Haste, gun drawn, ran toward her and Ramarley. The grandmother maintains that neither she, nor her grandsons heard police identify themselves or issue any warning. Graham retreated to a hallway bathroom, but moments later, Haste shot him.
Malcolm says that her mother initially believed she was the one who had been shot. “She tell me she look at her chest area and didn’t see any blood,” Malcolm recounted in her Jamaican lilt. “She remember that Ramarley was behind her, but when she looked behind her, she didn’t see him. She looked down, and that’s when she saw him. His head was into the bathroom, his legs were hanging out the bathroom.”
Hartley screamed, “Why did you shoot him? Why you kill him?” and Haste pushed the 85-pound woman backward into a vase, warning her to “get the f**k away before I have to shoot you, too!”
Hartley attempted to make a phone call, but a female cop whom Hartley hadn’t seen enter the apartment twisted her arm behind her back. A male officer grabbed her by the neck, pushed her into a chair and threatened to handcuff her if she moved. Hartley saw her grandson’s legs “moving and trembling,” but when she tried to approach him, police pushed her back.
After the fatal incident, police took Hartley and Chinnor, who was wearing only a red T-shirt and his underwear, outside in the winter cold. Officers then drove Hartley to the 47th Precinct leaving her surviving grandson with a downstairs neighbor, Eric Dixon.
Malcolm came home at 3:30 p.m. to find her home cordoned off. Without telling her what had happened, police took her to the precinct. “They killed ’Marley!” Hartley yelled when she saw her daughter. Police then locked the elderly woman in a room and questioned her for hours.
“They interrogated my mom for seven hours trying to put words in her mouth,” said Malcolm in late March 2017, at one of the many press conferences she and her volunteer support team have arranged over the last five years. “She stood her ground, because she knows what she saw” (Marlowe and Myers 2-3).
… The officers insisted that Ramarley had thrown a gun out the window and tried to get her to agree. When she refused, Hartley says they called her a “fucking liar.” Malcolm demanded a lawyer be present, but police refused to release Hartley, even after Malcolm’s lawyer arrived at the station. In the end, police held Hartley for seven hours, she says. (The NYPD said it was closer to five and a half, but pledged to investigate Hartley’s treatment.)
Following the shooting, city officials, including then–police commissioner Ray Kelly, expressed a commitment to get to the bottom of what happened. Bill de Blasio, then the city’s public advocate, issued a statement. “We need answers and we need them quickly.” But those commitments did little to comfort Graham’s family. Hartley was treated for trauma at the hospital. Ramarley’s father, Frank Graham (who separated from Malcolm soon after Ramarley’s birth but lived in Harlem and remained close to his son), also went to the hospital when his blood pressure skyrocketed. That weekend, Malcolm couldn’t see her son’s body because it had been misidentified. The morgue didn’t find it until a State Assembly member intervened.
Meanwhile, the NYPD pushed its own version of the facts to the press. On the night of the shooting, a spokesman for the department told the New York Times that the teenager had been running from police into his home, though the surveillance camera clearly showed Ramarley walking into the house, and that there had been a struggle between Graham and Haste. The next day, a law-enforcement source told The Wall Street Journal that Graham had been arrested eight times (police documents list seven arrests).
None of the arrests resulted in charges.
Horne, of course, couldn’t have known about Graham’s record when he saw the teenager leave the bodega. It stretched between June 2009 and October 2011 and included arrests for robbery, trespassing, disorderly conduct, possession of a weapon, burglary, and selling marijuana. Malcolm detailed a few of the arrests to me and chalked them up to misunderstandings: Friends had accused her son of stealing headphones; police thought he’d taken someone’s bike. Nor was Graham’s record unusual for the neighborhood during the height of the “stop and frisk” era: While black and Latino men between the ages of 14 and 24 made up 4.7 percent of the city’s population, they accounted for 41.6 percent of stops in 2011.
According to a former principal at Graham’s middle school, Ramarley had sought advice from teachers on how to avoid the rougher side of the neighborhood. But in ninth grade, he dropped out and began bouncing among odd jobs. His MySpace page featured crudely rendered street-gang logos and pictures of Graham and his friends posing with what looks like weed and what appears to be a handgun. When I asked Malcolm about the pictures, she had a blunt response: “Kids do stupid things.” But in the 47th Precinct, “stupid things” are considered evidence. Supportive officers sent Haste the webpage, ex post facto proof, they believed, that Graham had warranted suspicion. Malcolm wasn’t surprised. “This is what the NYPD does to justify what they did,” she said. When asked to describe the man her son was becoming, Malcolm paused. “He was 18,” she said. “He was just coming into himself when he died.”
Works cited:
Marlowe, Jen and Myers, Amy. “1 Teen, 6 Cops, 1 Bullet and 5 Years of a Black Family Screaming for Justice.” Colorlines, April 12, 2017. Net. https://www.colorlines.com/articles/1...
Walsh, James D. “The Bullet, the Cop, the Boy.” New York Magazine Intelligencer, June 2017. Net. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/...
White, Davon. “Ramarley Graham 1993-2012).” Blackpast, November 10, 2017. Net. https://www.blackpast.org/african-ame...
Their mother, Constance Malcolm, says these lessons were typical of their relationship: “Ramarley would take him to the park, pick him up from school, just do what a big brother would do with his little brother.”
Chinnor didn’t have his big brother’s guidance for much longer. On February 2, 2012, a White NYPD officer named Richard Haste entered Graham’s Bronx apartment and fired a fatal shot into his chest. He was only feet away, as was their maternal grandmother, Patricia Hartley.
Graham would be turning 24 today (April 12) if Haste and his colleagues had not followed him home from a bodega they were surveilling, kicked in the door and fatally shot him.
Local media have covered Graham’s case consistently, due in large part to his family’s sustained activism. But his shooting did not receive the level of nationwide attention that later police killings of Black men and boys would. Graham was slain 2 1/2 years before the Ferguson protests would place a renewed spotlight on police violence and direct action against it. That quirk of time means that many people don’t know who he is (Marlowe and Myers 1).
Ramarley Graham was born on April 12, 1993 to Constance Malcolm and Franclot Graham in The Bronx, New York. At the time of his death he was a student at the Young Scholars Academy of The Bronx where he aspired to travel the world and become a veterinarian. Graham died on February 2, 2012, at the age of 18 after being shot by a New York Police Department officer in his grandmother’s bathroom.
Ramarley Graham was spotted adjusting the waistband of his pants during a NYPD narcotics squad surveillance of a bodega near his home. Officers assumed Graham was concealing a gun. When plainclothes officers approached Graham, they reported that he ran to the home of Patricia Hartley, his grandmother, a few blocks away. Surveillance footage from outside the front entrance to Hartley’s building, however, shows Graham calmly walking up to the door and entering without urgency.
The same surveillance footage shows two officers running up to the building with their guns drawn just moments after Graham enters. As the two officers try to force their way through the locked door, other NYPD officers gained entrance through the rear of the building and opened the front door. One officer ran upstairs to Hartley’s apartment and broke down the door without a search warrant or announcing that he was a police officer.
Plainclothes Officer Richard Haste then ran into the apartment and discovered Graham in the bathroom attempting to flush a bag of marijuana down the toilet. Without any orders to comply, Graham was shot once in the chest in front of his little brother, Chinoor Campbell, and grandmother. Haste later reported that Graham reached into his waistband for a gun but no weapon was found in the Hartley apartment. Twenty minutes after the shooting, Graham was removed on a gurney from Hartley’s home by police officers. His family suspected he had already died but he was officially pronounced dead at 3:53 PM at the Montefiore Medical Center.
Patricia Hartley was arrested, detained, and questioned by NYPD about the series of events that occurred in her home for seven hours at the local precinct after watching her grandson, Graham, die at the hands of Haste. Graham’s body was also misidentified after his death, which prevented his parents from seeing his body for four days after his murder.
In 2012, a grand jury voted to indict Haste, but the indictment was tossed out due to a prosecutorial mistake. A second grand jury declined to indict Haste, allowing him to walk free. After further investigation during a departmental trial in March 2017, Haste was found guilty on all charges and turned in his badge and gun before Deputy Commissioner of Trials, Rosemarie Maldonado, asked Police Commissioner, James O’Neill, to fire him. Although Haste is no longer employed by NYPD, many people are still fighting to see justice for Ramarley Graham (White 1-2).
Ramarley Graham often picked up his 6-year-old half-brother, Chinnor, from school. At home, Graham would help Chinnor with his homework, show him how to do push-ups, and teach him to defend himself from kids who picked on him for being soft. (Ramarley was gentle, too, his friends told me, so he knew how that went.) They’d watch Animal Planet, play video games, or go to the park. But that February 2, Patricia Hartley, the boys’ grandmother, went to get Chinnor instead. Graham was with his friends, Jahmoy McKenzie and Travis Breckenridge, at McKenzie’s house. They smoked a little weed and, knowing McKenzie’s mother would be home soon, moved on, stopping at a bodega. Then Graham headed home to change — he had plans to see girls later.
Wakefield hangs above the city about as far north in the Bronx as one can go before crossing into Westchester. It’s a largely West Indian neighborhood where businesses on White Plains Road, the main thoroughfare, proudly display the Jamaican flag. It was along that avenue, under the elevated tracks of the 2 and 5 trains, that officers Tyrone Horne and Andrew Jarvis first saw something they regarded as suspicious. They were part of a Street Narcotics Enforcement Unit, staking out corners and trap houses. By 2012, most of the city’s precincts had eliminated their SNEUs, as street deals had declined, but not in the 47th Precinct; the department thought that a SNEU could still make “quality arrests” in the North Bronx. Sitting in a parked Lexus, Horne and Jarvis, who are both black, watched three black male teenagers walk into and then quickly out of a bodega.
According to internal documents from the NYPD’s Firearm Discharge Review Board investigation obtained by New York, Horne was the first to see what he thought was the butt of a gun sticking out from one teen’s waistband. Later, Horne would tell investigators that Graham looked suspicious because he’d been “walking with a purpose,” and Jarvis would confirm that he saw a gun. They relayed the sighting to the others on the team before following the teens up White Plains Road.
Sergeant Scott Morris, the officer in charge of the SNEU, was sitting in an unmarked sedan a few blocks away. Morris asked Horne and Jarvis to confirm what they had seen. “I definitely see the gun,” came Horne’s reply, according to another officer’s statement. “It’s under his shirt.”
Haste, then 30, perked up when he heard Horne say “gun.” In a series of interviews, Haste described the incident and subsequent fallout to me in great detail. He was parked nearby at the steering wheel of the “p-van” (prisoner van), a 12-passenger Ford Econoline. Haste, who had been in the SNEU for just two months, had worked in the 47th Precinct since graduating from the Police Academy three years earlier and had impressed his superiors by racking up 175 arrests. He told me that he chose to join the SNEU after learning the department didn’t have much use for a white guy as an undercover cop. For the same reason, Haste rarely manned the SNEU’s observation post — he’d stick out too much — and when he did, he’d dress as an MTA employee. Mostly he drove the p-van.
Excited to make an arrest, Haste drove toward Graham. Halfway down a residential street, Haste and his partner, John Mcloughlin, stopped the van and ran at the teenager, who had peeled off from his friends. Video surveillance taken from a camera outside Graham’s building shows him glancing over his shoulder in Haste’s direction before quickly walking into the house. Even before the door closes, Haste, dressed in a blue NYPD windbreaker, runs toward him. But by the time he gets to the door, it’s locked. Haste tries to kick in the door, but it doesn’t budge. A few minutes later, the first-floor tenant lets Haste in through the back door. Haste and Mcloughlin climbed up to the second floor, where Haste said he knocked before his partner kicked in the door to Graham’s apartment.
Inside, Haste saw Graham at the end of a narrow hallway. Gun drawn, Haste said he yelled blanket commands: “Police!” “Show me your hands!” According to Haste, Graham, with his hands in his waistband, hurried into the bathroom while yelling, “Fuck you, suck my dick.” Haste approached the bathroom and peered in to see Graham facing him with his hands still in his pants. Haste says he yelled, “Gun!” and pulled the trigger. He doesn’t remember seeing Graham fall to the floor. Haste also never saw the teenager throw pot — which is what newspapers would report he’d been reaching for in his pants — into the toilet (a bag was found in the bowl). All he remembers is Mcloughlin yanking on the back of his bulletproof vest and yelling, “Are you hit?” Haste tensed his muscles. He was fine. As another officer escorted him out, with Graham’s blood on his khaki pants, Haste passed Morris, whose eyes searched Haste’s face for an explanation. “I thought he was reaching,” Haste said, according to Morris’s statement.
Haste told me that one of his first thoughts after pulling the trigger was Shit, I’m jammed up, copspeak for police who are sidelined. Still unsure if Graham was dead or alive, Haste knew he was about to be overwhelmed by an investigation. And he was: A member of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association approached Haste and told him to talk to Horne, who was suddenly unsure if he’d said he saw a gun or he thought he saw a gun.
Horne’s equivocation floored Haste, but he feared talking to him would be a red flag for the Internal Affairs Bureau. He did it anyway. “I made it very clear: ‘I’m not here to tell you what you did or you didn’t see,’ ” Haste says he told Horne. “ ‘All I’m saying is that we all heard the same thing as far as I know. If you’re afraid of saying what you saw, you say something you believed to be a gun.’ ”
Multiple people told me Horne — who declined interview requests — would continue to argue that he’d always said he “thought” he saw a gun and distance himself from Haste more than the other SNEU members. By then, Haste knew Graham hadn’t been reaching for a firearm, but he was sure the NYPD would find one in the apartment. After two days of searching, the only gun recovered was a toy replica out back (Walsh 2-4).
In a 2013 civil suit against the City of New York, Graham’s grandmother gave her account of the shooting and its immediate aftermath. His mom provided additional details to Colorlines in a January 2017 telephone interview. Here is their version of what happened:
Hartley had just brought Chinnor home from school and was in the living room while he changed out of his school clothes. She heard commotion outside their apartment and walked toward the front door to see what was going on. Graham was behind her.
Hartley jumped back, and Officer Haste, gun drawn, ran toward her and Ramarley. The grandmother maintains that neither she, nor her grandsons heard police identify themselves or issue any warning. Graham retreated to a hallway bathroom, but moments later, Haste shot him.
Malcolm says that her mother initially believed she was the one who had been shot. “She tell me she look at her chest area and didn’t see any blood,” Malcolm recounted in her Jamaican lilt. “She remember that Ramarley was behind her, but when she looked behind her, she didn’t see him. She looked down, and that’s when she saw him. His head was into the bathroom, his legs were hanging out the bathroom.”
Hartley screamed, “Why did you shoot him? Why you kill him?” and Haste pushed the 85-pound woman backward into a vase, warning her to “get the f**k away before I have to shoot you, too!”
Hartley attempted to make a phone call, but a female cop whom Hartley hadn’t seen enter the apartment twisted her arm behind her back. A male officer grabbed her by the neck, pushed her into a chair and threatened to handcuff her if she moved. Hartley saw her grandson’s legs “moving and trembling,” but when she tried to approach him, police pushed her back.
After the fatal incident, police took Hartley and Chinnor, who was wearing only a red T-shirt and his underwear, outside in the winter cold. Officers then drove Hartley to the 47th Precinct leaving her surviving grandson with a downstairs neighbor, Eric Dixon.
Malcolm came home at 3:30 p.m. to find her home cordoned off. Without telling her what had happened, police took her to the precinct. “They killed ’Marley!” Hartley yelled when she saw her daughter. Police then locked the elderly woman in a room and questioned her for hours.
“They interrogated my mom for seven hours trying to put words in her mouth,” said Malcolm in late March 2017, at one of the many press conferences she and her volunteer support team have arranged over the last five years. “She stood her ground, because she knows what she saw” (Marlowe and Myers 2-3).
… The officers insisted that Ramarley had thrown a gun out the window and tried to get her to agree. When she refused, Hartley says they called her a “fucking liar.” Malcolm demanded a lawyer be present, but police refused to release Hartley, even after Malcolm’s lawyer arrived at the station. In the end, police held Hartley for seven hours, she says. (The NYPD said it was closer to five and a half, but pledged to investigate Hartley’s treatment.)
Following the shooting, city officials, including then–police commissioner Ray Kelly, expressed a commitment to get to the bottom of what happened. Bill de Blasio, then the city’s public advocate, issued a statement. “We need answers and we need them quickly.” But those commitments did little to comfort Graham’s family. Hartley was treated for trauma at the hospital. Ramarley’s father, Frank Graham (who separated from Malcolm soon after Ramarley’s birth but lived in Harlem and remained close to his son), also went to the hospital when his blood pressure skyrocketed. That weekend, Malcolm couldn’t see her son’s body because it had been misidentified. The morgue didn’t find it until a State Assembly member intervened.
Meanwhile, the NYPD pushed its own version of the facts to the press. On the night of the shooting, a spokesman for the department told the New York Times that the teenager had been running from police into his home, though the surveillance camera clearly showed Ramarley walking into the house, and that there had been a struggle between Graham and Haste. The next day, a law-enforcement source told The Wall Street Journal that Graham had been arrested eight times (police documents list seven arrests).
None of the arrests resulted in charges.
Horne, of course, couldn’t have known about Graham’s record when he saw the teenager leave the bodega. It stretched between June 2009 and October 2011 and included arrests for robbery, trespassing, disorderly conduct, possession of a weapon, burglary, and selling marijuana. Malcolm detailed a few of the arrests to me and chalked them up to misunderstandings: Friends had accused her son of stealing headphones; police thought he’d taken someone’s bike. Nor was Graham’s record unusual for the neighborhood during the height of the “stop and frisk” era: While black and Latino men between the ages of 14 and 24 made up 4.7 percent of the city’s population, they accounted for 41.6 percent of stops in 2011.
According to a former principal at Graham’s middle school, Ramarley had sought advice from teachers on how to avoid the rougher side of the neighborhood. But in ninth grade, he dropped out and began bouncing among odd jobs. His MySpace page featured crudely rendered street-gang logos and pictures of Graham and his friends posing with what looks like weed and what appears to be a handgun. When I asked Malcolm about the pictures, she had a blunt response: “Kids do stupid things.” But in the 47th Precinct, “stupid things” are considered evidence. Supportive officers sent Haste the webpage, ex post facto proof, they believed, that Graham had warranted suspicion. Malcolm wasn’t surprised. “This is what the NYPD does to justify what they did,” she said. When asked to describe the man her son was becoming, Malcolm paused. “He was 18,” she said. “He was just coming into himself when he died.”
Works cited:
Marlowe, Jen and Myers, Amy. “1 Teen, 6 Cops, 1 Bullet and 5 Years of a Black Family Screaming for Justice.” Colorlines, April 12, 2017. Net. https://www.colorlines.com/articles/1...
Walsh, James D. “The Bullet, the Cop, the Boy.” New York Magazine Intelligencer, June 2017. Net. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/...
White, Davon. “Ramarley Graham 1993-2012).” Blackpast, November 10, 2017. Net. https://www.blackpast.org/african-ame...
April 1, 2021
Bad Apples-- January 1, 2009--Oscar Grant
Bad Apples
January 1, 2009
Oscar Grant
On New Year's Day 2009, an Oakland police officer shot and killed an unarmed, pinned suspect. The officer, Johannes Mehserle, was arrested on murder charges on January 14th, 2009. The trial began on June 10, 2010. Here's what happened:
On January 1, 2009, at approximately 2 a.m., officers of the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) responded to reports of a fight on an Oakland subway car. They detained approximately 20 passengers. One of the passengers, who witnesses say was not actually involved in the fight, was 22-year-old Oscar Grant.
Grant, a local grocery store butcher, and the father of a four-year-old girl were unarmed. He [Grant] approached police in what appeared to be a nonviolent manner and was backed against the wall. In one video, he can be seen kneeling and pleading with police for reasons that are not yet clear. Some eyewitnesses say that he had already begun asking police not to shoot him. Officers restrained Grant and pinned him, face down, on the pavement. It is not clear whether he was handcuffed at this point.
As shown in a widely disseminated cell phone video of the shooting, Grant was restrained by two officers. A third, 27-year-old Johannes Mehserle, then drew his service pistol and shot Grant fatally in the back (Head 1).
Mehserle was charged with murder, but maintained throughout his trial that he mistakenly grabbed his service weapon, not his Taser, as he was attempting to arrest Grant (Booker 2).
While there had been previous cases where police officers confused guns with Tasers, modern Tasers weigh half as much as handguns. The prosecution argued that the position of Mehserle's Taser "in relation to his duty weapon, combined with the different 'feel' and color of the two weapons made it highly unlikely that he would have mistaken one for the other". [Grant family attorney] Burris responded to claims of Taser confusion by arguing that video evidence did not support the idea of Taser confusion. In any event, he said, Mehserle had no reason to fire his Taser. Mehserle was wearing his Taser on the left side of his body (on the opposite side from which he wore his gun) – but set up for a cross-body, strong hand (right-hand) draw (Wikipedia 3).
His [Mehserle’s] trial was moved to Los Angeles where a jury convicted him of a lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter. As member station KQED reports, Mehserle, was convicted in 2010 and sentenced to a two-year prison term. However, he was released in 2011 after serving just 11 months.
Oscar Grant's name became a rallying cry and another example of excessive force by law enforcement against communities of color. Similar claims are being made at recent national protests sparked by the deaths of Black Americans [George] Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain and others this year.
A 2013 film, Fruitvale Station, based on Grant's final moments, helped introduce new audiences to his story. It won awards including the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival that year. (Booker 2).
Though initial protests on July 8, 2010, against the jury verdict were peacefully organized, after dark there were incidents of looting, arson, destruction of property, and small riots. Nearly 80 people were eventually arrested. On November 5, 2010, Mehserle was sentenced to two years, minus time served. He served his time in Los Angeles County Jail protective custody, held in a private cell for his safety. On June 13, 2011, Mehserle was released under parole after serving 11 months. Oakland civil rights attorney John Burns filed a $25 million wrongful death claim against BART on behalf of Grant's family. BART settled with Grant's daughter and mother for a total of $2.8 million in 2011. It also settled with several of Grant's friends who had sued for damages because of police brutality. A separate suit by Grant's father did not result in a jury award, as it was decided that due to his imprisonment he was not sufficiently involved in Grant's life (Wikipedia 2).
More than a decade after the BART police killing of Oscar Grant, the transit agency has released [in 2019] a long-sealed report on a shooting that shocked the Bay Area, led to a rare criminal conviction for an officer's use of force and heralded a national movement for police accountability.
The 94-page report released Tuesday shows that investigators questioned Officer Johannes Mehserle's explanation for the New Year's Day 2009 shooting — that he meant to draw a Taser, not his service firearm, before firing the round that killed Grant.
The document also lays much of the responsibility for the incident, which occurred after BART police responded to a report of a fight on a train, on a second BART officer — Anthony Pirone. The report says Pirone, who punched and kneed Grant after detaining him, "started a cascade of events that ultimately led to the shooting."
The report, completed by independent investigators hired by BART in July 2009, was released by the agency Tuesday [2019] under terms of SB 1421, California's new police transparency law.
Sections of the report relating to Mehserle were redacted, and investigators noted they had been unable to interview the officer.
But they wrote that videos of the Fruitvale Station incident showed Mehserle may have known he was drawing his firearm, not his Taser, before shooting Grant.
"Despite the inability to interview Officer Mehserle, the conclusion can be made from a close viewing of the enhanced video that he was intending to pull his firearm and not his Taser," the report says, noting that Mehserle repeatedly reached for his gun "and on the final occasion can be seen looking back at his hand on the gun/holster to watch the gun come out."
Mehserle fired a single round into Grant's back.
Just prior to the shooting, the 22-year-old Grant, face down on the station platform with Officer Pirone kneeling on his neck and head, had put both hands behind him "in a handcuffing position," the report says.
…
The report is unsparing in its criticism of Pirone's conduct in the chaotic 13 minutes before the shooting, saying the officer lied repeatedly to investigators about his actions.
The document says Pirone was the first BART officer on the southbound Fruitvale platform, responding to reports of a fight on a Dublin/Pleasanton train crowded with passengers returning from New Year's Eve festivities in San Francisco.
Witnesses would later describe Pirone to investigators as the "crazy cop," “very agitated," "harsh and unprofessional," and "not calm, not once."
Pirone left his partner, Officer Marysol Domenici, who was handling a separate issue at a station agent's booth, and climbed the stairs to the station platform about 2:04 a.m. He stopped three black men who'd just walked off the train, telling them either to "sit the fuck down" or "get on the fucking wall," according to what they told investigators.
When Domenici joined him, he told her to "watch these guys," while he ordered Grant over to the wall.
Pirone then got on the train to detain a passenger named Michael Greer. Witnesses described Pirone as loud, aggressive and profane, with one saying the officer yelled, "Get the fuck out of my car" before dragging Greer off the train and handcuffing him.
Grant, meanwhile, was telling his friends against the wall to "just be cool" and "be quiet — we’re going to go home tonight" as they argued with Domenici, according to Jack Bryson Jr., one of the detained men.
Pirone told investigators he saw Grant fighting with Domenici and that he rushed to help her.
"The video, however, shows a completely different story, one of Grant pushing his friends back from Domenici and no touching of her ever taking place," the report says.
When he reached Grant, Pirone told investigators they scuffled. But the report notes that video of the incident shows Pirone shoved Grant against the wall and punched him in the head and that Grant did not fight back.
"Pirone accomplished his apparent intended goal to have Grant sit down. Once down, Pirone kneed Grant in the face," the report says, calling the strike "punitive" and unjustified.
Pirone told investigators that Grant called him a "bitch-ass n-----" and that he responded by saying, "bitch-ass n-----, huh?"
"For a white law enforcement officer to utter the word 'n-----' to an African American male while detaining him in the tense racial atmosphere at the Fruitvale station undoubtedly contributed to the escalation of tensions," the report says. "The use of such a word diminished Officer Pirone and the BART PD."
At that point, the report says, Pirone and Mehserle began struggling to handcuff Grant.
Mehserle shoved Grant down, and Pirone put his knee on Grant's neck and head. The internal investigation found that Pirone's weight likely prevented Grant from getting his hands out from under his stomach to put them behind his back.
"When Pirone takes his weight off Grant, Grant immediately puts both hands behind his back for cuffing," the report says.
That's when Mehserle drew his gun and fired.
Nigel Bryson, one of the men detained along the wall, told investigators he heard the gunshot, then looked over to see Grant raise his head slightly and say, "You shot me" (Emslie and Brekke 1-3).
Here is a somewhat different account of the details of Pirone’s actions.
Leading up to the shooting, Grant was on the train and was recognized by his friend Katie, which in turn caused an enemy from a nearby gang to recognize Grant and proceed to fight him. However, some of the other passengers on the train, along with Grant's girlfriend Sophina, were able to break up the fight. Shortly afterward, the train conductor announced to the passengers that the police had been contacted and were on their way to the station at which they were stopped. As the passengers began to exit the train, Grant and his girlfriend saw the police walking towards them and split up. As they got closer to the train, police started to pick out people they believed to have been involved in the fight. Officer Pirone walked up to two African-American men and ripped the jacket off one. Pirone threw three people against the wall and then turned to the train, yelling for everyone involved in the fight to exit the train and come to him. Everyone remained on the train, so Officer Pirone walked into the train to see if there was anyone who looked as if they were involved in the fight. Pirone saw Grant dressed in an outfit similar to that worn by those who were sitting against the platform wall and therefore removed him (Wikipedia 1).
An investigation was conducted to determine whether any other officers should be disciplined. On January 12, investigation results were forwarded to the district attorney. The investigation, which interviewed seven police officers and 33 other witnesses, came to no conclusion and made no recommendations. The details were forwarded to Meyers Nave, an outside law firm, for an independent investigation. It was led by Jayne Williams, the former city attorney for San Leandro, and was estimated to cost $250,000. In August, the law firm provided two reports to BART but released only one publicly. The report said officers failed to follow recommended procedures, failed to work as a team, and had lapses in both tactical communication and leadership
KTVU broadcast cell-phone video that showed Pirone striking Grant, resulting in additional agency actions. BART General Manager Dorothy Dugger said a "rigorous" internal affairs investigation would be ordered. Later, an attorney, representing BART and referring to the same video, said that Grant provoked Pirone's blow by trying to knee Pirone at least twice, "It is our position that there was a provocation and assault on Mr. Pirone based upon a video that shows Mr. Grant apparently hitting Mr. Pirone with his knee." On September 22, KTVU reported that Meyers Nave, in its unreleased report, had recommended the termination of Tony Pirone and Marysol Domenici. After being on leave since the incident, Domenici was terminated on March 24, 2010. She was rehired the following December after labor arbitration settled in her favor. Pirone was terminated on April 21 after an internal investigation upheld a finding of misconduct against him. Like Domenici, Pirone later sought to be reinstated through arbitration. This is a process whereby the BART administration and BART police union elect a member of the police union to decide if the firing of Anthony Pirone was justified. This arbitration was delayed, as Pirone served a tour in Afghanistan in the US Army. When he returned, the arbitration was set to finish by the end of 2013, but was delayed until the end of 2014. In December 2014, BART spokesperson Alicia Trost told reporters that Pirone's arbitration was denied, and the arbitrator upheld the termination (Wikipedia 4).
In October [2020], Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley reopened the investigation into Anthony Pirone, a former BART officer who hauled Grant out of a train car and pinned his knee to Grant’s neck and back in a manner similar to that used in the death of George Floyd last year.
Grant’s family had sought criminal charges against Pirone for years and at a news conference Monday, his mother, the Rev. Wanda Johnson, continued her call for justice, the Bay Area News Group reported.
“My son laid on the cold concrete with that Officer Pirone’s knee on his neck. My son’s head was smashed against the wall and he was kicked and he was pushed. Pirone still walks around free today,” Johnson said.
In a 16-page memo, O’Malley … [ultimately concluded] that no matter how “offensive or unacceptable” Pirone’s conduct that night, he did not fire the gun that killed Grant and there is no evidence that he knew Mehserle would fire his gun, which Mehserle said at trial he thought was his Taser (AP 1-2).
“My heart hurts on today, because 12 years I've been crying out for justice for my son," said Rev. Wanda Johnson, Grant's mother, in a press conference Monday. "Let the district attorney do what is right and charge him for the acts that he committed that led up to my son's death."
…
"I want to say to you that when you sleep on tonight and you think about why we're standing here — why I'm standing here — it's because my son laid on the cold concrete with that officer Pirone's knee in his neck," Johnson said. "And he continued to say he couldn't breathe. My son's head was smashed against the wall and he was kicked and he was punched. And the officer, Pirone, still walks around free today."
…
"It can't be hard to see that he was treated not humanly. It couldn't be hard to hear that a racial epithet was used against him. And if you or I used those against someone, and a crime was committed, we would definitely be charged with the hate crime," Johnson said. "So I'm not asking anything different than what our United States Constitution says or what our laws say. I'm asking for him to be charged for his actions leading up to my son's death."
…
[O’Malley’s] decision also cites a recent California Supreme Court decision, saying in the report that “a non-killer participant in a crime cannot be held vicariously liable for any death that results from that crime” unless the participant knew beforehand that death would likely occur and “with a knowing and willful disregard of the likelihood that death would occur."
Grant’s family and their attorneys plan to keep meeting with O’Malley and pressing for criminal charges.
"We want you to know that the fight still goes on. We've been standing at these banks, as you know, for the last 12 years and we're not going anywhere," said Cephus "Uncle Bobby X" Johnson, Grant's uncle (Wiley 1-2).
Works cited:
Booker, Brakkton. “California District Attorney Says Probe Of Oscar Grant Killing Will Be Reopened.” NPR, October 6, 2020. Net. https://www.npr.org/sections/live-upd...
Emslie, Alex and Brekke, Dan. “BART Releases Report with New Details of Officers' Roles in Oscar Grant Killing.” KQED, May 1, 2019. Net. https://www.kqed.org/news/11744106/ba...
Head, Tom. “The Shooting Death of Oscar Grant.” ThoughtCo, Updated August 11, 2019. Net. https://www.thoughtco.com/shooting-de...
“No Charges against 2nd Officer in 2009 Police Killing of Oscar Grant.” The Associated Press, January 11, 2021. Net. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/...
Wikipedia. “The Shooting of Oscar Grant.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Net. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shootin...
Wiley, Michelle. “'Crying Out for Justice': Oscar Grant's Family Vows to Keep Fighting after DA Declines to File New Charges.” KQED, January 11. 2021. Net. https://www.kqed.org/news/11854829/cr...
January 1, 2009
Oscar Grant
On New Year's Day 2009, an Oakland police officer shot and killed an unarmed, pinned suspect. The officer, Johannes Mehserle, was arrested on murder charges on January 14th, 2009. The trial began on June 10, 2010. Here's what happened:
On January 1, 2009, at approximately 2 a.m., officers of the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) responded to reports of a fight on an Oakland subway car. They detained approximately 20 passengers. One of the passengers, who witnesses say was not actually involved in the fight, was 22-year-old Oscar Grant.
Grant, a local grocery store butcher, and the father of a four-year-old girl were unarmed. He [Grant] approached police in what appeared to be a nonviolent manner and was backed against the wall. In one video, he can be seen kneeling and pleading with police for reasons that are not yet clear. Some eyewitnesses say that he had already begun asking police not to shoot him. Officers restrained Grant and pinned him, face down, on the pavement. It is not clear whether he was handcuffed at this point.
As shown in a widely disseminated cell phone video of the shooting, Grant was restrained by two officers. A third, 27-year-old Johannes Mehserle, then drew his service pistol and shot Grant fatally in the back (Head 1).
Mehserle was charged with murder, but maintained throughout his trial that he mistakenly grabbed his service weapon, not his Taser, as he was attempting to arrest Grant (Booker 2).
While there had been previous cases where police officers confused guns with Tasers, modern Tasers weigh half as much as handguns. The prosecution argued that the position of Mehserle's Taser "in relation to his duty weapon, combined with the different 'feel' and color of the two weapons made it highly unlikely that he would have mistaken one for the other". [Grant family attorney] Burris responded to claims of Taser confusion by arguing that video evidence did not support the idea of Taser confusion. In any event, he said, Mehserle had no reason to fire his Taser. Mehserle was wearing his Taser on the left side of his body (on the opposite side from which he wore his gun) – but set up for a cross-body, strong hand (right-hand) draw (Wikipedia 3).
His [Mehserle’s] trial was moved to Los Angeles where a jury convicted him of a lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter. As member station KQED reports, Mehserle, was convicted in 2010 and sentenced to a two-year prison term. However, he was released in 2011 after serving just 11 months.
Oscar Grant's name became a rallying cry and another example of excessive force by law enforcement against communities of color. Similar claims are being made at recent national protests sparked by the deaths of Black Americans [George] Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain and others this year.
A 2013 film, Fruitvale Station, based on Grant's final moments, helped introduce new audiences to his story. It won awards including the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival that year. (Booker 2).
Though initial protests on July 8, 2010, against the jury verdict were peacefully organized, after dark there were incidents of looting, arson, destruction of property, and small riots. Nearly 80 people were eventually arrested. On November 5, 2010, Mehserle was sentenced to two years, minus time served. He served his time in Los Angeles County Jail protective custody, held in a private cell for his safety. On June 13, 2011, Mehserle was released under parole after serving 11 months. Oakland civil rights attorney John Burns filed a $25 million wrongful death claim against BART on behalf of Grant's family. BART settled with Grant's daughter and mother for a total of $2.8 million in 2011. It also settled with several of Grant's friends who had sued for damages because of police brutality. A separate suit by Grant's father did not result in a jury award, as it was decided that due to his imprisonment he was not sufficiently involved in Grant's life (Wikipedia 2).
More than a decade after the BART police killing of Oscar Grant, the transit agency has released [in 2019] a long-sealed report on a shooting that shocked the Bay Area, led to a rare criminal conviction for an officer's use of force and heralded a national movement for police accountability.
The 94-page report released Tuesday shows that investigators questioned Officer Johannes Mehserle's explanation for the New Year's Day 2009 shooting — that he meant to draw a Taser, not his service firearm, before firing the round that killed Grant.
The document also lays much of the responsibility for the incident, which occurred after BART police responded to a report of a fight on a train, on a second BART officer — Anthony Pirone. The report says Pirone, who punched and kneed Grant after detaining him, "started a cascade of events that ultimately led to the shooting."
The report, completed by independent investigators hired by BART in July 2009, was released by the agency Tuesday [2019] under terms of SB 1421, California's new police transparency law.
Sections of the report relating to Mehserle were redacted, and investigators noted they had been unable to interview the officer.
But they wrote that videos of the Fruitvale Station incident showed Mehserle may have known he was drawing his firearm, not his Taser, before shooting Grant.
"Despite the inability to interview Officer Mehserle, the conclusion can be made from a close viewing of the enhanced video that he was intending to pull his firearm and not his Taser," the report says, noting that Mehserle repeatedly reached for his gun "and on the final occasion can be seen looking back at his hand on the gun/holster to watch the gun come out."
Mehserle fired a single round into Grant's back.
Just prior to the shooting, the 22-year-old Grant, face down on the station platform with Officer Pirone kneeling on his neck and head, had put both hands behind him "in a handcuffing position," the report says.
…
The report is unsparing in its criticism of Pirone's conduct in the chaotic 13 minutes before the shooting, saying the officer lied repeatedly to investigators about his actions.
The document says Pirone was the first BART officer on the southbound Fruitvale platform, responding to reports of a fight on a Dublin/Pleasanton train crowded with passengers returning from New Year's Eve festivities in San Francisco.
Witnesses would later describe Pirone to investigators as the "crazy cop," “very agitated," "harsh and unprofessional," and "not calm, not once."
Pirone left his partner, Officer Marysol Domenici, who was handling a separate issue at a station agent's booth, and climbed the stairs to the station platform about 2:04 a.m. He stopped three black men who'd just walked off the train, telling them either to "sit the fuck down" or "get on the fucking wall," according to what they told investigators.
When Domenici joined him, he told her to "watch these guys," while he ordered Grant over to the wall.
Pirone then got on the train to detain a passenger named Michael Greer. Witnesses described Pirone as loud, aggressive and profane, with one saying the officer yelled, "Get the fuck out of my car" before dragging Greer off the train and handcuffing him.
Grant, meanwhile, was telling his friends against the wall to "just be cool" and "be quiet — we’re going to go home tonight" as they argued with Domenici, according to Jack Bryson Jr., one of the detained men.
Pirone told investigators he saw Grant fighting with Domenici and that he rushed to help her.
"The video, however, shows a completely different story, one of Grant pushing his friends back from Domenici and no touching of her ever taking place," the report says.
When he reached Grant, Pirone told investigators they scuffled. But the report notes that video of the incident shows Pirone shoved Grant against the wall and punched him in the head and that Grant did not fight back.
"Pirone accomplished his apparent intended goal to have Grant sit down. Once down, Pirone kneed Grant in the face," the report says, calling the strike "punitive" and unjustified.
Pirone told investigators that Grant called him a "bitch-ass n-----" and that he responded by saying, "bitch-ass n-----, huh?"
"For a white law enforcement officer to utter the word 'n-----' to an African American male while detaining him in the tense racial atmosphere at the Fruitvale station undoubtedly contributed to the escalation of tensions," the report says. "The use of such a word diminished Officer Pirone and the BART PD."
At that point, the report says, Pirone and Mehserle began struggling to handcuff Grant.
Mehserle shoved Grant down, and Pirone put his knee on Grant's neck and head. The internal investigation found that Pirone's weight likely prevented Grant from getting his hands out from under his stomach to put them behind his back.
"When Pirone takes his weight off Grant, Grant immediately puts both hands behind his back for cuffing," the report says.
That's when Mehserle drew his gun and fired.
Nigel Bryson, one of the men detained along the wall, told investigators he heard the gunshot, then looked over to see Grant raise his head slightly and say, "You shot me" (Emslie and Brekke 1-3).
Here is a somewhat different account of the details of Pirone’s actions.
Leading up to the shooting, Grant was on the train and was recognized by his friend Katie, which in turn caused an enemy from a nearby gang to recognize Grant and proceed to fight him. However, some of the other passengers on the train, along with Grant's girlfriend Sophina, were able to break up the fight. Shortly afterward, the train conductor announced to the passengers that the police had been contacted and were on their way to the station at which they were stopped. As the passengers began to exit the train, Grant and his girlfriend saw the police walking towards them and split up. As they got closer to the train, police started to pick out people they believed to have been involved in the fight. Officer Pirone walked up to two African-American men and ripped the jacket off one. Pirone threw three people against the wall and then turned to the train, yelling for everyone involved in the fight to exit the train and come to him. Everyone remained on the train, so Officer Pirone walked into the train to see if there was anyone who looked as if they were involved in the fight. Pirone saw Grant dressed in an outfit similar to that worn by those who were sitting against the platform wall and therefore removed him (Wikipedia 1).
An investigation was conducted to determine whether any other officers should be disciplined. On January 12, investigation results were forwarded to the district attorney. The investigation, which interviewed seven police officers and 33 other witnesses, came to no conclusion and made no recommendations. The details were forwarded to Meyers Nave, an outside law firm, for an independent investigation. It was led by Jayne Williams, the former city attorney for San Leandro, and was estimated to cost $250,000. In August, the law firm provided two reports to BART but released only one publicly. The report said officers failed to follow recommended procedures, failed to work as a team, and had lapses in both tactical communication and leadership
KTVU broadcast cell-phone video that showed Pirone striking Grant, resulting in additional agency actions. BART General Manager Dorothy Dugger said a "rigorous" internal affairs investigation would be ordered. Later, an attorney, representing BART and referring to the same video, said that Grant provoked Pirone's blow by trying to knee Pirone at least twice, "It is our position that there was a provocation and assault on Mr. Pirone based upon a video that shows Mr. Grant apparently hitting Mr. Pirone with his knee." On September 22, KTVU reported that Meyers Nave, in its unreleased report, had recommended the termination of Tony Pirone and Marysol Domenici. After being on leave since the incident, Domenici was terminated on March 24, 2010. She was rehired the following December after labor arbitration settled in her favor. Pirone was terminated on April 21 after an internal investigation upheld a finding of misconduct against him. Like Domenici, Pirone later sought to be reinstated through arbitration. This is a process whereby the BART administration and BART police union elect a member of the police union to decide if the firing of Anthony Pirone was justified. This arbitration was delayed, as Pirone served a tour in Afghanistan in the US Army. When he returned, the arbitration was set to finish by the end of 2013, but was delayed until the end of 2014. In December 2014, BART spokesperson Alicia Trost told reporters that Pirone's arbitration was denied, and the arbitrator upheld the termination (Wikipedia 4).
In October [2020], Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley reopened the investigation into Anthony Pirone, a former BART officer who hauled Grant out of a train car and pinned his knee to Grant’s neck and back in a manner similar to that used in the death of George Floyd last year.
Grant’s family had sought criminal charges against Pirone for years and at a news conference Monday, his mother, the Rev. Wanda Johnson, continued her call for justice, the Bay Area News Group reported.
“My son laid on the cold concrete with that Officer Pirone’s knee on his neck. My son’s head was smashed against the wall and he was kicked and he was pushed. Pirone still walks around free today,” Johnson said.
In a 16-page memo, O’Malley … [ultimately concluded] that no matter how “offensive or unacceptable” Pirone’s conduct that night, he did not fire the gun that killed Grant and there is no evidence that he knew Mehserle would fire his gun, which Mehserle said at trial he thought was his Taser (AP 1-2).
“My heart hurts on today, because 12 years I've been crying out for justice for my son," said Rev. Wanda Johnson, Grant's mother, in a press conference Monday. "Let the district attorney do what is right and charge him for the acts that he committed that led up to my son's death."
…
"I want to say to you that when you sleep on tonight and you think about why we're standing here — why I'm standing here — it's because my son laid on the cold concrete with that officer Pirone's knee in his neck," Johnson said. "And he continued to say he couldn't breathe. My son's head was smashed against the wall and he was kicked and he was punched. And the officer, Pirone, still walks around free today."
…
"It can't be hard to see that he was treated not humanly. It couldn't be hard to hear that a racial epithet was used against him. And if you or I used those against someone, and a crime was committed, we would definitely be charged with the hate crime," Johnson said. "So I'm not asking anything different than what our United States Constitution says or what our laws say. I'm asking for him to be charged for his actions leading up to my son's death."
…
[O’Malley’s] decision also cites a recent California Supreme Court decision, saying in the report that “a non-killer participant in a crime cannot be held vicariously liable for any death that results from that crime” unless the participant knew beforehand that death would likely occur and “with a knowing and willful disregard of the likelihood that death would occur."
Grant’s family and their attorneys plan to keep meeting with O’Malley and pressing for criminal charges.
"We want you to know that the fight still goes on. We've been standing at these banks, as you know, for the last 12 years and we're not going anywhere," said Cephus "Uncle Bobby X" Johnson, Grant's uncle (Wiley 1-2).
Works cited:
Booker, Brakkton. “California District Attorney Says Probe Of Oscar Grant Killing Will Be Reopened.” NPR, October 6, 2020. Net. https://www.npr.org/sections/live-upd...
Emslie, Alex and Brekke, Dan. “BART Releases Report with New Details of Officers' Roles in Oscar Grant Killing.” KQED, May 1, 2019. Net. https://www.kqed.org/news/11744106/ba...
Head, Tom. “The Shooting Death of Oscar Grant.” ThoughtCo, Updated August 11, 2019. Net. https://www.thoughtco.com/shooting-de...
“No Charges against 2nd Officer in 2009 Police Killing of Oscar Grant.” The Associated Press, January 11, 2021. Net. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/...
Wikipedia. “The Shooting of Oscar Grant.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Net. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shootin...
Wiley, Michelle. “'Crying Out for Justice': Oscar Grant's Family Vows to Keep Fighting after DA Declines to File New Charges.” KQED, January 11. 2021. Net. https://www.kqed.org/news/11854829/cr...
March 28, 2021
Bad Apples
Black people are 3.5 times more likely than white people to be killed by police when they are not attacking or have a weapon: George Floyd. Black teenagers are 21 times more likely than White teenagers to be killed by police: Tamir Rice and Antwon Rose. A Black person is killed every 40 hours by police: Jonathan Ferrell and Koryn Gaines. One in every 1,000 Black people are killed by police: Breonna Taylor. And, as sobering as these statistics are, they are improvements to the past. These statistics are the reason why from Minneapolis to Los Angeles people are protesting, marching, and rioting.
We must wonder if we would even know about George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, or Christian Cooper without phone videos. These incidents should make us all wonder how many more like them there are that did not get the opportunity to become martyred hashtags. Most Black people will tell you there are many more unnamed martyrs than named ones. In the words of Will Smith: “Racism is not getting worse. It is getting filmed.”
As I turn 40, I [Rashawn Ray] have been stopped while driving cars, sitting in parked cars, riding on buses and trains, walking, running, studying, eating, and clubbing. I have been cussed out, thrown up against concrete walls, and arrested by police. I have a PhD, am a professor at a major university, and do not have a criminal record. I also have several members of my family who are retired or former police and military. My great uncle, Walter J. Gooch, was the first Black chief of police in my hometown of Murfreesboro, TN. My grandfather, Clarence Williams, served in two wars, receiving a Purple Heart and Bronze Star. I should not even have to say these things because they do not seem to matter much.
As the father of two Black boys, I worry about the moment they will go from cute to criminal in the eyes and minds of so many people; how people will dehumanize their minds, weaponize their Blackness, and criminalize their bodies; how no credential, no degree, no level of income or wealth, no smile, no level of professionalism or grace can protect my babies from the gaze and guise of police violence and white supremacist stereotypes: Christian Cooper and Omar Jimenez (Ray 1-2)
Calls to reform, defund or dismantle police departments are being brought forth as solutions to the systemic racism that pervades many police departments in Texas and across the country. There is a tension between those who believe that there are “a few bad apples” and others who contend that departments in certain municipalities are so problematic that the system of policing has to change (Awad 1).
From Atlanta to Buffalo, New York, officers handling protests are being charged after violent videos spread, contradicting the officers' testimonies. When asked about the incidents, [Trump] national security advisor Robert O’Brien said in an interview with CNN that the issue is the result of a "few bad apples," not a result of systemic racism.
At a House committee hearing on police brutality on Tuesday, Republican Rep. Mike Johnson blamed problems in law enforcement on a "few bad apples."
And on Thursday at a discussion on race relations and policing, President Donald Trump stated, "You always have a bad apple, no matter where you go," claiming bad actors will always be a part of life, but "there aren't too many of them in the police department" (Cunningham 4).
The focus on a few bad apples is misguided at best and dangerous at worst. To root out racism, we need to fix the barrels.
… the killing of George Floyd demonstrates how one bad apple may have spoiled the bunch from a systemic racism perspective.
Derek Chauvin, the officer who is being charged with second degree murder, was able to snuff out George Floyd while three other officers watched and did not intervene. The other three officers are being charged with aiding and abetting second-degree murder, given that it was their inaction that also led to murder.
Let’s assume that Chauvin is the bad apple, a status cemented by at least 17 prior complaints lodged against him. His presence probably ruined the integrity of his fellow officers to the point where they stood by and let their fellow colleague murder a man. However, it was unlikely that Chauvin was the first bad apple in the Minnesota Police Department. Given other prior allegations lodged against the department, there was something about the system itself that corrupted the officers, perpetuating the creation of more bad apples. This gives credence to the notion of systemic racism.
The fact that two of the officers involved in the George Floyd case were rookie officers drives home the point that it is something about the system itself. One was working his third shift as an officer, and the other had been an officer for only four days. They looked to their more senior colleagues to figure out what to do.
The “bad apples” narrative is also being used to describe excessive force used by police officers during these racial protests. Some of the more recent instances caught on camera include: The pushing of a 75-year-old protester by two Buffalo police officers that resulted in the elderly man hospitalized in serious condition. The excessive use of force on college students in Atlanta that included the use of a Taser on one of the students. And a New York Police Department vehicle veers toward a group of protesters.
How many bad apples do you need before the “bunch” is spoiled?
...
In the words of Chris Rock: “Bad apples? Some jobs can’t have bad apples. Some jobs, everybody gotta be good” (Awad 1-3)
Paul Butler is a law professor at Georgetown, a former federal prosecutor, and the author of the 2017 book Chokehold: Policing Black Men. His work has long focused on the fundamentals of America’s criminal justice system and why they keep reproducing the same outcomes for black Americans. Here are excerpts of an interview he did for Vox Magazine.
The point of policing the hood is to demonstrate that the police officer dominates. That he’s the man, regardless of gender, that the officer is the boss, and that everybody else is subordinate. The way that that message is communicated is with fear. Fear for your physical safety. I called this “torture lite” in my book Chokehold, and some people thought that that was extreme. But I was actually thinking about a specific thing in international human rights law, and a specific evolution of torture, from the horrible pulling out of your fingernails to the way it works now — which is to make people feel both humiliated and terrified that anything could happen to them at any moment.
This attitude is present in a lot of police officers who work in communities of color, and it defines the dynamic between them and the people they’re supposed to be serving. It impacts all of us. I went to a fancy college and law school; I have a good job and drive a nice car. But every time there’s a police car behind me, my heart starts beating quickly. Every black man I know has the same story.
Because you just never know.
Let’s think about the Floyd case. Before we get to the killing, let’s think about the arrest. The store owner called the police and said that someone had tried to pass a fake $20 bill. The police respond, and what they do is virtually impossible to imagine happening to a white person. What they do is to approach Mr. Floyd’s car like he’s a violent thug. They order Mr. Floyd and the passengers to exit the car. One officer has his hand on his gun. They put Mr. Floyd in handcuffs. When he falls to the ground, they leave him on the ground in handcuffs, and then, as the whole world knows, they hold him down by his back and knee and legs for 10 minutes until he dies. I just can’t imagine that happening to a white person over a $20 bill.
… a lot of the conduct that people of color complain about is totally legal. … The defense [in the George Floyd case] will be that their use of force was reasonable. And they have a case to make. They don’t have a great case, given that Mr. Floyd was handcuffed, but what they will say is that he was resisting arrest and they used reasonable force to subdue him.
Outside of that case, in theory, the power that police have is unreal. I have a police officer buddy who comes and visits my criminal law class, and to demonstrate how much power he has, he invites my students to go on a ride-along in his car, to see what it’s like to patrol the streets of DC. He plays a game with them called Pick That Car. He tells the student, “Pick any car that you want, and I’ll stop it.” So the student will say, “How about that white Camry over there.”
… he says that he could follow any car, and after five minutes or three blocks, the driver will commit some traffic infraction, and then under the law he has the power to stop the car, to order the driver and the passengers to get out of the car. If he has reasonable suspicion that they might be armed or dangerous, he could touch their bodies, he can frisk them, he can ask to search their car. And it’s totally legal. That’s an example of the extraordinary power that police have.
And that extraordinary power, that constitutional power, is used more aggressively against black and brown men than against white soccer moms.
I don’t think police officers are any more racist than law professors or doctors or anybody else. In fact, I think that some people go into that work because they want to be warriors, and that’s not constructive, so when we think about change, we need to think about guardianship as a model, not war.
But I think a lot of people go into the work because they really want to help communities, and they really want to make a difference, and this belief is based on my experience as a prosecutor working with police officers of all backgrounds and of all races. So I don’t think that police officers are especially racist. But I do think we give them tools and authority in a context that leads them to deploy it unjustly against people of color.
So the problem is about culture, and it runs much deeper than a few racists here and there.
[Interviewer]: … how is it that non-racist cops, or cops who set out with good intentions, succumb to perverse incentives and end up enforcing inequalities they themselves would probably reject in the abstract?
The culture of law enforcement is very much a paramilitary culture. You’re part of a team and you have to have each other’s back. Part of the reason your question is so important is that we’re not just talking about white cops, we’re also talking about black cops. Police officers of color get caught up in the same loops. In hip-hop, there’s a lot of interest in black police officers, and the message you often hear is that black officers are actually worse than white officers, because they want to show off for the white cops.
… we can save lives in other ways before we [attempt to] crush white supremacy.
So in the meantime, we can make a difference by teaching cops to intervene when their peers are crossing the line, by teaching them how to deescalate, by changing our entire approach to nonviolent criminal arrests. These things are not going to bring the revolution, but they can save lives.
Martin Luther King says the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice. I hope that’s right. One of the most poignant moments of that horrific video [of Floyd’s death] is there’s a bystander who says to the cop, “Bro, he’s human.” The truth is that I don’t think those police officers saw Mr. Floyd as human. And I’m not sure that’s a problem that can be solved by a reform (Illing 1-6).
A growing body of research suggests that some of the most widely adopted reform efforts have not succeeded at curbing police violence in the ways the policies intended.
Research into the use of body cameras by police officers has shown no statistical difference in behaviors or reduction in force when the cameras are on. Body cameras also haven’t stopped egregious killings, have rarely led to discipline or termination, and have almost never yielded charges or convictions.
In Oakland, California, a police department monitor found that officers were failing to properly turn on cameras nearly 20% of the time.
…
Policies aimed at preventing excessive force and protecting free speech rights at protests have similarly led to little change. In protests across the country this week officers from some of the same departments that enacted reforms were seen violating those policies.
“The issue is not a ‘bad apples’ problem,” said Alisa Bierria, an organizer with Survived and Punished, a prison abolition group. “There is something specific about the institution of policing that is intrinsically violent.”
In Austin, policy dictates that officers may use beanbag rounds to de-escalate potentially deadly situations or “riotous behavior” that could cause injury. But at one of the early protests after Floyd’s death, police fired a beanbag round at a 16-year-old boy’s head, even though he was alone on a hill far from officers, and appeared to be watching the events. His brother said the ammunition fractured his skull and required emergency surgery.
There is also minimal evidence that implicit bias trainings affect officers’ prejudiced behavior on the job, and some research suggesting they could even be counterproductive, making officers resentful and more entrenched in racist viewpoints. In San Jose, California, earlier this month, a black community activist who had trained police on implicit bias for years, and personally knew the chief and others, tried to de-escalate a confrontation between officers and protesters. Police shot him in the groin with a rubber bullet, possibly preventing him from having children.
These kinds of repeated scandals are reminders that misconduct, abuse and brutality aren’t isolated acts that reforms can fix, activists said.
That idea was exemplified this month in Buffalo when two officers were suspended after video showed them shoving a 75-year-old peace activist to the ground. More than 50 officers, the entire emergency response team, resigned from that unit after the suspension, apparently in support of the two colleagues.
…
But given the failure of many past reforms, a coalition of activists actively opposes such moderate policy shifts and argues the US needs more radical change, pointing at the failures of past reforms. These activists say that it would not only be a waste of the momentum of these global protests, but that continuing to rely on police departments to address their own violence will simply lead to ongoing harm.
They point at the continued power and influence of police unions and legal protections for police officers accused of wrongdoing and excessive force as barriers to change. If police and politicians who oversee law enforcement continue to adopt policies that focus on fixing individual behaviors, they say, it will not address institutional and deeply embedded cultural problems.
Instead, they are backing efforts to immediately reduce police power and size, as a way to move toward dismantling police departments and creating different models of safety (Levin 1-4).
In order to fundamentally solve police brutality, we have to replant the roots of rotten trees within law enforcement. To deal with rotten roots, America needs to be honest that law enforcement originated from slave patrols meant to capture my descendants who aimed to flee from enslavement. America has not fully dealt with this. We also have to deal with the “above the law” mentality of officers, the fact that fear is used as an excuse to enact force, and the blue wall of silence that extends from police departments to prosecutor’s offices and courtrooms.
Most importantly, there needs to be a restructuring of civilian payouts for police misconduct. Eventually, there will be a large civil payout for the death of George Floyd. Troublingly, his family’s taxpayer money will be used to pay for the dehumanization of his body. Typically, officers are immune from the financial impacts of these civil payouts. Since 2010, the city of St. Louis has paid over $33 million and Baltimore was found liable for about $50 million for police misconduct. Over the past 20 years, Chicago spent over $650 million on police misconduct cases. …
My policy recommendation is for police department insurances to replace taxpayer money concerning civilian payouts for police misconduct. This restructuring will allow for police chiefs to better identify bad apples and justify their removal. Healthcare uses this model to make determinations about physicians. When hospital premiums increase due to medical malpractice, hospitals perform a cost-benefit analysis to determine if physicians should allow to continue surgeries.
Furthermore, bad apples should not be allowed to proliferate and spread to other trees. For many people, it is clear that the Minneapolis officers should have been fired long ago. Chavin has had 18 misconduct complaints against him, as have some of the other officers involved. While being fired instantly sends a clear message about accountability, this should be commonplace in a country that should treat every human life like it matters. However, it needs to be ensured they cannot work in law enforcement again. If this happened with the officers who killed Tamir Rice and Antwon Rose, those teenagers may still be alive (Ray 3-4).
Works cited:
Awad, Germine. “Saying ‘A Few Bad Apples’ Does Not End Systemic Racism in Policing.” UT News, June 22, 2020. Net. https://news.utexas.edu/2020/06/22/sa...
Cunningham, Malorie. “'A Few Bad Apples': Phrase Describing Rotten Police Officers Used to Have Different Meaning.” ABC News, June 14. 2020. Net. https://abcnews.go.com/US/bad-apples-...
Illing, Sean. “Why the Policing Problem Isn’t about ‘a Few Bad Apples’.” Vox, June 6, 2020. Net. https://www.vox.com/identities/2020/6...
Levin, Sam. “’It's Not about Bad Apples': How US Police Reforms Have Failed to Stop Brutality and Violence.” The Guardian, June 16, 2020. Net. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...
Ray, Rashawn. “Bad Apples Come from Rotten Trees in Policing.” Brookings, May 30, 2020. Net. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/how-we...
We must wonder if we would even know about George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, or Christian Cooper without phone videos. These incidents should make us all wonder how many more like them there are that did not get the opportunity to become martyred hashtags. Most Black people will tell you there are many more unnamed martyrs than named ones. In the words of Will Smith: “Racism is not getting worse. It is getting filmed.”
As I turn 40, I [Rashawn Ray] have been stopped while driving cars, sitting in parked cars, riding on buses and trains, walking, running, studying, eating, and clubbing. I have been cussed out, thrown up against concrete walls, and arrested by police. I have a PhD, am a professor at a major university, and do not have a criminal record. I also have several members of my family who are retired or former police and military. My great uncle, Walter J. Gooch, was the first Black chief of police in my hometown of Murfreesboro, TN. My grandfather, Clarence Williams, served in two wars, receiving a Purple Heart and Bronze Star. I should not even have to say these things because they do not seem to matter much.
As the father of two Black boys, I worry about the moment they will go from cute to criminal in the eyes and minds of so many people; how people will dehumanize their minds, weaponize their Blackness, and criminalize their bodies; how no credential, no degree, no level of income or wealth, no smile, no level of professionalism or grace can protect my babies from the gaze and guise of police violence and white supremacist stereotypes: Christian Cooper and Omar Jimenez (Ray 1-2)
Calls to reform, defund or dismantle police departments are being brought forth as solutions to the systemic racism that pervades many police departments in Texas and across the country. There is a tension between those who believe that there are “a few bad apples” and others who contend that departments in certain municipalities are so problematic that the system of policing has to change (Awad 1).
From Atlanta to Buffalo, New York, officers handling protests are being charged after violent videos spread, contradicting the officers' testimonies. When asked about the incidents, [Trump] national security advisor Robert O’Brien said in an interview with CNN that the issue is the result of a "few bad apples," not a result of systemic racism.
At a House committee hearing on police brutality on Tuesday, Republican Rep. Mike Johnson blamed problems in law enforcement on a "few bad apples."
And on Thursday at a discussion on race relations and policing, President Donald Trump stated, "You always have a bad apple, no matter where you go," claiming bad actors will always be a part of life, but "there aren't too many of them in the police department" (Cunningham 4).
The focus on a few bad apples is misguided at best and dangerous at worst. To root out racism, we need to fix the barrels.
… the killing of George Floyd demonstrates how one bad apple may have spoiled the bunch from a systemic racism perspective.
Derek Chauvin, the officer who is being charged with second degree murder, was able to snuff out George Floyd while three other officers watched and did not intervene. The other three officers are being charged with aiding and abetting second-degree murder, given that it was their inaction that also led to murder.
Let’s assume that Chauvin is the bad apple, a status cemented by at least 17 prior complaints lodged against him. His presence probably ruined the integrity of his fellow officers to the point where they stood by and let their fellow colleague murder a man. However, it was unlikely that Chauvin was the first bad apple in the Minnesota Police Department. Given other prior allegations lodged against the department, there was something about the system itself that corrupted the officers, perpetuating the creation of more bad apples. This gives credence to the notion of systemic racism.
The fact that two of the officers involved in the George Floyd case were rookie officers drives home the point that it is something about the system itself. One was working his third shift as an officer, and the other had been an officer for only four days. They looked to their more senior colleagues to figure out what to do.
The “bad apples” narrative is also being used to describe excessive force used by police officers during these racial protests. Some of the more recent instances caught on camera include: The pushing of a 75-year-old protester by two Buffalo police officers that resulted in the elderly man hospitalized in serious condition. The excessive use of force on college students in Atlanta that included the use of a Taser on one of the students. And a New York Police Department vehicle veers toward a group of protesters.
How many bad apples do you need before the “bunch” is spoiled?
...
In the words of Chris Rock: “Bad apples? Some jobs can’t have bad apples. Some jobs, everybody gotta be good” (Awad 1-3)
Paul Butler is a law professor at Georgetown, a former federal prosecutor, and the author of the 2017 book Chokehold: Policing Black Men. His work has long focused on the fundamentals of America’s criminal justice system and why they keep reproducing the same outcomes for black Americans. Here are excerpts of an interview he did for Vox Magazine.
The point of policing the hood is to demonstrate that the police officer dominates. That he’s the man, regardless of gender, that the officer is the boss, and that everybody else is subordinate. The way that that message is communicated is with fear. Fear for your physical safety. I called this “torture lite” in my book Chokehold, and some people thought that that was extreme. But I was actually thinking about a specific thing in international human rights law, and a specific evolution of torture, from the horrible pulling out of your fingernails to the way it works now — which is to make people feel both humiliated and terrified that anything could happen to them at any moment.
This attitude is present in a lot of police officers who work in communities of color, and it defines the dynamic between them and the people they’re supposed to be serving. It impacts all of us. I went to a fancy college and law school; I have a good job and drive a nice car. But every time there’s a police car behind me, my heart starts beating quickly. Every black man I know has the same story.
Because you just never know.
Let’s think about the Floyd case. Before we get to the killing, let’s think about the arrest. The store owner called the police and said that someone had tried to pass a fake $20 bill. The police respond, and what they do is virtually impossible to imagine happening to a white person. What they do is to approach Mr. Floyd’s car like he’s a violent thug. They order Mr. Floyd and the passengers to exit the car. One officer has his hand on his gun. They put Mr. Floyd in handcuffs. When he falls to the ground, they leave him on the ground in handcuffs, and then, as the whole world knows, they hold him down by his back and knee and legs for 10 minutes until he dies. I just can’t imagine that happening to a white person over a $20 bill.
… a lot of the conduct that people of color complain about is totally legal. … The defense [in the George Floyd case] will be that their use of force was reasonable. And they have a case to make. They don’t have a great case, given that Mr. Floyd was handcuffed, but what they will say is that he was resisting arrest and they used reasonable force to subdue him.
Outside of that case, in theory, the power that police have is unreal. I have a police officer buddy who comes and visits my criminal law class, and to demonstrate how much power he has, he invites my students to go on a ride-along in his car, to see what it’s like to patrol the streets of DC. He plays a game with them called Pick That Car. He tells the student, “Pick any car that you want, and I’ll stop it.” So the student will say, “How about that white Camry over there.”
… he says that he could follow any car, and after five minutes or three blocks, the driver will commit some traffic infraction, and then under the law he has the power to stop the car, to order the driver and the passengers to get out of the car. If he has reasonable suspicion that they might be armed or dangerous, he could touch their bodies, he can frisk them, he can ask to search their car. And it’s totally legal. That’s an example of the extraordinary power that police have.
And that extraordinary power, that constitutional power, is used more aggressively against black and brown men than against white soccer moms.
I don’t think police officers are any more racist than law professors or doctors or anybody else. In fact, I think that some people go into that work because they want to be warriors, and that’s not constructive, so when we think about change, we need to think about guardianship as a model, not war.
But I think a lot of people go into the work because they really want to help communities, and they really want to make a difference, and this belief is based on my experience as a prosecutor working with police officers of all backgrounds and of all races. So I don’t think that police officers are especially racist. But I do think we give them tools and authority in a context that leads them to deploy it unjustly against people of color.
So the problem is about culture, and it runs much deeper than a few racists here and there.
[Interviewer]: … how is it that non-racist cops, or cops who set out with good intentions, succumb to perverse incentives and end up enforcing inequalities they themselves would probably reject in the abstract?
The culture of law enforcement is very much a paramilitary culture. You’re part of a team and you have to have each other’s back. Part of the reason your question is so important is that we’re not just talking about white cops, we’re also talking about black cops. Police officers of color get caught up in the same loops. In hip-hop, there’s a lot of interest in black police officers, and the message you often hear is that black officers are actually worse than white officers, because they want to show off for the white cops.
… we can save lives in other ways before we [attempt to] crush white supremacy.
So in the meantime, we can make a difference by teaching cops to intervene when their peers are crossing the line, by teaching them how to deescalate, by changing our entire approach to nonviolent criminal arrests. These things are not going to bring the revolution, but they can save lives.
Martin Luther King says the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice. I hope that’s right. One of the most poignant moments of that horrific video [of Floyd’s death] is there’s a bystander who says to the cop, “Bro, he’s human.” The truth is that I don’t think those police officers saw Mr. Floyd as human. And I’m not sure that’s a problem that can be solved by a reform (Illing 1-6).
A growing body of research suggests that some of the most widely adopted reform efforts have not succeeded at curbing police violence in the ways the policies intended.
Research into the use of body cameras by police officers has shown no statistical difference in behaviors or reduction in force when the cameras are on. Body cameras also haven’t stopped egregious killings, have rarely led to discipline or termination, and have almost never yielded charges or convictions.
In Oakland, California, a police department monitor found that officers were failing to properly turn on cameras nearly 20% of the time.
…
Policies aimed at preventing excessive force and protecting free speech rights at protests have similarly led to little change. In protests across the country this week officers from some of the same departments that enacted reforms were seen violating those policies.
“The issue is not a ‘bad apples’ problem,” said Alisa Bierria, an organizer with Survived and Punished, a prison abolition group. “There is something specific about the institution of policing that is intrinsically violent.”
In Austin, policy dictates that officers may use beanbag rounds to de-escalate potentially deadly situations or “riotous behavior” that could cause injury. But at one of the early protests after Floyd’s death, police fired a beanbag round at a 16-year-old boy’s head, even though he was alone on a hill far from officers, and appeared to be watching the events. His brother said the ammunition fractured his skull and required emergency surgery.
There is also minimal evidence that implicit bias trainings affect officers’ prejudiced behavior on the job, and some research suggesting they could even be counterproductive, making officers resentful and more entrenched in racist viewpoints. In San Jose, California, earlier this month, a black community activist who had trained police on implicit bias for years, and personally knew the chief and others, tried to de-escalate a confrontation between officers and protesters. Police shot him in the groin with a rubber bullet, possibly preventing him from having children.
These kinds of repeated scandals are reminders that misconduct, abuse and brutality aren’t isolated acts that reforms can fix, activists said.
That idea was exemplified this month in Buffalo when two officers were suspended after video showed them shoving a 75-year-old peace activist to the ground. More than 50 officers, the entire emergency response team, resigned from that unit after the suspension, apparently in support of the two colleagues.
…
But given the failure of many past reforms, a coalition of activists actively opposes such moderate policy shifts and argues the US needs more radical change, pointing at the failures of past reforms. These activists say that it would not only be a waste of the momentum of these global protests, but that continuing to rely on police departments to address their own violence will simply lead to ongoing harm.
They point at the continued power and influence of police unions and legal protections for police officers accused of wrongdoing and excessive force as barriers to change. If police and politicians who oversee law enforcement continue to adopt policies that focus on fixing individual behaviors, they say, it will not address institutional and deeply embedded cultural problems.
Instead, they are backing efforts to immediately reduce police power and size, as a way to move toward dismantling police departments and creating different models of safety (Levin 1-4).
In order to fundamentally solve police brutality, we have to replant the roots of rotten trees within law enforcement. To deal with rotten roots, America needs to be honest that law enforcement originated from slave patrols meant to capture my descendants who aimed to flee from enslavement. America has not fully dealt with this. We also have to deal with the “above the law” mentality of officers, the fact that fear is used as an excuse to enact force, and the blue wall of silence that extends from police departments to prosecutor’s offices and courtrooms.
Most importantly, there needs to be a restructuring of civilian payouts for police misconduct. Eventually, there will be a large civil payout for the death of George Floyd. Troublingly, his family’s taxpayer money will be used to pay for the dehumanization of his body. Typically, officers are immune from the financial impacts of these civil payouts. Since 2010, the city of St. Louis has paid over $33 million and Baltimore was found liable for about $50 million for police misconduct. Over the past 20 years, Chicago spent over $650 million on police misconduct cases. …
My policy recommendation is for police department insurances to replace taxpayer money concerning civilian payouts for police misconduct. This restructuring will allow for police chiefs to better identify bad apples and justify their removal. Healthcare uses this model to make determinations about physicians. When hospital premiums increase due to medical malpractice, hospitals perform a cost-benefit analysis to determine if physicians should allow to continue surgeries.
Furthermore, bad apples should not be allowed to proliferate and spread to other trees. For many people, it is clear that the Minneapolis officers should have been fired long ago. Chavin has had 18 misconduct complaints against him, as have some of the other officers involved. While being fired instantly sends a clear message about accountability, this should be commonplace in a country that should treat every human life like it matters. However, it needs to be ensured they cannot work in law enforcement again. If this happened with the officers who killed Tamir Rice and Antwon Rose, those teenagers may still be alive (Ray 3-4).
Works cited:
Awad, Germine. “Saying ‘A Few Bad Apples’ Does Not End Systemic Racism in Policing.” UT News, June 22, 2020. Net. https://news.utexas.edu/2020/06/22/sa...
Cunningham, Malorie. “'A Few Bad Apples': Phrase Describing Rotten Police Officers Used to Have Different Meaning.” ABC News, June 14. 2020. Net. https://abcnews.go.com/US/bad-apples-...
Illing, Sean. “Why the Policing Problem Isn’t about ‘a Few Bad Apples’.” Vox, June 6, 2020. Net. https://www.vox.com/identities/2020/6...
Levin, Sam. “’It's Not about Bad Apples': How US Police Reforms Have Failed to Stop Brutality and Violence.” The Guardian, June 16, 2020. Net. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...
Ray, Rashawn. “Bad Apples Come from Rotten Trees in Policing.” Brookings, May 30, 2020. Net. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/how-we...
March 25, 2021
Crossing the River -- Chapter 10 -- Section 3
Characters Mentioned
Adams, Samuel – Continental Congress delegate. Leader of the rebel patriots of Massachusetts
Browner, Solomon – 18 year old Lexington youth, one of three men sent to scout the road west of Lexington, captured by Major Mitchell’s advance party
Clarke, Rev. Jonas – Lexington minister and influential political leader
Dawes, William – express rider
Gage, General Thomas – commanding general of British forces stationed in Boston
Hancock, John – Rich Boston merchant. Continental Congress delegate
Loring, Jonathan – One of a party of three Lexington men captured by Major Mitchell’s advance party
Lowell, John – John Hancock’s clerk
Mitchell, Major Edward – 10th Regiment. In command of a body of officers assigned to intercept express riders prior to the raid upon Concord
Parker, Captain John – Lexington militia captain
Patterson, Elijah – Lexington cabinet maker. One of a party of three captured by Major Mitchell’s advance party
Prescott, Dr. Samuel – traveling from his fiancee’s house near Lexington to Concord
Revere, Paul – Boston silversmith and express rider
Chapter 10, “My Name Is Revere,” Section 3
“Keep moving!” the sadistic lieutenant ordered. Using the side of his hanger, he struck the rump of Patterson’s horse.
The party of soldiers that had arrested and detained the three of them had separated into two groups. Patterson’s group, which included three lieutenants, four sergeants, Paul Revere, Loring, Browner, and a peddler whom the soldiers had an hour ago arrested, was riding toward Lexington. The main group, led by the patrol’s fearsome major, had thirty minutes earlier ridden ahead to locate and arrest John Hancock and Sam Adams. That they would not accomplish! They, not Reverend Clarke’s houseguests, would very soon be the hunted! “500 militiamen,” he had heard Mr. Revere say. A mere fifty, intelligently used, would be enough!
Guarded by a sergeant whom the major had instructed, “Take out your pistol. If he runs, kill him!” Revere had for a short time been verbally abused. “Damned rebel” he was! Patterson thought. Ten times the man these flaming cuckolds!
“You are in a damned critical situation,” one of the lieutenants had told Revere.
“I am sensible of it,” had been Revere’s bland reply.
Not having daunted Revere, having good reason themselves to be afraid, the seven soldiers had thereafter been silent.
At the top of Pine Hill, a half mile past the Nelson house, Patterson’s group came upon the lead group, waiting in the road.
The three lieutenants from Patterson’s group and the commanding officer conferred. Watching them, Patterson sized up his situation.
They were a mile and a half from the Common. Was Captain Parker aware of their proximity? Had he sent a rider out to discover why he, Loring, and Browner hadn’t returned? Were militiamen hiding behind trees and stone walls prepared to fight? Would these soldiers refuse to surrender? Would he, in the middle of them, draw fire?
Patterson pictured himself galloping across the Common. An officer or two might fire at him, but he wouldn’t be chased -- the patrol’s safety being too important. If he didn’t do this, what afterward should he expect?! Considering who was in charge, … the worst!
The four officers separated. A minute later the two groups started up. When we reach Lexington, I’ll kick my horse across the Common, Patterson vowed, all the way to Bedford, by God!
His body’s queasy lassitude suggested otherwise.
The toll of the tower bell startled them. It continued to peal. The riders at the front halted. Facing his captives, the wrathful major demanded an explanation.
“The bell's aringing,” Jonathan Loring said.
The officer’s look scorched him.
“The town's alarmed. You're all dead men!” Loring responded.
“I wouldn't be sayin' that,” the sergeant next to Loring whispered.
The major summoned four officers. They conferred. One of them dismounted. He approached Patterson.
“Get off your horse,” he said.
His heart pounding, Patterson dismounted. Wobbling a bit, he extended his right hand.
The officer’s eyes locked on him. “I must do you an injury!”
Patterson’s shoulder blades went numb. “What … are you going to do?” he stammered.
The officer withdrew his hanger. Emitting a high-pitched screech, Patterson lurched backward against the hindquarters of Solomon Browner's horse. The officer laughed. Turning his back, he pressed his blade against the bridle of Patterson’s horse.
Having severed also the horse’s saddle girths, the lieutenant ordered Browner, Loring, and the one-armed tin ware peddler to dismount.
Patterson’s bowels rumbled. Buttock muscles clenched, he watched the sadistic officer labor.
“It makes no sense,” Loring said. “They could simply take ‘em off.”
“They don’t want us usin’ them again, ever,” Browner answered.
“Spiteful bastards!” Loring muttered.
The officer with the hanger flung the last saddle to the side of the road.
“You are released!” Major Mitchell exclaimed, the four of them having looked at him expectantly. “Drive their horses off!” he ordered the sergeant who controlled Paul Revere’s mount. “But not you!” he said to its rider.
“Dismiss me as well.”
“I will not!”
Patterson turned his head. Loring and Browner had already crossed the road. They were scrambling over a rail fence. On the other side, bracing himself, Browner extended a hand to assist the peddler.
Ejecting blasts of gas, Patterson rushed to join them.
“I admit I cannot carry you. But I will not release you! Let the consequence be what it may,” Mitchell declared.
They started up again. They advanced no faster than a vigorous walker.
By now, Revere thought, Sons of Liberty in Concord would be removing the last of the cannon and powder. This time he had not warned them; he was confident that Prescott, or Dawes, had. He had been taken out of it; he would not entertain thoughts of what they might do to him. What that would be he would accept. With dignity. With pride. Rousing the temper of this belligerent officer had given him satisfaction; it would have to be his recompense. Because he had alerted the countryside, because his name inspired anathema throughout General Gage’s cadre, and, most importantly, because he had infuriated this man, nothing, not even the likelihood of capture, would induce the officer to release him.
He was mistaken.
A sudden burst of musket fire halted them.
“What does that mean?!”
“It’s a single volley. To summon Lexington’s minutemen.”
The Major slapped his reins against his saddle. Gritting his teeth, he cursed.
The sergeant controlling Revere’s horse grimaced. Revere saw fear in the soldier’s eyes.
“How far is it to Cambridge?!”
“Twenty miles,” Revere exaggerated.
“Is there another road to Cambridge?!”
“No.”
“Then, … be it so!”
The officer glared at the soldier holding Revere’s reins. “Is your horse tired, sergeant?!”
“Yes sir, he is.”
“Then take this man's beast!” he declared. “Take it!” he shouted.
Averting his face, one of the officers took Revere's reins. The sergeant stripped his own horse. A second officer slapped its rump. Showing no emotion, the first officer ordered Revere to dismount. The sergeant eased himself into Revere’s saddle. His back legs stiffening, the horse, Revere's excellent steed, urinated.
Major Mitchell’s patrol disappeared.
Revere did not dwell on his good fortune. He studied the rocky, wooded hillside north of the road. Going in that direction, cutting across the burying ground, he could save fifteen minutes. If Adams and Hancock had not left the Clarke house, he would have something new and amusing to tell!
Recalling Hancock in robe and slippers wanting Lowell to polish his sword, Revere laughed.
****
This ends my posting of chapters from Crossing the River. Below are links to Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com should you be interested in purchasing either a paperback or electronic copy of the novel or of my second novel Alsoomse and Wanchese. – Harold Titus
Crossing the River
https://www.amazon.com/Crossing-River...
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/cros...
Alsoomse and Wanchese
https://www.amazon.com/Alsoomse-Wanch...
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/also...
Adams, Samuel – Continental Congress delegate. Leader of the rebel patriots of Massachusetts
Browner, Solomon – 18 year old Lexington youth, one of three men sent to scout the road west of Lexington, captured by Major Mitchell’s advance party
Clarke, Rev. Jonas – Lexington minister and influential political leader
Dawes, William – express rider
Gage, General Thomas – commanding general of British forces stationed in Boston
Hancock, John – Rich Boston merchant. Continental Congress delegate
Loring, Jonathan – One of a party of three Lexington men captured by Major Mitchell’s advance party
Lowell, John – John Hancock’s clerk
Mitchell, Major Edward – 10th Regiment. In command of a body of officers assigned to intercept express riders prior to the raid upon Concord
Parker, Captain John – Lexington militia captain
Patterson, Elijah – Lexington cabinet maker. One of a party of three captured by Major Mitchell’s advance party
Prescott, Dr. Samuel – traveling from his fiancee’s house near Lexington to Concord
Revere, Paul – Boston silversmith and express rider
Chapter 10, “My Name Is Revere,” Section 3
“Keep moving!” the sadistic lieutenant ordered. Using the side of his hanger, he struck the rump of Patterson’s horse.
The party of soldiers that had arrested and detained the three of them had separated into two groups. Patterson’s group, which included three lieutenants, four sergeants, Paul Revere, Loring, Browner, and a peddler whom the soldiers had an hour ago arrested, was riding toward Lexington. The main group, led by the patrol’s fearsome major, had thirty minutes earlier ridden ahead to locate and arrest John Hancock and Sam Adams. That they would not accomplish! They, not Reverend Clarke’s houseguests, would very soon be the hunted! “500 militiamen,” he had heard Mr. Revere say. A mere fifty, intelligently used, would be enough!
Guarded by a sergeant whom the major had instructed, “Take out your pistol. If he runs, kill him!” Revere had for a short time been verbally abused. “Damned rebel” he was! Patterson thought. Ten times the man these flaming cuckolds!
“You are in a damned critical situation,” one of the lieutenants had told Revere.
“I am sensible of it,” had been Revere’s bland reply.
Not having daunted Revere, having good reason themselves to be afraid, the seven soldiers had thereafter been silent.
At the top of Pine Hill, a half mile past the Nelson house, Patterson’s group came upon the lead group, waiting in the road.
The three lieutenants from Patterson’s group and the commanding officer conferred. Watching them, Patterson sized up his situation.
They were a mile and a half from the Common. Was Captain Parker aware of their proximity? Had he sent a rider out to discover why he, Loring, and Browner hadn’t returned? Were militiamen hiding behind trees and stone walls prepared to fight? Would these soldiers refuse to surrender? Would he, in the middle of them, draw fire?
Patterson pictured himself galloping across the Common. An officer or two might fire at him, but he wouldn’t be chased -- the patrol’s safety being too important. If he didn’t do this, what afterward should he expect?! Considering who was in charge, … the worst!
The four officers separated. A minute later the two groups started up. When we reach Lexington, I’ll kick my horse across the Common, Patterson vowed, all the way to Bedford, by God!
His body’s queasy lassitude suggested otherwise.
The toll of the tower bell startled them. It continued to peal. The riders at the front halted. Facing his captives, the wrathful major demanded an explanation.
“The bell's aringing,” Jonathan Loring said.
The officer’s look scorched him.
“The town's alarmed. You're all dead men!” Loring responded.
“I wouldn't be sayin' that,” the sergeant next to Loring whispered.
The major summoned four officers. They conferred. One of them dismounted. He approached Patterson.
“Get off your horse,” he said.
His heart pounding, Patterson dismounted. Wobbling a bit, he extended his right hand.
The officer’s eyes locked on him. “I must do you an injury!”
Patterson’s shoulder blades went numb. “What … are you going to do?” he stammered.
The officer withdrew his hanger. Emitting a high-pitched screech, Patterson lurched backward against the hindquarters of Solomon Browner's horse. The officer laughed. Turning his back, he pressed his blade against the bridle of Patterson’s horse.
Having severed also the horse’s saddle girths, the lieutenant ordered Browner, Loring, and the one-armed tin ware peddler to dismount.
Patterson’s bowels rumbled. Buttock muscles clenched, he watched the sadistic officer labor.
“It makes no sense,” Loring said. “They could simply take ‘em off.”
“They don’t want us usin’ them again, ever,” Browner answered.
“Spiteful bastards!” Loring muttered.
The officer with the hanger flung the last saddle to the side of the road.
“You are released!” Major Mitchell exclaimed, the four of them having looked at him expectantly. “Drive their horses off!” he ordered the sergeant who controlled Paul Revere’s mount. “But not you!” he said to its rider.
“Dismiss me as well.”
“I will not!”
Patterson turned his head. Loring and Browner had already crossed the road. They were scrambling over a rail fence. On the other side, bracing himself, Browner extended a hand to assist the peddler.
Ejecting blasts of gas, Patterson rushed to join them.
“I admit I cannot carry you. But I will not release you! Let the consequence be what it may,” Mitchell declared.
They started up again. They advanced no faster than a vigorous walker.
By now, Revere thought, Sons of Liberty in Concord would be removing the last of the cannon and powder. This time he had not warned them; he was confident that Prescott, or Dawes, had. He had been taken out of it; he would not entertain thoughts of what they might do to him. What that would be he would accept. With dignity. With pride. Rousing the temper of this belligerent officer had given him satisfaction; it would have to be his recompense. Because he had alerted the countryside, because his name inspired anathema throughout General Gage’s cadre, and, most importantly, because he had infuriated this man, nothing, not even the likelihood of capture, would induce the officer to release him.
He was mistaken.
A sudden burst of musket fire halted them.
“What does that mean?!”
“It’s a single volley. To summon Lexington’s minutemen.”
The Major slapped his reins against his saddle. Gritting his teeth, he cursed.
The sergeant controlling Revere’s horse grimaced. Revere saw fear in the soldier’s eyes.
“How far is it to Cambridge?!”
“Twenty miles,” Revere exaggerated.
“Is there another road to Cambridge?!”
“No.”
“Then, … be it so!”
The officer glared at the soldier holding Revere’s reins. “Is your horse tired, sergeant?!”
“Yes sir, he is.”
“Then take this man's beast!” he declared. “Take it!” he shouted.
Averting his face, one of the officers took Revere's reins. The sergeant stripped his own horse. A second officer slapped its rump. Showing no emotion, the first officer ordered Revere to dismount. The sergeant eased himself into Revere’s saddle. His back legs stiffening, the horse, Revere's excellent steed, urinated.
Major Mitchell’s patrol disappeared.
Revere did not dwell on his good fortune. He studied the rocky, wooded hillside north of the road. Going in that direction, cutting across the burying ground, he could save fifteen minutes. If Adams and Hancock had not left the Clarke house, he would have something new and amusing to tell!
Recalling Hancock in robe and slippers wanting Lowell to polish his sword, Revere laughed.
****
This ends my posting of chapters from Crossing the River. Below are links to Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com should you be interested in purchasing either a paperback or electronic copy of the novel or of my second novel Alsoomse and Wanchese. – Harold Titus
Crossing the River
https://www.amazon.com/Crossing-River...
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/cros...
Alsoomse and Wanchese
https://www.amazon.com/Alsoomse-Wanch...
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/also...
March 21, 2021
Crossing the River -- Chapter 10 -- Section 2
Characters Mentioned
Clarke, Rev. Jonas – Lexington minister and influential political leader
Browner, Solomon – 18 year old Lexington youth, one of three men sent to scout the road west of Lexington, captured by Major Mitchell’s advance party
Eaton – Lexington militiaman at the meetinghouse
Gage, General Thomas – commanding general of British forces stationed in Boston
Gove – Tory farmer temporarily holding Josiah Nelson captive
Harrington – Lexington militiaman at the meetinghouse
Johnson – Lexington militiaman at the meetinghouse
Loring, Jonathan – One of a party of three Lexington men captured by Major Mitchell’s advance party
Nelson, Josiah – Lincoln farmer captured by Major Mitchell’s party
Parker, Captain John – Lexington militia captain
Patterson, Elijah – Lexington cabinet maker. One of a party of three captured by Major Mitchell’s advance party
Porter, Asahel – Woburn citizen who volunteered to scout the road east of Lexington
Winsett, John – Lexington youth who exploded gunpowder outside the town meetinghouse
Chapter 10, “My Name Is Revere,” Section 2
The sound of the bell had brought most of Lexington’s militiamen to the Meeting House. Told by their captain, John Parker, that the redcoats were marching, malcontents had started a contentious argument.
“We don't even know they're marching!” one militiaman shouted, addressing Parker. “It's been what, an hour, since you sent out your last scout? We should have heard something by now!”
“Maybe he was arrested! Think, why don’t you?!”
“We don’t know nothing!”
“I'll send out another scout, right now, if any of you be willing!” Parker answered.
He watched them turn their heads, a curious movement of hats, quick to criticize, not quick to volunteer!
“I will,” a voice sounded. Parker located the young man, Asahel Porter, leaning against the back wall. Porter was from Woburn. He motioned Porter to come forward. As they conferred, the arguers continued.
“We can stay here, and wait. Or we can go over t'the Tavern. It's warm there. It's just one night!”
“Some of us, Jonas, live too far away. Our families are goin’ t’need us, close by.”
“One night! What’s one night?!”
“Say that again, Johnson! These ears don’t believe they heard what you said!”
“I said my wife and children need me, close by.”
“Horse crap! You want t’be gone, before they get here!”
“If you lived where I live, Harrington, you'd do the same! Don’t be so quick to judge!”
“Talk all you want, Johnson. Once you leave here you’re not comin’ back! I’ll wager anyone a crown!”
“Judas, those of you leavin’, you'll all get back! We'll be firin' a musket, beatin' a drum!”
“That’s if'n our scouts do what they’re supposed to do!”
“We'll know soon enough!” Captain Parker bellowed. “Stop all this bickering!”
He witnessed again their redirection of heads. Damn them! He would make them listen! “No more talk about whether they’re coming! They are! When they do, I expect every last one of you to be here waiting!” He dared them to object.
“What I have t'decide,” he said, having daunted them, “is what we do once they get here!” Again, the hats. “Do we form up lines and stand against 'em?” It was the key point the Reverend had told him to advance.
“I say we stay out o' the way and watch 'em! What can we do against five, six hundred?”
“Get ourselves killed! That's your answer!”
“If they molest us, insult us, then we fight! Otherwise, …”
“We should stay over at Buckman's. Then go follow ‘em up the road.”
“That’s right, Eaton. Follow ‘em wagging our tails!”
“Listen! If there’s trouble at Concord, we'll be able t'help! Damn little we can do here!”
“Enough!” Parker’s fierce demeanor silenced them. “Having fought the French,” he roared, “I know better'n most of you what it’s like standing against superior numbers!” He hooked his thumbs over the front of his belt. “When the time comes, we'll see what we have t'do. It seems t'me, though, that we should let them know what we think o' them, what they're doing!”
“You mean fire on them?!”
“No! Stand our ground! Show them we've got principle! We’ll stand aside in good order if they move at us.”
He watched them twist about.
“I'm not for hidin' here or hidin’ at Buckman’s like some cornered weasel!”
“If we just stand there, in plain sight, showin' them we aim not t'shoot …”
“They'll fire on us! Count on it!”
“Ah, go home t'yer wife, Samuel.”
“Go hide under your bed! Like Johnson here!”
Three proponents continued to speak. It was clear to Parker that most, because they were silent, favored watching the redcoats pass leaving open the option to follow at a safe distance. It was what he would have decided, had he …
“As I said,” he shouted, “when the time comes! When our scouts let us know the British are near! Then we'll decide!”
“What good'll that do?!”
“I’m for decidin' now! The hell with all this jabber!”
“All right!” Parker raised his right hand. “All right! Then here it is!” Several standing men sat down. “If we don't change our minds, we'll not meddle with 'em! Sounds t'me that's what most of you want. We'll let them pass, if they don't abuse us.” He looked across the room at their attentive faces. “Those that want t'leave do so now. But listen for a drumbeat! Get back here then as fast as you can! Meeting over!”
He heard the sound of their weight on the plank floor. Sharp words were exchanged as they crowded toward the exit. He had not convinced them, but he still had time.
Questions. So many questions. What had happened to Patterson, Loring, and Browner? What would they say, when they returned, that would muddy the water?
Musket shots outside the Meeting House startled him. For an instant the room was deathly quiet. What the hell! he thought. Outside, he found several young men, inside a growing circle, grinning.
“We'll put 'em all on the ground, Captain!” one of them, brash John Winsett, shouted.
“Just a little practice, Captain. Sorry about that,” the boy next to Winsett shamefacedly said.
Josiah Nelson was awakened by his wife Elizabeth shortly before 3 a.m. Twice he rolled over on his right side only to be jabbed by her bony elbow.
“I heard horses,” she said just as he was about to speak.
Nelson rose. Yawning, he guided his callused feet through his farmer’s frock pant legs. A Lincoln minuteman, he had been assigned to watch the Concord road. Upon receiving evidence of a British expedition he was to ride to Bedford to alert that town’s militia. Two hours earlier a young man on a horse had warned him that regulars had crossed the Charles River bound for Concord. Believing that he would be warned a second time, he had returned to his bed to rest.
Opening his front door, he felt instantly the post midnight chill. Men on horseback had indeed stopped. They were wearing dark cloaks. Because they took no notice of him and because there were too many of them, he concluded that they were not express riders but farmers traveling to market. Had they just learned something from a passerby? Hatless, without shoes, he stepped out onto the path to hail them.
“Have you heard anything about Gage’s regulars? Are they coming out?” he asked the closest rider.
Turning his horse around, the man halted Nelson with a menacing stare. “We will let you know,” the man declared. “Be certain of that!” Down upon the top of Nelson’s head came the flat side of the officer’s hanger.
Nelson was aware that he was lying on his back. His scalp throbbed. He reached to touch it. Strong hands grasped his biceps.
They lifted him.
He was bleeding.
His legs labored to support his weight. His mind rebelled. Lie down. Decide what has happened. The hands gripping his arms prevailed.
He remembered.
He willed his body to stand.
“Take him along,” he heard somebody say. They were soldiers. British officers. One of them had tried to kill him.
He was propelled forward. His bare feet found ruts and stones. He fell to his right knee but was lifted, supported, goaded, lifted again, dragged. His right hand stanching his wound, he realized that he was being driven the several miles to Lexington. Why? How much farther would they do this before they abandoned him, believing he would bleed to death?
“I can’t walk as fast as you ride. I’m lame,” he said.
“We’ll not be riding as slow as you walk,” the officer closest to him, refusing to look, said.
“He slows us. Interminably.” The officer that had spoken, the one that had struck him, lowered his bony face. Never had Nelson seen in a man’s eyes such ferocity.
To Nelson’s handlers -- three Tory farmers -- the officer said: “Detain him! After the regulars pass, do what you will with him!”
They escorted him off the road.
The soldiers galloped out of sight.
Hoof-beats sounded behind them. Nelson’s captors pulled him behind two thick pine trees. More soldiers, and three or four county men, galloped past.
He concluded that the county men were clandestine guides. Seated on a flat surfaced boulder, supporting his drooping head with raised hands, he refused to speak.
Minutes passed. The Tory farmers remained silent. Twice he heard them stand and walk about. He sensed a festering irritation. Their leader, a prosperous farmer named Gove, eventually spoke. “You need bandaging.”
Nelson raised his head.
“If you’ll go home and not light a light, we’ll let you go.”
Nelson didn’t answer.
“But if you give any alarm, or light a light, we’ll burn your house down, over your head!”
He heard their departing footsteps.
Fawners! Trucklers! Craving their goose-down beds! He stared at the road a good half-minute. Teetering, he stood.
Maybe because they had pitied him, but more probably because they were tired and cold, they had abandoned him, but not so far, he thought, that going back he would faint. Crawl to his door if he had to, he would have his revenge! While his wife bandaged him, he would marshal his strength. Afterward, he would ride to Bedford, to Fitch Tavern, where angry militiamen would thereafter swiftly congregate.
Clarke, Rev. Jonas – Lexington minister and influential political leader
Browner, Solomon – 18 year old Lexington youth, one of three men sent to scout the road west of Lexington, captured by Major Mitchell’s advance party
Eaton – Lexington militiaman at the meetinghouse
Gage, General Thomas – commanding general of British forces stationed in Boston
Gove – Tory farmer temporarily holding Josiah Nelson captive
Harrington – Lexington militiaman at the meetinghouse
Johnson – Lexington militiaman at the meetinghouse
Loring, Jonathan – One of a party of three Lexington men captured by Major Mitchell’s advance party
Nelson, Josiah – Lincoln farmer captured by Major Mitchell’s party
Parker, Captain John – Lexington militia captain
Patterson, Elijah – Lexington cabinet maker. One of a party of three captured by Major Mitchell’s advance party
Porter, Asahel – Woburn citizen who volunteered to scout the road east of Lexington
Winsett, John – Lexington youth who exploded gunpowder outside the town meetinghouse
Chapter 10, “My Name Is Revere,” Section 2
The sound of the bell had brought most of Lexington’s militiamen to the Meeting House. Told by their captain, John Parker, that the redcoats were marching, malcontents had started a contentious argument.
“We don't even know they're marching!” one militiaman shouted, addressing Parker. “It's been what, an hour, since you sent out your last scout? We should have heard something by now!”
“Maybe he was arrested! Think, why don’t you?!”
“We don’t know nothing!”
“I'll send out another scout, right now, if any of you be willing!” Parker answered.
He watched them turn their heads, a curious movement of hats, quick to criticize, not quick to volunteer!
“I will,” a voice sounded. Parker located the young man, Asahel Porter, leaning against the back wall. Porter was from Woburn. He motioned Porter to come forward. As they conferred, the arguers continued.
“We can stay here, and wait. Or we can go over t'the Tavern. It's warm there. It's just one night!”
“Some of us, Jonas, live too far away. Our families are goin’ t’need us, close by.”
“One night! What’s one night?!”
“Say that again, Johnson! These ears don’t believe they heard what you said!”
“I said my wife and children need me, close by.”
“Horse crap! You want t’be gone, before they get here!”
“If you lived where I live, Harrington, you'd do the same! Don’t be so quick to judge!”
“Talk all you want, Johnson. Once you leave here you’re not comin’ back! I’ll wager anyone a crown!”
“Judas, those of you leavin’, you'll all get back! We'll be firin' a musket, beatin' a drum!”
“That’s if'n our scouts do what they’re supposed to do!”
“We'll know soon enough!” Captain Parker bellowed. “Stop all this bickering!”
He witnessed again their redirection of heads. Damn them! He would make them listen! “No more talk about whether they’re coming! They are! When they do, I expect every last one of you to be here waiting!” He dared them to object.
“What I have t'decide,” he said, having daunted them, “is what we do once they get here!” Again, the hats. “Do we form up lines and stand against 'em?” It was the key point the Reverend had told him to advance.
“I say we stay out o' the way and watch 'em! What can we do against five, six hundred?”
“Get ourselves killed! That's your answer!”
“If they molest us, insult us, then we fight! Otherwise, …”
“We should stay over at Buckman's. Then go follow ‘em up the road.”
“That’s right, Eaton. Follow ‘em wagging our tails!”
“Listen! If there’s trouble at Concord, we'll be able t'help! Damn little we can do here!”
“Enough!” Parker’s fierce demeanor silenced them. “Having fought the French,” he roared, “I know better'n most of you what it’s like standing against superior numbers!” He hooked his thumbs over the front of his belt. “When the time comes, we'll see what we have t'do. It seems t'me, though, that we should let them know what we think o' them, what they're doing!”
“You mean fire on them?!”
“No! Stand our ground! Show them we've got principle! We’ll stand aside in good order if they move at us.”
He watched them twist about.
“I'm not for hidin' here or hidin’ at Buckman’s like some cornered weasel!”
“If we just stand there, in plain sight, showin' them we aim not t'shoot …”
“They'll fire on us! Count on it!”
“Ah, go home t'yer wife, Samuel.”
“Go hide under your bed! Like Johnson here!”
Three proponents continued to speak. It was clear to Parker that most, because they were silent, favored watching the redcoats pass leaving open the option to follow at a safe distance. It was what he would have decided, had he …
“As I said,” he shouted, “when the time comes! When our scouts let us know the British are near! Then we'll decide!”
“What good'll that do?!”
“I’m for decidin' now! The hell with all this jabber!”
“All right!” Parker raised his right hand. “All right! Then here it is!” Several standing men sat down. “If we don't change our minds, we'll not meddle with 'em! Sounds t'me that's what most of you want. We'll let them pass, if they don't abuse us.” He looked across the room at their attentive faces. “Those that want t'leave do so now. But listen for a drumbeat! Get back here then as fast as you can! Meeting over!”
He heard the sound of their weight on the plank floor. Sharp words were exchanged as they crowded toward the exit. He had not convinced them, but he still had time.
Questions. So many questions. What had happened to Patterson, Loring, and Browner? What would they say, when they returned, that would muddy the water?
Musket shots outside the Meeting House startled him. For an instant the room was deathly quiet. What the hell! he thought. Outside, he found several young men, inside a growing circle, grinning.
“We'll put 'em all on the ground, Captain!” one of them, brash John Winsett, shouted.
“Just a little practice, Captain. Sorry about that,” the boy next to Winsett shamefacedly said.
Josiah Nelson was awakened by his wife Elizabeth shortly before 3 a.m. Twice he rolled over on his right side only to be jabbed by her bony elbow.
“I heard horses,” she said just as he was about to speak.
Nelson rose. Yawning, he guided his callused feet through his farmer’s frock pant legs. A Lincoln minuteman, he had been assigned to watch the Concord road. Upon receiving evidence of a British expedition he was to ride to Bedford to alert that town’s militia. Two hours earlier a young man on a horse had warned him that regulars had crossed the Charles River bound for Concord. Believing that he would be warned a second time, he had returned to his bed to rest.
Opening his front door, he felt instantly the post midnight chill. Men on horseback had indeed stopped. They were wearing dark cloaks. Because they took no notice of him and because there were too many of them, he concluded that they were not express riders but farmers traveling to market. Had they just learned something from a passerby? Hatless, without shoes, he stepped out onto the path to hail them.
“Have you heard anything about Gage’s regulars? Are they coming out?” he asked the closest rider.
Turning his horse around, the man halted Nelson with a menacing stare. “We will let you know,” the man declared. “Be certain of that!” Down upon the top of Nelson’s head came the flat side of the officer’s hanger.
Nelson was aware that he was lying on his back. His scalp throbbed. He reached to touch it. Strong hands grasped his biceps.
They lifted him.
He was bleeding.
His legs labored to support his weight. His mind rebelled. Lie down. Decide what has happened. The hands gripping his arms prevailed.
He remembered.
He willed his body to stand.
“Take him along,” he heard somebody say. They were soldiers. British officers. One of them had tried to kill him.
He was propelled forward. His bare feet found ruts and stones. He fell to his right knee but was lifted, supported, goaded, lifted again, dragged. His right hand stanching his wound, he realized that he was being driven the several miles to Lexington. Why? How much farther would they do this before they abandoned him, believing he would bleed to death?
“I can’t walk as fast as you ride. I’m lame,” he said.
“We’ll not be riding as slow as you walk,” the officer closest to him, refusing to look, said.
“He slows us. Interminably.” The officer that had spoken, the one that had struck him, lowered his bony face. Never had Nelson seen in a man’s eyes such ferocity.
To Nelson’s handlers -- three Tory farmers -- the officer said: “Detain him! After the regulars pass, do what you will with him!”
They escorted him off the road.
The soldiers galloped out of sight.
Hoof-beats sounded behind them. Nelson’s captors pulled him behind two thick pine trees. More soldiers, and three or four county men, galloped past.
He concluded that the county men were clandestine guides. Seated on a flat surfaced boulder, supporting his drooping head with raised hands, he refused to speak.
Minutes passed. The Tory farmers remained silent. Twice he heard them stand and walk about. He sensed a festering irritation. Their leader, a prosperous farmer named Gove, eventually spoke. “You need bandaging.”
Nelson raised his head.
“If you’ll go home and not light a light, we’ll let you go.”
Nelson didn’t answer.
“But if you give any alarm, or light a light, we’ll burn your house down, over your head!”
He heard their departing footsteps.
Fawners! Trucklers! Craving their goose-down beds! He stared at the road a good half-minute. Teetering, he stood.
Maybe because they had pitied him, but more probably because they were tired and cold, they had abandoned him, but not so far, he thought, that going back he would faint. Crawl to his door if he had to, he would have his revenge! While his wife bandaged him, he would marshal his strength. Afterward, he would ride to Bedford, to Fitch Tavern, where angry militiamen would thereafter swiftly congregate.
