After the death of his father, Andru Kulas just wanted to spend a night out with his friends. Things took a turn when a group of men suddenly approached his friend and pushed her to the ground. The attackers fled, and Andru and his friends climbed the roof of a nearby restaurant to search for them, prompting a local security guard to call the police. When police arrived on the scene, they accosted Andrew as he was eating a burrito, and then proceeded to pepper spray and arrest him. Police Accountability Report investigates.
Production: Taya Graham, Stephen Janis
Post-Production: Stephen Janis, Adam Coley
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Taya Graham:
Hello, my name is Taya Graham and welcome to the Police Accountability Report. As I always make clear, this show has a single purpose, holding the politically powerful institution of policing accountable. And to do so, we don’t just focus on the bad behavior of individual cops. Instead, we examine the system that makes bad policing possible. And today, we will achieve that goal by showing you this video of Colorado police tracking down a man, assaulting him, and arresting him after he tried to find an assailant who had pushed his female friend to the ground.
But it’s how much effort cops put into tracking down the victim, not the suspect that raises more questions as to why police partisans keep arguing, we need more cops, not less, a question we will investigate in light of this shocking video. But before we get started, I want you watching to know that if you have video evidence of police misconduct, please email it to us privately at par@therealnews.com, or you can reach out to me directly on Facebook or Twitter @tayasbaltimore and we might be able to investigate for you.
And please, like, share, and comment on our videos. It helps us get the word out and can even help our guests. And you know I read your comments and appreciate them. You see those little hearts I give out down there. Oh, and we also have a Patreon called Accountability Reports. So if you feel inspired to donate, please do. We don’t run ads or take corporate dollars, so anything you can spare is truly appreciated.
Okay, now we’ve gotten that out of the way. Now, almost every time we publish a story about police doing something inexplicable, we invariably get someone who posts a surprisingly predictable response. Put simply, “If you don’t like the police, maybe don’t call them when you need them.” Fair enough. Even though I think holding police accountable is not a for or against proposition, I get the point. But I think the person in the video I’m showing now would probably be happy if cops had followed the advice of our critics.
Because the series of events I’m about to relay to you are so impossible to explain, so seemingly excessive, it’s hard for me to put them into a context where I can begin to understand them or even explain them to you. An unrelenting pursuit by police that would be laughable if it hadn’t ended in personal tragedy for the victim.
The story starts in Fort Collins, Colorado in August of 2021 when Andrew Kulis was spending a night out with friends. His father had recently passed and those same friends didn’t want him to be alone while he was grieving, but the evening soon took a turn for the worse, when three men decided to start trouble by shoving Andrew’s female friend to the ground. The trio fled, which prompted Andrew and his associate to try to track them down. To do so, the pair climbed to a rooftop area of the bar to see if they could spot the assailants. However, the efforts failed to yield results.
So all three soon left the establishment to buy some burritos at a nearby eatery. And that, they thought, was the end of that. But for some reason, the action of Kulis and his friends had caught the attention of a bouncer at the club. That person, let’s call him a security Karen, actually followed the group to the restaurant, and then, I’m not kidding, called the police. And that leads to what you’re watching now, when not one, but two, but three Fort Collins cops decided that these post bar revelers were worthy of a serious show of force. And they called dispatch for backup. Take a look.
Andrew:
What’s going on?
Speaker 2:
Can you just give us a second here?
Andrew:
Yeah, but he’s helping them.
Speaker 2:
Yep. All right, can you just give us a second here?
Andrew:
So can you help me?
Speaker 2:
I’ll help you as soon as we’re done. Okay?
Andrew:
What’s going on?
Speaker 2:
Please give us some space, all right? Back up.
Andrew:
I’ll give you as much space as [inaudible 00:03:37].
Speaker 2:
All right, thank you. Then just stand back over there. Okay?
Andrew:
What’s going on? That’s great, but my rights are to [inaudible 00:03:46].
Speaker 2:
You don’t have rights in this right now.
Andrew:
No, I don’t have rights at all.
Speaker 2:
So I just need you to step back.
Andrew:
No, because we don’t have rights these days.
Speaker 2:
Do you want me to give you a ticket too?
Andrew:
Dude, come on. Serious right now? Come on. I’m being respectful.
Speaker 2:
I just told you, I’ll talk with you as soon as we’re done here.
Andrew:
[inaudible 00:04:04] out.
Taya Graham:
Now it’s worth noting the cops didn’t ask about the possible assailants, and they didn’t even really probe into the reasons Andrew and his friends went to the roof. Frankly, it’s hard to determine exactly why they thought it was necessary to investigate a man calmly eating a burrito and write him a ticket. But apparently, that’s exactly what they did. Take a look.
Andrew:
Because you can’t talk to me man-to-man with a burrito in my hand. Come on. Are you serious right now? There’s fucking three guys that fucking ran away at the fucking thing and pushed her down on the fucking ground. Yeah, you don’t care. No, because she fucking got her head knocked down on the ground.
Speaker 2:
If you keep encroaching on his face, you’re going to get a ticket.
Andrew:
No, no, I’ll back away.
Speaker 2:
Thank you.
Andrew:
I’ll back away and I’ll talk my peace because that’s my right. Do you understand that? That’s my right.
Taya Graham:
Now, one can understand why Andrew might’ve been a bit annoyed with this intrusion. Remember again, he was mourning the death of his father, but even more importantly, his female friend had been the victim of an assault. But those facts didn’t seem to matter as cops escalated the encounter.
Andrew:
Go ahead, do your fucking shit. But you know what? Someone got hurt and it wasn’t right. There’s three other guys that fucking knocked her down and you guys don’t care.
Speaker 2:
Based on what the informant told us, you are getting a citation for third degree trespassing, okay?
Andrew:
For what, dude? You didn’t give me anything. For what?
Speaker 2:
[inaudible 00:05:45] trespassing.
Andrew:
Trespass… Are you [inaudible 00:05:48]?
Speaker 2:
So, I’ll explain this to you-
Andrew:
No, no. I’m not signing anything.
Speaker 2:
You don’t have to sign anything.
Andrew:
No, you can keep my fucking ID. I’ll get it next week. No, that’s bullshit, dude. No, I’m not taking it. No.
Speaker 5:
If you don’t take it, it’s still getting turned in and there’s going to be a warrant for your arrest when you don’t show up for that court date.
Andrew:
Yeah, that’s great. I’ll fucking show up because I have a client that is a fucking attorney and it’ll take your shit. Oh, yeah. No, no, no, no you don’t…
Speaker 5:
This is yours, okay?
Andrew:
Are you serious right now?
Taya Graham:
In fact, given the circumstances, this seems like the perfect moment to exercise what we call officer discretion, the idea that an officer can deem an incident not worth police intervention. It’s a concept that apparently the police in Fort Collins are not familiar with, because instead of just deciding to write the ticket and leave, they apparently had to take Andrew to the ground. Take a look.
Speaker 2:
Stop resisting.
Speaker 7:
Andrew, stop.
Andrew:
Dude. Ow, dude.
Speaker 2:
Stop resisting.
Andrew:
I’m not. I’m sorry, are you serious right now?
Speaker 2:
Stop resisting.
Andrew:
Are you serious?
Speaker 2:
Put your hand behind your back your back.
Andrew:
[inaudible 00:06:55].
Speaker 7:
Andrew, stop.
Speaker 2:
Stop resisting.
Andrew:
I’m sorry, are you serious right now?
Speaker 2:
Stop resisting.
Andrew:
Are you serious?
Speaker 2:
Put your hand behind your back.
Speaker 7:
Stop, stop. Andrew, Andrew, stop.
Speaker 2:
Stop resisting.
Speaker 7:
Andrew, stop. Andrew, stop.
Speaker 2:
Stop resisting.
Andrew:
Let’s go motherfuckers.
Speaker 2:
OC.
Speaker 7:
No, Andrew. Andrew, stop.
Speaker 2:
OC.
Speaker 7:
Andrew, stop.
Speaker 2:
Comply or force will be used against you.
Taya Graham:
And apparently undeterred by the absurdity of turning a nonviolent encounter into an ugly episode of police brutality, cops went even further. They decided that Andrew was so dangerous and such a threat to the safety of Fort Collins, they pepper sprayed him. But it wasn’t just your normal use of OC pepper spray, which is bad enough. The cops on the scene actually violated police procedure and sprayed just two inches away from his face.
A dangerous use of force that is all, but prohibited for simple reason. Spraying the weapon that close can lead to something called hydraulic needling, a misuse of which can permanently damage the eyes and cause serious injury. Take a look and just a warning, this might be upsetting. So if you don’t want to see what police did, just skip this portion of the body camera video.
Speaker 2:
OC.
Speaker 7:
Andrew, stop.
Speaker 2:
Comply or force will be used against you.
Andrew:
Please don’t.
Speaker 2:
Comply.
Speaker 5:
You’re going to get OC.
Speaker 2:
Turn over.
Speaker 7:
You, get away.
Speaker 5:
Go on your back.
Speaker 2:
Turn over.
Andrew:
Are you serious right now?
Speaker 2:
Yes.
Speaker 5:
[inaudible 00:08:22]. Sorry.
Speaker 2:
Stop resisting.
Taya Graham:
Now, the injuries Andrew suffered in the days he was functionally blind were just the beginning of the fallout over his arrest. And for more on what has happened since and what the investigation into that office uncovered, I will be joined by Sarah Schielke shortly. But before we do, I’m joined by my reporting partner, Stephen Janis, who has been looking into the police and looking into the facts about this case. Stephen, thank you so much for joining me.
Stephen Janis:
Taya, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Taya Graham:
So Stephen, first, the officer who maced Andrew, officer Parks, was there an investigation into his actions and what were the results?
Stephen Janis:
Well, Taya, this is a very interesting story, because first of all, internal affairs found out that the officer did not need to mace Mr. Kulis at all. In fact, they said they could have put the ticket down on the ground, they could have put the license down on the ground, or they could have confiscated it. They didn’t need to use force. No force was justified. So the internal investigation was extremely clear, this officer violated departmental policy.
Taya Graham:
So for the actions of Officer Kevin Parks, which we know violated police procedure by their own standards, what sort of discipline did he face or was he prosecuted?
Stephen Janis:
Well, Taya, this is where the story gets really interesting, because no, nothing was done to this officer. This officer was not punished. He was fully exonerated by internal affairs and the police chief. But on top of that, we got this picture of him giving him awards shortly after this determination. So really, you can see this is a typical case how policing and police are incapable of policing themselves.
Taya Graham:
So what else do we know about the Fort Collins Police Department?
Stephen Janis:
Well, we know a lot of things. Number one, we know there’s an officer who has been accused of writing 10 false DUIs, but we also know something just from watching this video, what did we learn? They sent five officers to a trespassing case. I can’t think of any more stark example of over-policing to send five officers to write a trespassing ticket. If you need that many officers to do that, you have too many officers. I think that’s a lesson we can take from this and it’s something important to keep in mind when we cover policing across this country.
Taya Graham:
And now to discuss what she’s uncovered about the officers, the department, and the general absurdity of this arrest, I’m joined by Andrew’s lawyer, Sarah Schielke. Sarah, thank you so much for joining me.
Sarah Schielke:
Thanks for having me, Taya.
Taya Graham:
So first, tell me why Andrew and his friend allegedly trespassed onto the roof of the bar. It’s something to do with the assault of their female friend, correct?
Sarah Schielke:
Yeah. They had been out that night. Andrew had with his two friends and there had apparently been some kind of scuffle in a bar that involved… Not involving them, but involving some other guy ultimately shoving their female friend as he ran out. And they went looking for him, they wanted to confront him and were trying to find the guy. And in their endeavoring to find him, they went up on this rooftop area of a bar. They didn’t realize it was closed. They just went up there to get a better vantage point, couldn’t find him. And so basically kind of gave up, figured he was long gone and went across the street to get burritos.
Taya Graham:
So Andrew and his friends had already peacefully moved on to a food stand and were enjoying a burrito when over three Fort Collins police officers approached them. Can you tell me what happened next?
Sarah Schielke:
Apparently a bouncer had noticed them go up in the rooftop and had called police, and then had followed Andrew and his two friends around. Waiting for the police to arrive, this is a very over-policed town and with not very much crime for the officers to keep themselves occupied with. So it looks to me at least like a good portion of the entire night shift showed up, and the bouncer pointed out Andrew and his friends over peaceably eating burritos to them.
And they went up to them, began questioning them about this alleged trespass and they openly admitted they went up there and that they were looking for the guy who had shoved their friend. And they implored these officers to help them with that. And were trying to provide more information to assist and they were not interested in investigating this assault, which their female friend also corroborated had happened to her. They were far more interested apparently in this third degree trespass, writing these tickets, which is a petty offense, the lowest level crime in the state of Colorado.
Taya Graham:
Can you tell me why so many Fort Collins police officers would come to a scene for such a minor and petty trespass offense?
Sarah Schielke:
Yep. Third degree trespass is a petty offense in Colorado. I have no idea. Someone may need to ask the Fort Collins police services about that. I mean, if you want to know my broader thoughts on that, it’s because this area, this state, frankly the whole country, but especially here locally, is extremely over-policed. We have too many officers with not enough things to do. So when that call came in and they’ve got everybody working that night shift, they sent them all because there’s not much crime happening here.
Taya Graham:
Now, Andrew refused physically taking the summons. That’s his legal right, correct? I mean, did Andrew actually violate the law at any time during his interaction with these police officers?
Sarah Schielke:
The second that that citation was completed and Andrew informed the officer he was showing up and he had a means for showing up, there’s really nothing left for them to do. Legally, rationally, constitutionally, there’s no justification to detain him. There’s no justification to jam the ticket in his pocket, and there’s certainly no justification to use any kind of force in that scenario. The fact that this officer, Officer Park did these things, I think it speaks to the fact that earlier, Andrew was very critical.
The fact that these guys were not investigating this assault on their friend, he used a very colorful language. He exercises First Amendment Right to criticize his government, which is in my opinion, the most important constitutional right we have. And unfortunately, when you have officers with ego involved, when you have departments that endorse and condone escalation, needless escalation of these encounters into violence, you will see more often than you would believe these type of scenarios unfold where the officer who’s aggrieved, whose ego is aggrieved, waits for the first opportunity upon which they can claim fill in the blank, resisting, obstructing, all of those fake type of justification offenses. And then they go wild on the person. They get very violent, they escalate and we see the type of stuff we saw in this video.
Taya Graham:
The police that were attempting to serve the citation suddenly became very aggressive and threw Andrew to the ground. What happened next?
Sarah Schielke:
In terms of what leads up to these events, a theme I’ve always seemed to notice is it’s not just something as simple as not wanting to take a citation. What usually precipitates these type of wild aggression events from police officers is that the person that they’re attacking was critical of their police work prior to them. That they were exercising their First Amendment Right to criticize their government, criticize the actions of their government, and a lot of the times, these people aren’t going to be using the nicest of words.
As you can see, Mr. Kulis does, but this is supposed to be part and parcel of the job as a police officer is that you are above responding with violence to these types of comments. It’s really the core of your job, but that obviously is not what happened here. Andrew expressed a lot of displeasure using some pretty colorful words about their failure to investigate the guy who had assaulted their friend. And when this officer got the first opportunity to retaliate and hurt him for that, we see him do it.
And it’s very obvious that this encounter should have been ended once that ticket was ripped off and handed to him. But instead, it escalates into what we see on the camera, which is inexplicable, horrific, outrageous. There aren’t enough words for it. As a member of this community, I can tell you that myself and basically every other person I know living here would not look at that situation and say, oh, this is some criminal activity. I hope that the police snuff out with force and violence. In fact, that’s the last thing that I would want as a community member.
And these police officers are supposed to know that, they’re supposed to be trained this way and yet we see as this unfolded not just with the events themselves, but the aftermath with internal affairs at this police department saying this was unjustified force. And then the chief taking it somewhere else to get people to exonerate his officer anyway. It’s question marks and exclamation points left and right. Where do we begin?
Taya Graham:
Now, there can be very serious consequences for pepper spraying someone so close to their face, especially just two or three inches away. Can you talk about how serious it is?
Sarah Schielke:
Yeah, so there’s not much scientific data on what happens when you spray somebody in their eyes from that close because nobody’s willing to do it on humans. It is extremely dangerous. The operator’s manuals, all of the training that any agency receives regarding this OC spray states that it’s supposed to be deployed from minimum of three feet away. And if deployed within three feet, the circumstances need to be that the officer’s life is in danger basically. Obviously not the case here.
I mean, they have five officers tackling on… Choking Andrew, doing the whole… They’ve got him down and they’re just yelling at him to roll over, which is a physical impossibility for him at that point. And then they spray him from two inches. That, as I watch it, looks nothing short of deliberately and knowingly retaliatory, knowingly a policy violation and a violation of training.
We can see in the police department’s heavily redacted IA investigation into it that they interviewed one of their own lieutenants who confirmed that their officers are trained not to deploy it from that close. And the risk is this what’s called hydraulic needling effect, which is where the particulate that is in the OC spray and combined with the volume at which it is sprayed out can cause the particulates to be permanently launched in the eyeball in a way that your eye could never heal, which unfortunately did happen with Andrew in this case. He has a little area in his left eye that has remained cloudy vision-wise ever since the incident.
Taya Graham:
So how long was Andrew in jail for and how serious were his injuries? I mean, he was in pain and functionally blind for nearly three days.
Sarah Schielke:
He was, and it took a really long time for him to get medical care on scene, for him to be seen to receive medical treatment at the jail. He had contacts in, which is an additionally endangering event that weren’t removed until after he was at the jail. So that was trapping more of that spray against his eye. I can’t imagine how painful it was and I also can’t imagine… I mean, Andrew lives by himself and his father had just passed away. It was the only family he had, and so he had to spend those next three days trying to take care of himself, functionally blind, worrying I’m sure the whole time of whether he was ever going to get full vision restored.
Taya Graham:
So what are the counts and allegations in your lawsuit? What type of case are you filing?
Sarah Schielke:
We filed a lawsuit in federal courts for violations of Andrew’s constitutional rights, both state and federal. The primary ones being the Fourth Amendment and the Colorado equivalent here, which is to be free from Unreasonable Search and Seizure. There’s also, we’ve filed what are called Monell Claims. Those are claims that target and go after the municipality itself, the chain of command, the people in charge, for their basically failing to train or failing to supervise.
Or permitting such a pattern or custom within their departments of permitting this behavior that that became a moving, driving cause of the event as well. I think that what is extremely compelling on that Monell Claim here for Mr. Culis’ lawsuit with respect to the chief and Fort Collins police services itself is the fact that they ratified the behavior afterwards.
Taya Graham:
How did the department justify their findings?
Sarah Schielke:
When confronted with a video, which is obviously an officer using force when he had no authorization to do so, then making that force increasingly excessive with this pinnacle of being sprayed in the eyes. But the spraying in the eyes is so crazy to think about that a lot of what I’ve noticed gets lost in the shuffles well is that when he throws him to the ground, that was not an accepted or trained takedown method.
The grabbing him from the back and swinging him down. And very unsurprisingly, you can actually hear Andrew’s head hit the concrete and he appears to have had his head shoved in that direction on his way down by Officer Park, which thank God he doesn’t have brain injuries from that. That has the potential to be even more seriously permanently damaging to a human being.
This case is super unusual and jaw dropping because we have these IA units. It’s yet another safeguard that we have installed to ensure that police are held accountable. And that when police officers abuse their power, that it’s one of our many… Along with body cams and the laws Colorado has been passing for that as well, it’s one of the safeguards we built in. And here we witnessed that safeguard actually appeared to be functioning appropriately in terms of doing a thorough investigation, looking at the policy, talking to who trains on the OC spray.
And then producing these findings saying that they shouldn’t have done this. Where things take this insane turn and what for me, I think makes the biggest and most concerning claim in this case come to light is what the chief and the chain of command did with those findings afterwards. Which was to redact them away and without explanation, without explanation to their community especially, but also without explanation of Mr. Culis who did make this complaint to initiate the investigation. To just exonerate this officer and that’s what we call in the lawsuit world, that’s ratification of conduct, which suggests that this officer likely engaged in it because he knew he wouldn’t get in trouble for it and potentially would be complimented for it.
Taya Graham:
Can you tell me if there are any issues with excessive force or police misconduct within the Fort Collins Police Department? I mean, this is an exceptionally aggressive incident over a minor offense. Are there issues with this department?
Sarah Schielke:
In my research for this lawsuit and from what I just know practicing in this area, there unfortunately is. Fort Collins Police Department has a long and recent history of using OC spray on people when they really should not have, and I’m tasing people when they shouldn’t have, either because they didn’t have justification to do so, or because they’re deploying it in a way that violates training in terms of being too dangerous.
Taya Graham:
What do you and Andrew hope will be the result of this lawsuit?
Sarah Schielke:
Obviously the first issue, and I feel like I’m a broken record on this sometimes is leadership. We need to have a change in leadership. The guy who’s in charge right now, I don’t know if you saw, on the day I released the video and filed the lawsuit in this case, there was so much backlash on him and his department that he went on to the Fort Collins Police YouTube and posted a video defending what they did. And basically telling everybody that they don’t have all the facts so they’re going to re-release the video, et cetera.
It doesn’t look like it went very well for him with this endeavor, but joking aside, that’s deeply concerning that a chief would want to do that given when he’s seeing what the community feedback is, which is why on earth would you guys have utilized force? Or even continued escalating this very garden-variety low level offense type of encounter? And for him to jump up and pretty boldly and proudly say that nothing wrong was done here, that’s a big concern.
I think there need to be leadership changes obviously when that’s the factual landscape we’re looking at. Another interesting wrinkle with this lawsuit that happened after we filed it was that the chief in his statement to the press, because there was a lot of local news coverage on it here, he informed everybody that the Citizen Review Board had reviewed this and exonerated this officer for the event.
And if you look at how he says this and pushes this narrative of the Citizen Review Board exonerating it, it really sounds like he is trying to shove all of the blame for the ratification onto this board of six citizens who typically are former police officers. And for whom he and other officers at the agency control what information they receive when they’re doing a review. I have a lot to say about that that we probably don’t have time for.
But I’ve always had the thought that in my experience, I’ve never seen a citizen review board actually do anything worthwhile. Ever take a stand or say anything that isn’t aligned with whatever predetermined outcome the agency wants. And for in this situation on such bad facts, on really incontrovertibly bad facts with a very bad video for this chief to jump out to the public and say, our Citizen Review Board exonerated this officer, that to me, is such an indictment of the Citizen Review Board.
Taya Graham:
Okay. I think my main takeaway from this story is something about policing that continues to play out over and over again, but could use some discussion so that we better understand it. And when I say understand it, I mean grasping the consequences of bad policy with the hopes of avoiding situations like the one we just showed you in the future. In this case, what I mean is how often we misapply the power of policing to tasks that could be otherwise dealt with without handcuffs, conflicts in tricky situations that for some unknown reason fall under the auspices of police, but would be better served if they didn’t.
Now, I think there’s a reason for this overuse of the badge that also explains my aforementioned concern about the misapplication of state power. An underlying imperative that drives police into spaces that would otherwise be better served, but is driven by perverse incentives that are forcing the square peg of policing into the round hole of social ills. Not just convenient, but beneficial to some. So what do I mean? Well, let me show you, not tell you.
I’m going to start with this unassuming piece of plastic that I believe is a perfect example of all the ridiculous bad policy choices I just described. This instrument, which dispenses a life-saving medicine, tells us all we need to know about the literally upside down world our addiction to policing has created. So this is what’s known as Narcan. It’s literally Lazarus in a bottle, a medicine that can bring people who have overdosed on opioids back to life with a single shot.
In fact, it’s so efficacious, that just recently the drug was made available to buy without a prescription so that anyone who needs it can theoretically get it. The move was made in response to the ever-growing opioid crisis, which continues to claim tens of thousands of lives per year. The hope is that if Narcan is easier to obtain, lives can be saved in the process. There’s a catch, because it turns out that the company which makes Narcan actually fought efforts to make it more available.
In fact, a recent Washington Post article found that executives lobbied Congress to delay the process to make it over-the-counter for nearly eight years. During that period, tens of thousands… Actually, hold that. Hundreds of thousands of people died and yet public officials were unable, afraid, or otherwise bought and paid for to the extent that they did not do a single thing to ensure that a lifesaving medication was available everywhere and for everyone, even as hundreds of thousands of people die.
Let me emphasize, people were allowed to die and officials did nothing. Instead, as I said before, they protected the profits of a single drug company, but it gets worse. Over that same period of time, the government was more than willing to fund another so-called solution to address the overdose crisis. An approach that has been used over and over again with increasingly dismal results. I’m talking about policing.
That’s right. While a life-saving drug was totally out the reach of the people who needed it the most, so executives could grab greater profits, the government was more than willing to throw millions of dollars at law enforcement to fix a health problem. While Wall Street gobbled up big bonuses and fat fees from big pharma, our own representative government couldn’t overcome their own greed to use a simple solution that was literally right at their fingertips.
Instead, they threw millions, actually, hundreds of millions at police to cure addiction. I mean, I want you to think about how sick that calculus really is. We know that opioid addiction is literally a physical dependence, meaning, once you’re hooked, you need medical treatment to cure it. We know that it was the pharmaceutical companies themselves that flooded the country with opioid pills to bolster profits, while evidence showed deaths from their abuse were climbing. And we know the war on drugs have been an utter and obvious failure even though billions of dollars have been spent to prosecute it.
And yet, still, still our government chose to empower people with guns and handcuffs to arrest and imprison people with a condition that could better be solved with that humble drug. They chose to use courts and cages and cops to fix a disease of the mind and body instead of choosing to demand. And I do mean demand, that a drug company put people over profits. I am serious. We need to think about how horrible this is. We need to comprehend how cruel this idea is, how much it says about the police state, how much it tells us about the type of law enforcement we see on this show and what it is really about.
We, meaning our country, could not forego profits to save lives and instead we used policing to address a medical crisis. We literally could not summon the courage or the power to stop people from dying while we easily shelled out more money for cops, more patrol cars, more jail cells, and ultimately, more human suffering. I want you to think about what this means, that greed trumped life, that it’s easier to fund arrest than it is to fund a medical marvel. And that ultimately, we chose profits over people and cops over care.
Nothing about this makes sense unless you’re willing to understand how much enforcing the law is really about unleashing the cruelty of a system that is not only irrational, but in my opinion, often barbaric. I want you for a moment to take stock of this idea, how inhumane it is, how utterly irrational it is, how completely ridiculous it is, and yet, how symbolic it is of the problem with a country that thrives on punishment for profit.
Simply put, it’s an absolutely absurd approach to an existential crisis, which once again, only seems to exacerbate it. This is exactly the reason people do not trust our government. This more so than social media or TikTok is why people are skeptical of power. The utter institutional stupidity and carelessness is why we don’t believe the people we send to Washington actually work for us. I have seen firsthand how the opioid crisis has affected my own city of Baltimore.
I have reported on a woman specifically who could not get proper treatment and died as a result. I have been a witness to the utter arrogance and dismissiveness of a system that would rather jail drug users than offer them life-saving medications. I have recounted in my reporting how that policy has torn our city asunder. And what I’ve learned is that all of the stupidity, arrogance, and yes, cruelty, stems from a simple yet destructive idea, that we don’t matter.
Well, let me say this, you matter to us. You matter to me, and we will continue to report on stories that matter to everyone as long as we’re able to, as long as you want us to. I’d like to thank my guest, civil rights attorney, Sarah Schielke, for her work to protect the civil liberties of the public and for taking the time to speak with us today. Thank you, Sarah. And of course, I have to thank intrepid reporter, Stephen Janis for his writing, research, and editing on this piece. Thank you Stephen.
Stephen Janis:
Taya, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Taya Graham:
And I want to thank friends of the show, Noli D and Lacey R for their support, thank you both very much. And a very special thanks to our Accountability Report, Patreons. We appreciate you and I look forward to thanking each and every one of you personally in our next livestream, especially Patreon associate producers, John ER, David K, and Louis P. Super fans, Shane [inaudible 00:35:24], Pineapple Girl, Chris R, Matter of Rights, and Angela True.
And I want you watching to know that if you have video evidence of police misconduct or brutality, please share it with us and we might be able to investigate for you. Please reach out to us. You can email us tips privately at par@therealnews.com and share your evidence of police misconduct. You can also message us at Police Accountability Report on Facebook or Instagram or at Eyes on Police on Twitter. And of course, you can always message me directly @tayasbaltimore on Twitter and Facebook.
And please like and comment. You know I really read your comments and appreciate them. And we do have the Patreon link pinned in the comments below for Accountability Report. So if you feel inspired to donate, please do. We don’t run ads or take corporate dollars, so anything you can spare is truly appreciated. My name is Taya Graham and I’m your host of the Police Accountability Report. Please, be safe out there.
Speaker 9:
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This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
