This story first appeared in Common Dreams on Oct. 21, 2021. It is shared here with permission under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
Two weeks after a review board cleared Guantánamo Bay prisoner Asadullah Haroon Gul for release, a federal judge ruled this week that the Afghan’s imprisonment by the US military in Cuba for over 14 years without charge or trial is illegal.
“This is such happy, sweet news for our family. We now pray that Asadullah is sent back home quickly—where he belongs.”
Judge Amit P. Mehta of the US District Court for the District of Columbia on Tuesday granted Gul’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus, making him the first Guantánamo detainee in over a decade to win such a case against the government.
In a ruling still undergoing classification review, Judge Amit P. Mehta of the US District Court for the District of Columbia on Tuesday granted Gul’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus, making him the first Guantánamo detainee in over a decade to win such a case against the government.
Mehta ruled that the United States had no legal basis for imprisoning Gul, a 40-year-old militant captured in Afghanistan in 2007, because he was not a member of al-Qaeda.
“This is a historic victory for the rule of law and a much-needed reminder to the US government that there are limits on what it may do in the name of national security,” Tara Plochocki, an attorney for Gul, said in a statement. “I’m hopeful that Asadullah will soon be reunited with his family.”
While a prisoner at Guantánamo, Gul has been subjected to physical and psychological torture, “including being beaten, hung by his wrists, deprived of food and water, and prevented from praying,” as well as “sleep deprivation, extreme cold temperatures, and solitary confinement,” according to the human rights group Reprieve.
BREAKING: A US court has ruled that our client Asadullah Haroon Gul’s imprisonment in Guantánamo is unlawful.
In this landmark ruling, Asadullah has become the first Guantánamo detainee in 10 years to win a habeas corpus case. 1/4 https://t.co/Z9Jt7JRd6n
Mark Maher, a lawyer at Reprieve US who also represents Gul, said: “We are thrilled for Asad. A federal court has finally affirmed what Asad has known for so long—he should be home with his family, and his detention is unlawful.”
“This is a landmark ruling,” added Maher. “For 20 years, successive US administrations have asserted their right to imprison people indefinitely, without charge or trial. Guantánamo was built on the shakiest of legal foundations, and that has never been more clear than it is today.”
The ruling does not mean that Gul’s release is imminent. The Biden administration can appeal the decision, and as The New York Timesnoted:
In 2008, a federal judge ruled that 17 Muslims from China of the Uyghur minority were unlawfully detained at Guantánamo Bay but, as an oppressed minority, could not go home. The Uyghurs then languished at the prison for years while the Obama administration sought nations to receive them. The last three Uyghurs were sent to Slovakia for resettlement in 2013.
The US government has argued it has the authority to indefinitely imprison Gul, citing his alleged connections to al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and noting the continuation of the 20-year so-called War on Terror.
An Afghan national at #GITMO just won his #habeas case. What comes next?
However, on Oct. 7, the interagency Periodic Review Board—which is tasked with determining whether Guantánamo prisoners pose a security threat to the United States—approved the transfer of Gul and Sanad Yislam al-Kazimi, a Yemeni captured in Dubai in 2003 and accused of being one of slain al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden’s bodyguards.
There have been approximately 780 men and boys imprisoned at Guantánamo since it opened in 2002. Thirty-nine detainees remain at Gitmo following the transfer last month of Abdul Latif Nasser, a 56-year-old Moroccan held there for 19 years without charge or trial. Of those 39 prisoners, 28 have never been charged with any crime.
Back in Afghanistan, Gul’s family cheered news of Mehta’s ruling.
“This is such happy, sweet news for our family. We now pray that Asadullah is sent back home quickly—where he belongs,” Roman Khan, Gul’s brother, said in a statement. “The family has eyes only to see him again. We are all waiting for him. His wife, his young daughter Maryam, his parents, me, his nieces and nephews.”
“He has spent more than 14 years of his life in this dangerous and terrible prison without charge,” added Khan. “We are thankful to the judges and to everyone who continue to press for his freedom.”
A questionable traffic stop by an Arizona highway patrol officer reveals how the powers bestowed upon police are ripe for abuse. Video shows how the officer escalated the encounter after he was challenged by a motorist to justify his actions. In this episode of the Police Accountability Report, we break down how the misuse of police power during a single car stop reflects a broader anti-democratic imperative that drives American policing.
Transcript
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’re going to achieve that goal by reporting on this disturbing video of a brutal arrest by Arizona Highway cops. It’s an encounter sent to us by a viewer, who was dragged out of his car by police for a crime that has yet to be determined. But, it’s also an example of how far cops will go to enforce their arbitrary sense of power, and how quickly they will sacrifice both the safety and well-being of the public to maintain it.
But, before we get started, I want you watching to know that if you have evidence of police misconduct, please email it to us privately at par@therealnews.com. And please like, share, and comment on our videos. You know I read your comments and appreciate them. And of course, you can always reach out to me directly @tayasbaltimore on Facebook or Twitter. And if you can, take a look at the Patreon donate link pinned below in the comments, because we do have some extras for the PAR family. All right, now we’ve gotten all that out of the way.
Now, as we’ve reported on before, policing in America is quite often focused on objectives that appear to have little to do with public safety. It’s an idea that seems to be ingrained in the culture of policing, which emphasizes enforcing power over the people, rather than maintaining public safety. And no police encounter could be more illustrative of this point than the video I’m going to show you now.
It’s a video, sent to us by viewer Perry Taylor, who was pulled over by the Arizona Department of Safety Highway Patrol Division in the summer of 2021. The officer said he had been driving erratically and following too closely to another vehicle before changing lanes. However, the interaction between the cop and our viewer quickly escalates, as the officer makes a seemingly odd request that would put both of them in danger. Let’s watch.
[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]
Patrol Officer:Hello, I’m [inaudible] patrol. The reason I’m stopping you today is for your driving behavior.
Perry Taylor:My driving behavior?
Patrol Officer:Yeah.
Perry Taylor: I just let off the brake. Can you explain?
Ashley:Yeah, can you explain?
Patrol Officer:You’re weaving in – What’s that?
Ashley:Can you explain?
Perry Taylor: [crosstalk] I’m weaving in and out? How am I not allowed to weave in and out? Like, I’m just changing lanes.
Ashley: Yeah, he was just changing lanes.
Patrol Officer: Yeah, just changing lanes?
Perry Taylor: Yeah.
Ashley: Yeah.
Patrol Officer: You’re not racing a –
Ashley: No.
Patrol Officer: – White Camaro at all?
Ashley:No.
Perry Taylor: Why, can I not get around somebody to make it safe for myself?
Patrol Officer: You do what?
Perry Taylor: Can I not get around somebody to make a safe for myself? Can I not make distance between me and the guy beside me or next to me, because, I think maybe they’re driving a little aggressive? I’m just asking.
Patrol Officer: Oh, okay. So is that how you want to play it today?
Perry Taylor: I’m just asking, I’m just asking.
Patrol Officer: No, is that how you want to play it today? [crosstalk] Because you’re talking a whole lot of attitude, so here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to go ahead and exit the vehicle.
Perry Taylor: No, I’m not.
Ashley: Oh my God.
[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]
Taya Graham:Notice that the driver, Mr. Taylor, is not accused of a crime. In fact, the officer seems to have trouble articulating exactly what Mr. Taylor did that warranted the stop. But, what’s even more telling is how the officer escalates the encounter after he is challenged to articulate the infraction that prompted him to pull Mr. Taylor over in the first place. In fact, the minute Mr. Taylor pushes back and refuses to concede that he’s broken some yet to be defined law, the officer starts to increase both the intensity of his orders and the force he’s willing to use to ensure compliance. But that’s not where this bizarre encounter ends, not hardly.
That’s because as you can see here, the cop in question is joined by another officer. And it’s at that point that they threaten Mr. Taylor with a taser and try to pull him out of his car. I’m not kidding. First, they deploy an often dangerous, and sometimes lethal, weapon due to a vague accusation that Mr. Taylor is driving erratically. And then, stymied by his inability to correctly present evidence that Taylor deserves anything more than a ticket, the cops resort to force. Let’s watch as they threaten Taylor with a taser, and then attempt to drag him from his car.
[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]
Perry Taylor: [inaudible] Give me your ticket.
Patrol Officer:Get out of the car.
Perry Taylor: Give me your ticket because your ego was bruised. Just give me your ticket. You are escalating this situation.
Patrol Officer: Get out of –
Perry Taylor: I’m asking you to give me a ticket.
Patrol Officer: You’re not –
Perry Taylor: I’m asking you.
Patrol Officer: You’re not getting a –
Perry Taylor: You’re trying to go for your arrest quota, and I’m not going to allow it to happen, man.
Patrol Officer: Get out of the car.
Perry Taylor: No, don’t.
Patrol Officer: Get out of the car, right now.
Perry Taylor: Don’t, don’t. Don’t, man.
Patrol Officer: Get out of the car –
Perry Taylor:For what?
Patrol Officer:…right now.
Perry Taylor: For what?
Patrol Officer: Get out of the car.
Perry Taylor: For what?
Perry Taylor: I don’t feel safe, you see this, I don’t feel safe.
Patrol Officer: Taser on him.
Perry Taylor: I don’t feel safe. I don’t feel safe.
Patrol Officer:Get out of the car, Sir.
Perry Taylor: Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me.
Patrol Officer: Get out of the car.
Perry Taylor: Don’t touch me.
Patrol Officer: Get out.
Perry Taylor: I’m getting out.
Patrol Officer: Get out.
Perry Taylor: Don’t touch me. [crosstalk] Don’t touch me.
Patrol Officer:Put the phone down.
Perry Taylor:Don’t touch me. You’re threatening my life right now. [crosstalk] So get out of my face. Get out.
Patrol Officer: Put the phone down.
Perry Taylor: No, I’m not putting my phone down, no.
Patrol Officer: You can leave it recording right there.
Perry Taylor:I don’t care.
Patrol Officer: I’m trying to be as –
Perry Taylor: No, you’re not.
Patrol Officer: Listen –
Perry Taylor: I asked you to give me the ticket.
Patrol Officer: Get out of the car.
Perry Taylor: Okay [crosstalk] Let me get out of the car.
Patrol Officer: Get out of the car now.
Perry Taylor: Let me get out.
Patrol Officer: Get out.
Perry Taylor: Let me get out.
Patrol Officer: Get out of –
[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]
Taya Graham:Let’s remember that Taylor was pulled over on a highway with a very narrow emergency lane. And this is only made worse by the fact that one of the most dangerous and risky police activities is pulling over cars on the shoulder of high-speed highways. But that didn’t stop these two law enforcement officers from engaging in the risky strategy of dragging a man, accused, at worst, of changing lanes too closely, from his car and onto the highway. And so, before we talk to the man who endured this terrifying encounter with police, I’m joined by reporting partner, Stephen Janis, who has been looking into the case. Stephen, thank you so much for joining me.
Stephen Janis: Taya, thanks for having me, I appreciate it.
Taya Graham: So first, who are these officers, and what agency do they work for?
Stephen Janis: Well, they’re the Arizona equivalent of State Troopers, they’re the Arizona Department of Public Safety Highway Patrol. They patrol state highways and state facilities. So they’re basically responsible for state traffic.
Taya Graham:So you’ve reached out to them. What have they said about this incident?
Stephen Janis:Well, to be fair, I just sent them the videos. I sent the video to their Public Information Officer. I asked him specific questions, really a clarification on what exactly were they accusing Mr. Taylor of, and exactly what laws he had violated. And if, indeed, officers are allowed to extract people from cars, and if that’s safe. So I’ve asked all these questions, hopefully I’ll be able to answer them in the chat, but if not, I will post my findings as soon as we get them.
Taya Graham: Stephen, we’ve talked continually about the idea of hegemonic policing, where cops focus on projecting power rather than public safety. Does that idea apply to this stop?
Stephen Janis: Well, what’s really important about this is that the idea infiltrates the thinking of the police officer. What’s interesting when you watch the video, is that the officer cannot stand the fact that his orders are not followed. In other words, he’s sort of embraced the concept that what he says is actually law, and that’s something that I think we have to understand. He has no sense that perhaps the constitution, or other laws, might intercede on his orders to somebody, or that his orders cannot be followed. To police, this is almost like antithetical. And the only way that becomes part of your persona, part of your employee psyche, is if you believe that you are enforcing a law that you can conceive of. In other words, if you can conceptualize it, then it is a law. And if you don’t follow it, it’s a threat to public safety. He’s conflated the law and his own power. And it is scary
Taya Graham: And now, to give us more insight into what happened during this traffic stop and how it affected him, I’m joined by the man in the video, Mr. Perry Taylor. Perry, thank you so much for joining us.
Perry Taylor: You’re welcome. Thank you for having me.
Taya Graham: So tell us why you were pulled over in the first place?
Perry Taylor:So my passenger, well, my fiance, we were just running some errands. We were on the highway, we were headed northbound and just kind of, felt like there was kind of an aggressive driver, I think he was in my right hand side. So I kind of got around them to kind of be safe and create some distance. Maybe about a mile or two ahead of that, when I did that, we noticed we were at a cruising speed of 65 miles an hour on the highway here, and noticed an aggressive police officer. DPS police officer pulled just, we clearly we’ve been out of traffic, got right on my rear bumper, tailgated us, for lack of a better phrase. And for about maybe 10, 15 seconds, no lights, anything. Then he put them on. I knew he was looking at my plate to see if they were anything there.
Of course, it’s clean. I even have veteran plates. Not that I think that should get me off of anything, but I just figured, hey, come on, we’re not dealing with your average Joe here. I have a nice car, it’s modified, it has a little bit louder exhaust on it. So, it does catch their attention, which, it’s not going to bother me. I’m not going to live my life in fear of a police officer because he’s going to pull me over for the way my car looks or sounds. Anyway, so he pulls us over. We pull over, as soon as we felt it was safe enough on the busy highway, it was pretty busy at that time of the day. And he approaches, I think in the video you see on my camera was to the passenger side. And I think you heard him give his explanation of something about a Camaro, or a Mustang, or something behind us.
And I said, no, I didn’t remember what kind of car it was. And he just said, so you weren’t weaving in and out? I said, no, I’m just moving away. I can change lanes. And I noticed I’ve watched the video a few times. As soon as I said, ‘I’m just asking,’ that’s what tipped him off and triggered him and said, also, this is how this is going to go. So I felt instead of making sure everything was okay, there was no, he didn’t even say you were speeding. All he said was I heard exhaust. I said, okay. And your point is, thinking to myself. So like I said, as soon as I said, I’m just asking if that’s okay, in my opinion, that’s a rhetorical question to him. So he got the attitude that they all get, that they’re the ones out there ruling the streets, and came around to my side and said, you need to get out of your car, which was the busy side, the driver’s side.
It was the busy side of the highway, it was pretty busy. So I felt like he had a lot of guts to even go on that side anyway. And I said, no, I think what you hear from me saying, is just give me the ticket. I don’t care. We’ll fight it out in court. I’m not getting out of my car because I don’t feel safe. I know what happens. I don’t feel safe. And so he felt like he was just going to, at the end of it, was just going to give me the ticket that said, disobeying a police officer. Which, I looked up the ARS code, and it did not at all follow what he was trying to do, which was trying to direct traffic, or anything like that. And so we felt like our lives were in danger.
They separated both of us. That’s their protocol, their tactic to try to get one to rat on the other. And she was scared, my fiance was scared, so she didn’t want to get shot, tased. I begged her not to get out of the car, wait for the supervisor. Supervisor eventually showed up. They had me in cuffs so tight. I got pictures. I don’t think I sent you those, but there’s just red marks around my wrist, kept my hands behind my back. Now, before that, of course, they threatened me with their taser. So they threatened arrest, which they’re not supposed to do. They’re not supposed to use their tasers, guns, unless their lives are in danger. And they threatened me, to put me under arrest, because I didn’t want to get out of a car where I felt I was unsafe. So instead of making sure we were safe, like it says on the side of their car, protect and serve, they decided to escalate.
And that’s where I had the issue. So instead of making sure we were okay, and he didn’t even give me a ticket for what he says he thought he saw. The only thing was disobeying a police officer. So he didn’t take me to jail, which he knew he couldn’t have anything to do with that, and let me go. Now, I have not seen any of their body cam footage, hopefully that does exist. I know we’re in the discovery phase right now. I have been told from my attorney that the prosecutor he’s working with is actually somebody. He was a prosecutor as well, our defense attorney. They’re coming up with some kind of diversion program, or I don’t agree with, I’m not paying my lawyer plus another fee to go to the courts and the cops just to have something maybe not go on my record where it’s… When someone feels like they’re getting wronged. It’s probably because they’re being wronged.
Taya Graham:What happened when the police first approached you? And can you describe what we see in the video?
Perry Taylor:I don’t remember if I rolled my window all the way down, or if it was just part of the way down. Knowing me, it was probably just part of the way down, just enough to hear, and he could hear me, or us. But I think he said something about, like I said before, it just was one of, I heard exhaust, were you racing some kind of a Mustang or a Camaro in the back? And I said, no. And he made a reference of weaving in and out of traffic. And it was just, to me, it just seemed kind of, he was trying to build, in his mind, his case. Like, let me get you to talk about something. Let me get you to… that’s why I’m pretty sure his body cam was on so they can get that on recording.
[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]
Patrol Officer: Hello, I’m [inaudible] patrol. The reason I’m stopping you today is for your driving behavior.
Perry Taylor: My driving behavior?
Patrol Officer: Yeah.
Perry Taylor: I just let off the brake. Can you explain?
Ashley: Yeah, can you explain?
Patrol Officer: You’re weaving in – What’s that?
Ashley: Can you explain?
Perry Taylor:[crosstalk] I’m weaving in and out? How am I not allowed to weave in and out? Like, I’m just changing lanes.
Ashley: Yeah, he was just changing lanes.
Patrol Officer: Yeah, just changing lanes?
Perry Taylor:Yeah.
Ashley: Yeah.
Patrol Officer:You’re not racing a –
Ashley: No.
Patrol Officer: – White Camaro at all?
Ashley: No.
Perry Taylor: Can I not get around somebody to make it safe for myself?
Patrol Officer: You do what?
Perry Taylor: Can I not get around somebody to make it safe for myself? Can I not make distance between me and the guy beside me, or next to me, cause I think maybe they’re driving a little aggressive? I’m just asking.
Patrol Officer: Oh, okay. So is that how you want to play it today?
Perry Taylor: I’m just asking, I’m just asking.
Patrol Officer: No, is that how you want to play it today? [crosstalk] Because you’re talking a whole lot of attitude, so here’s what we’re going to do, you’re going to go ahead and exit the vehicle.
Perry Taylor: No, I’m not.
[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]
Perry Taylor:And I felt like he wasn’t getting the answer he wanted. And as soon as I say, well I was just changing lanes is that not, and you hear my fiance, Ashley say the same thing. That’s what we were doing. Is that not allowed? I’m just asking. That is where you see him, the switch flip.
Taya Graham: Do you feel that the officer accurately depicted your driving? I mean, didn’t he accuse you of drag racing a Camaro?
Perry Taylor: No, I don’t. Like I said, when he said, immediately said when he heard exhaust. So any time in the slightest, if any vehicle with a modified type exhaust is going to hit accelerate a little bit, you’re going to hear a little bit of that. And again, my car… and the other part of it is I just feel opposite on. This isn’t the first time I’ve been pulled over, but I feel profiled for just being grouped into the whole… The type of stuff I have is normally, like the younger generation would have, the car guys. And I have a lot of friends in the community and stuff, but I just felt like this was so wrong. And he was going after something.
I used to work with police officers, I used to do their retirement accounts, and the stories I would hear in their retirement meetings as they reflected back on their career would make you cringe about the stories they told. And they laughed about it. And there were people’s lives and public records at stake. And they thought it was a joke. And I eventually left that firm, in a completely different career field now. But, I’m an ex firefighter, I’m ex military, I’m Air Force, and I get it, the whole brotherhood. And I just feel like in the public like this, it’s kind of, they make it them against us. And it’s not supposed to be that way.
Taya Graham: You mentioned de-escalation in the video, essentially asking him to calm down. Why do you think things got heated so quickly?
Perry Taylor: Like I said, it’s just part of their culture. And it’s just, as soon as they feel like they’re questioned and they don’t have an answer to come back with… They pulled you over, they have to come back with something. Even if it’s just them saying to you at the end of it, I’m just giving you a warning. They want to let you know that they’re in charge, and you’re free to go because of them. But in this case, he knew he wasn’t dealing with your average person who he typically pulls over. And he didn’t like the way that I – and that’s fine. You don’t have to like it, but you’re supposed to de-escalate and be a lot more… Our tax dollars that are being pulled from our paychecks are paying for you. It’s just appalling to, when you think about it, and when you break it down like that, it’s like, I’m paying you so you can harass me.
I wasn’t as if I just was leaving the scene of robbing a bank, or setting a house on fire, or beating somebody up, or assaulting somebody, that’s different. I totally support police in that type of scenario. If I could help, I would, in those types of situations. But for them to be patrolling, and just preying on people on the streets to get their arrest quota, to generate revenue, I can go on, but it really just burns. It makes my blood boil. And this particular time I was not going to let go.
Taya Graham:So one aspect of this case that really struck me is how it provides a perfect illustration of the divide between what law enforcement in this country purports to be, and what it actually is. So what do I mean? Well, I’m sure most police partisans would the bizarre behavior of this cop as just another example of an officer trying to maintain public safety. That his seemingly disproportionate overreach was simply an example of cops trying to keep the streets, and us, safe. But does that really hold up under scrutiny? Does aggressively policing highways with illusory accusations of erratic driving actually keep us safer? And does the underlying imperative, highway safety, really justify the behavior of the officers we saw in the video? Well, let’s try to answer that question in two ways.
First, let’s look at the data. Over the past 20 years, the number of highway fatalities have been remarkably and tragically consistent, averaging around 30,000 to 40,000 per year. Meanwhile, the number of police initiated contacts while driving rose during that same period, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, from 27 million in 2015 to 28 million in 2018. So, one would think if writing more tickets and more police encounters led to increase safety, then we would see a downward trend in the number of fatalities. Of course, as the oft-repeated saying reminds us, correlation is not always causation. So maybe we need to look at another example and dive a little deeper into the true imperative of traffic enforcement.
In this case, a specific example comes from an op-ed in USA Today, written by a scientist, whose job was to test blood samples for DUI cases. In the editorial, he describes not how police arrested and fairly prosecuted those guilty of driving drunk. Instead, he tells a tale of how the law enforcement establishment ordered him to lie about the blood alcohol test under oath, and when he refused, fired.
His name is Greg Olsen, and he worked for the same state where our guest was arrested, Arizona. In the editorial, he recounts how Arizona tested blood alcohol samples and batches. A process which he believes should have been disclosed to defendants, so they could better evaluate the results in court. That’s because due to his scientific opinion, it could lead to false positives. And in 2016, he did just that, testified truthfully in a case when he told the court that testing in batches can lead to errors. So, what happened? Was he lauded for his ethical admission and his adherence to scientific truthfulness? Not hardly. His superiors in the Arizona law enforcement-industrial complex, ordered him to change his testimony and lie. That’s right, the agency tasked with enforcing the laws and discerning the truth told him to simply cast aside the facts and perjure himself, or otherwise lose his job. That hardly seems like the behavior of an institution founded on the premise of both truth and fairness would espouse.
I mean, imagine if you and I conspired to tell a similar lie. Imagine if we sought to intentionally give false testimony which led to the unjust conviction of an innocent person. In fact, it’s actually a crime called suborning false testimony or perjury, but it gets worse. After Olsen was fired for telling the truth., he sued the state for violating his first amendment rights. And even though the court agreed that they had indeed been violated, the same set of judges ruled he could not receive damages or back pay. Why? Because the law enforcement officers who ordered him to lie had qualified immunity. That’s right. The same people who conspired to have innocent people convicted of a crime can’t be held accountable, because of a legal precedent that shields government officials from the same laws that govern us. In fact, the court ruled that due to qualified immunity, law enforcement officers have free rein to violate the first amendment rights of their employees, regardless of circumstance. How’s that for Post’s constitutional case law.
The point is that when we watch videos of officers dragging people out of cars, or law enforcement officials ordering people to lie, we have to realize that the chain of causality that created a world where these acts are even possible started with a core concept that has not been fully acknowledged. The power to order someone out of a car who has not committed a crime, or convict someone of a serious offense was innocent, all starts with the underlying premise that law enforcement is more about enforcing arbitrary power than improving public safety.
What do I mean by arbitrary? When you think about it, the law, in conception, is supposed to be administered in a way that is both fair and consistent. That is the underlying principle that is supposed to differentiate constitutional policing from a more despotic and capricious system. But when you can bend or corrupt the process, and convict people who are innocent or arbitrarily order them around, then the law becomes a different tool. Suddenly it is truly tyrannical. It is arbitrary, indifferent to facts, and far better at terrorizing the public and diminishing the rights of those it’s supposed to protect. And that is why we see so many examples of arbitrary enforcement on our show. It is the fatal flaw, so to speak, in the system itself. I think it is the end result of a process that has become so insular, it only serves itself. A system of shadow governance that, due to lack of real oversight, grabbed power and absorbed constitutional rights into a web of self-serving laws that have created a state within a state.
And that state is not deep or hidden. It inflicts its arbitrary power in broad daylight. It’s overreach and abuse is captured in videos and cell phone cameras by auditors and cop watchers and citizens across the country. It is, put simply, the most brazen and obvious expression of the true anti-democratic impulses of the uber elite. The powers that be empowering cops to ensure that we won’t, or can’t, fight back. Well, at least here on this show, we certainly won’t stop reporting on and revealing what they do. And more importantly, why they do it.
I want to thank Mr. Perry Taylor for speaking with us today and sharing his experience. Thank you, Mr. Taylor. And of course I want 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 of course I want to thank friend of the show Noli Dee for her support, thanks Nollie Dee. And a special thank you to our Patreons, we really appreciate you. And I want you watching to know that if you have 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 privately at par@therealnews.com and share your evidence of police misconduct. You can also message us @policeaccountabilityreport on Facebook or Instagram, or @eyesonpolice on Twitter. And of course you can always message me directly @tayasbaltimore on Twitter or Facebook. And please like, and comment, you know I read your comments and appreciate them, and I try to answer your questions whenever I can. And we do have a Patreon link pinned in the comments below, so if you do feel inspired to donate, and you can, please do. We don’t run ads or take corporate dollars, so anything you can spare is greatly appreciated. My name is Taya Graham, and I am your host to the Police Accountability Report. Please, be safe out there.
Earlier this week, Gov. Larry Hogan went down to Ocean City, Maryland, and told a room full of law enforcement attending the Maryland Chiefs of Police and Maryland Sheriffs’ Associations Professional Development Conference how unfairly they’re being treated these days.
“Our state and our nation owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to all of you and to all of the brave, proud members of the Thin Blue Line,” Hogan said. “I want each and everyone of you to know—especially in today’s environment when, far too often, our law enforcement officers are unfairly criticized and don’t get the appreciation and the recognition that they deserve—that you will continue to have the full support of your governor.”
“Refund the police” is a response to “defund the police,” the nascent movement that demands police funding be significantly reduced in order to allocate funding for less carceral and more effective approaches to public safety.
The same day Hogan said all of that, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of two police officers (one who shot a man in the back with a beanbag round and another who killed a man wielding a hammer), upholding the controversial “qualified immunity” legal principle. Ocean City, where Hogan spoke, made national news over the summer when the town’s police officers were recorded in two different incidents, brutalizing Black teens who were violating a vaping ordinance.
Hogan’s comments followed up his Oct. 15 press conference in which the governor—who has been floated as a 2024 presidential candidate—announced what he called “refund the police.” The initiative would provide an additional $150 million to Maryland law enforcement as well as neighborhood safety grants, victims services, and money for Marylanders who provide tips that lead to arrests.
“The reality is that our police are underfunded and under attack,” Hogan said last week. “To reverse the tide of rising crime, we need to stop demonizing and sabotaging the dedicated men and women who risk their lives every single day to keep the rest of us safe. We cannot defund the police, we need to refund the police.”
‘Refund The Police‘
“Refund the police” is a response to “defund the police,” the nascent movement that demands police funding be significantly reduced in order to allocate funding for less carceral and more effective approaches to public safety (and for some advocates, it is also a hopeful first step towards police abolition). Since George Floyd’s murder by police in 2020, talk of “defund” has grown, and with it an intentional misrepresentation of what defund means and how much departments have actually been defunded.
This disinformation campaign has been assisted by mainstream news media willing to repeat unsubstantiated (and sometimes impossible) claims about the effects of defunding the police. At the same time, police are talking up concerns about a “crime wave,” which does include a significant homicide spike in 2020 (though one that falls far below ’80s and ’90s numbers), to secure higher budgets. The news too has followed with “crime spike” stories, which have noted rising homicides but are also apt to indulge easily disprovable stories about “organized shoplifting rings.” Civil rights lawyer Alec Karakatsanis critiqued a recent New York Times piece titled, “A year after ‘defund’ police department get their money back,” tweeting, “The NYT published another dangerous piece of copaganda, filled with misrepresentations and strategic omissions, all to confuse the public into normalizing and supporting record human caging budgets.”
After Hogan’s “refund the police” speech, his director of communications Mike Ricci took to Twitter to suggest Montgomery County and Prince George’s County were two examples where police were “defunded.” But that isn’t entirely accurate. There was a proposed reduction of the police budget in Montgomery County, but ultimately, after calculating scheduled police pay increases, the police budget grew by $1.6 million. In Prince George’s County, the police department budget was reduced by $12.6 million, though that’s just 3.6% less than the department had last year. The PG County police budget for 2022 is nearly $342 million.
The suggestion that the thin blue line that keeps society from submitting to chaos depends on less than 4% of a police department’s budget is hard to believe.
Baltimore Police have not been ‘defunded’
Police funding has not been reduced in Baltimore City. In 2020, the city council removed $22 million from the police budget, but in June of this year, council unanimously approved a $28 million increase to the police budget.
Last month, it was also decided that the Baltimore Police Department (BPD) would receive $6.5 million from revenue that was generated by red light and speeding cameras over the past year. Something similar happened last year when $2 million allotted for the city’s free bus system was instead used to further fund the police.
The use of that revenue to fund more police moved Jed Weeks of the advocacy group Bikemore, to speak out against the decision: “We can’t accept the continued theft of desperately needed transportation dollars by the Baltimore City Police Department,” Weeks said.
For every dollar the city spends on policing, 50 cents is spent on public schools, 20 cents on public housing, 12 cents on homeless services, 11 cents on recreation and parks, and 1 cent on mental health services.
Along with Baltimore finding new ways to fund the police by reallocating other funding, the city has long been a laboratory for surveillance—all framed as necessary to help police stop out-of-control crime. That surveillance has included a privately-funded surveillance plane, undisclosed Stringray phone trackers, the specious ShotSpotter technology, and the vast network of Citiwatch cameras throughout Baltimore that are monitored by the police.
Meanwhile, Johns Hopkins University plans to assist the police by creating their own armed police force, and residents are being encouraged by one councilperson to help the police do their jobs in exchange for cash.
Councilperson Isaac “Yitzy” Schliefer recently introduced a bill that he argues will help more residents come forward and provide information to the police. The bill increases the amount of money a resident receives if their tip leads to an arrest.
“Detectives are spread very thin and when tips come forward it helps them solve these crimes a lot quicker which helps bring closure to the families and communities of these victims,” Schliefer said during an Oct. 19 city council meeting. “If detectives can solve their crimes and their caseload quicker it also helps reduce the overtime that they have to spend in solving these crimes.”
This year so far, BPD’s clearance rate for homicides is 40.5%. In 2017, according to the police, the clearance rate was 51%. In 2018 it was 43%, in 2019 it was 32%, and in 2020 it was 40%.
The national clearance rate average for homicides is 54.7%.
But even Schliefer, whose bill has been praised by Hogan, stressed that police in Baltimore have not been defunded.
“When you say ‘refund the police,’ you’re indicating they were defunded,” he said on local radio the same day Hogan was telling cops how hard they have it. “In Baltimore city, the numbers don’t lie. There have been increases in the police department.”
$555 million a year
The approved Baltimore City police budget is $555 million—$5 million more than last year.
Since 2000, the BPD police budget has increased by $334 million while the number of homicides in the city has remained high. In 2000, there were 261 homicides and the police budget was $231 million. In 2011, when Baltimore endured 196 homicides—the lowest number of homicides in Baltimore since the seventies—the city spent $336 million on police. The police budget in 2011 had actually been reduced: In 2010, the budget was nearly $353,000 and there were 223 homicides.
Since 2015, homicides have significantly increased—more than 300 each year—along with the police budget. In 2020, there were 335 homicides and the police budget was nearly $550 million.
According to Vera Institute, that $550 million made up 26% of the city’s total funds and added up to about $840 per resident.
Organizing Black, an abolitionist group that mobilized Baltimoreans this year to tell the City Council to defund the police (the council did not listen), has stressed that for every dollar the city spends on policing, 50 cents is spent on public schools, 20 cents on public housing, 12 cents on homeless services, 11 cents on recreation and parks, and 1 cent on mental health services.
“The community is saying this ain’t working, and we need to cut the funding to the police department,” Organizing Black’s Rob Ferrell recently told journalist J. Brian Charles.
Baltimore City Councilperson Ryan Dorsey, a frequent critic of the police who nevertheless voted for recent budget increases for BPD, took to Twitter to mock Hogan’s “refund the police” plan.
“I heard refund police and thought it meant giving people a refund on the billions of dollars spent on the lie that police would make anything better,” Dorsey tweeted.
In the state of Louisiana, 786 inmates—none of whom were ever sentenced to death—died behind bars between 2015-2019 while serving out their prison sentences. Since Black people are already incarcerated at disproportionate rates, these deaths have been disproportionately among Black inmates. This information has not been publicly available until now, because no single authority in Louisiana is required to collect such data. When law professor Andrea Armstrong and her students took it upon themselves to conduct this research, they were shocked by what they found. In this episode of Rattling the Bars, TRNN Executive Producer Eddie Conway speaks with Armstrong about investigating the quiet horror happening inside Louisiana prisons and what can be done to stop it. Professor Armstrong joined the Loyola University New Orleans,College of Law faculty in 2010 and founded IncarcerationTransparency.org, a database that provides facility-level deaths behind bars data and analysis for Louisiana and memorializes the lives lost. She is a leading national expert on prison and jail conditions and is certified by the US Department of Justice as a Prison Rape Elimination Act auditor.
Earlier this week, the new Vice President for Public Safety of Johns Hopkins University and Hopkins Medicine Branville Bard Jr. discussed the university’s planned armed private police force in an internal email sent to “the Johns Hopkins Community” and obtained by Battleground Baltimore. The email is light on specifics and heavy on, well, saying the right thing, and that’s what makes it interesting.
“I was excited about the opportunity to take on this role at Johns Hopkins because of the institution’s comprehensive vision for public safety, one that reflects the truth I have long understood: There is far more to public safety than police or security officers; they are just one element of our broader public safety strategy,” Bard wrote.
Bard joined Hopkins in July. From 2017-2021 he was the police commissioner of the Cambridge Police Department in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and before that, he spent 21 years with the Philadelphia Police Department. In the email, Bard promised to begin speaking to Baltimoreans, Hopkins students and faculty, and “affinity groups” about the private police force.
A look at Bard’s work in Cambridge suggests a similar approach to Hopkins: deploying social justice language while defending and misrepresenting police powers in the name of reform.
“Throughout my career, some of my most important relationships have been with those who are critical of the police. Indeed, I have found that often those who harbor the strongest objections to policing have the potential to be the most instructive in our growth and improvement,” Bard wrote.
Since March of 2018, soon after a state-level bill that would have allowed the university to establish its own police force was introduced, Hopkins students and faculty, along with those who live near the two Hopkins campuses, have organized against the plan. They opposed more police in their neighborhoods and invoked Tyrone West, a Black man who was killed by Baltimore Police and Morgan State University police in 2013. They were also, more broadly, protesting Hopkins as an incredibly powerful institution that lords its prestige over the city to get what it wants and expand its power—and an institution that should pay more taxes.
Protests against the private police force escalated in April 2019 with a month-long occupation of Garland Hall, a building on the Homewood campus. That occupation was eventually ended by Baltimore Police, who broke the doors of the building to get in, removed and arrested the students, and, in the process, misgendered one arrestee. “Your friend is a man,” one cop told students pleading for their friend to be moved to the police van designated for women arrestees.
The police, it appeared, had proven the activists’ point. But the private police bill soon passed, allowing Hopkins to create its own police force.
Then, the police in Minnesota murdered George Floyd on May 25, 2020, and it briefly became gauche to call for more cops. Ronald Daniels, Hopkins’ president, announced a “pause” on the police force for “at least two years” in June 2020.
In July 2021, barely a year after the pause was announced, Bard was hired.
Bard’s email frames his current period of establishing the police force as a way to “respect the two-year pause in the development of the eventual JHPD,” confirming that the “two-year pause” only referred to the implementation of the police force and not the ongoing development of it. This was as many activists suspected back in 2020. At the time, they called the announcement of the pause a “PR move” in response to George Floyd and saw it as cynical: realistically, Hopkins couldn’t fully launch the police force in less than two years, anyway.
A look at Bard’s work in Cambridge suggests a similar approach to Hopkins: deploying social justice language while defending and misrepresenting police powers in the name of reform.
“I was born and raised in Southwest Philly, a place not too different from Baltimore, as one of six kids. Policing in that time and that place—and the policing that I witnessed first hand—was often conducted at the end of a nightstick,” Bard wrote in the email. “Those early experiences served as a model to me for what policing should not be.”
In April 2018, police officers for Bard’s Cambridge Police Department did not conduct their policing with nightsticks, but they did use their fists. They tackled and arrested a Black Harvard student who had removed all of his clothes and allegedly threw them at someone. Witnesses to the man’s arrest said the officers punched the student multiple times in the stomach.
“A naked, unarmed Black man, stood still on the median,” a statement from the Harvard Black Law Students Association (BLSA) said. “He was surrounded by at least four Cambridge Police Department (CPD) officers who, without provocation, lunged at him, tackled him and pinned him to the ground.”
Last year, at around the same time that Hopkins put its supposed “pause” on the police force, Bard was in Cambridge boasting that his department did not have any, in his words, “military equipment.” This was not true: The Boston Globe later revealed that Cambridge Police were in possession of 64 M4 assault rifles, sniper rifles, and an armored vehicle.
Bard unequivocally defended the officers’ actions.
“I absolutely do support the officers,” Bard said at a press conference two days after the incident. “You have to judge their actions within the context of a rapidly evolving situation and not within an ideal construct.”
And last year, at around the same time that Hopkins put its supposed “pause” on the police force, Bard was in Cambridge boasting that his department did not have any, in his words, “military equipment.” This was not true: The Boston Globe later revealed that Cambridge Police were in possession of 64 M4 assault rifles, sniper rifles, and an armored vehicle.
Bard then claimed that what he meant was that his police department “did not possess materials that are restricted to the military by law.”
Earlier this year, a bill sponsored by longtime police reform advocate Maryland State Sen. Jill Carter, which would have repealed the private police force bill, died in committee.
“It should not have required the protest of George Floyd to come to that conclusion, given the fact that they’ve had staff, residents, students overwhelmingly not in support of the police force,” Carter said at the time. “Hopkins has a record of exploiting generations of persons of color, city and University namesake.”
Baltimore City to consider local control of its cops
“I will hold [the Baltimore Police Department] accountable as mayor,” Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott told the Real News at the beginning of this year, a few weeks after he was sworn in.
Scott focused on accountability by way of getting the city’s police department back in control of the city. The Baltimore Police Department is a state agency, not a city agency, and Scott, like many others, has long argued that state control severely limits how much the city can do to hold cops accountable.
“We need local control over BPD, we need to listen to our residents and youth organizers,” Scott said.
During the last legislative session, a bill that could make the police locally controlled again passed. The bill would ultimately put local control of the police—for the first time since the State of Maryland seized control of the Baltimore Police Department during the Civil War—on the ballot to be decided by voters.
Mayor Scott, who had a hand in getting the bill to Annapolis, announced the Local Control Advisory Board and swore in its community-appointed members in late August. Now, there is a set date for the group to start looking into local control: Oct. 27.
“After a decade of advocacy in Annapolis, Baltimore City is one step closer to having local control of its police department for the very first time,” Scott said in a press release. “The ability to set policies and provide oversight locally will enable us to transform the Baltimore Police Department, while also fulfilling our consent decree requirements with integrity.”
The Baltimore Police Department is a state agency, not a city agency, and Scott, like many others, has long argued that state control severely limits how much the city can do to hold cops accountable.
Included on the Local Control Advisory Board is Robert Cherry, a Baltimore Police veteran appointed to the position provided to the Fraternal Order of Police.
In 2012, when Cherry was the President of the Fraternal Order of Police, he dismissed the concerns of whistleblowing Baltimore cop Joe Crystal, who, after reporting misconduct from fellow officers, found a rat on his car’s windshield. According to Crystal, Cherry told him that police units are “blood in, blood out” and Crystal should begin looking for a police job in another city. Cherry’s FOP also represented Sgt. Marinos Gialamas, who allegedly looked on as another officer beat up a suspect. Cherry was a character witness for Gialamas.
In 2017, Cherry mocked a shooting that happened in the radical bookstore Red Emma’s (he later deleted the tweet).
This year, Cherry posted a gruesome photo of a homicide victim (since deleted) to make some kind of point about Baltimore’s murder rate. Earlier this month, Cherry tweeted that he would use his position on the Local Control Advisory Board to call attention to “silence to incompetence” going on in the department. Cherry claims that those in charge do not hold commanders responsible. What that has to do with local control of the police was not clear.
The first meeting of the Local Control Advisory Board takes place on Oct. 27 at 5:30PM.
Walters Museum still won’t recognize union
Walters Workers United (WWU), a proposed union that would represent all Walters Art Museum workers which has yet to be recognized by their bosses, took their case to the Baltimore City Council on Thursday, Oct. 14.
Back in April, WWU announced its intention to form a wall-to-wall union which would include everybody employed by the museum and eligible (including the museum’s security guards) in order to negotiate equity in pay, more opportunities to advance, and better work conditions.
The Walters has demanded WWU hold a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election, which would require a majority vote. But WWU is organized through the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) because it is the trade union for city employees. They have repeatedly said they have a supermajority anyway.
In June, City Council passed a resolution so that the council would look at what collective bargaining through the city could look like for WWU, and the hearing on Thursday night was where WWU and the Walters began to make their cases.
The Walters has demanded WWU hold a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election, which would require a majority vote.
Director of the Walters Julia Marciari-Alexander maintained the museum’s party line: The museum is “impartial” in the process. The Walters, however, has not recognized the union and wants to bring the issue before the National Labor Relations Board. That’s an issue because, as was discussed during the hearing, the Walters is generally understood as a public institution and the NLRB, due to the National Labor Relations Act, primarily handles private institutions. Few would reasonably think of the museum as “private.” The museum’s staff, for example, receive their health benefits through the city, and though other money for the museum comes through private funding, Baltimore City has some control over the museum.
Unionizing through AFSCME would enable the union to include the museum’s security guards. Teague Paterson, lawyer for AFSCME, argued to council that the Walters’ hybrid public/private setup means it is out of the NLRB’s jurisdiction.
Due to the Walters’ inaction in recognizing the union and calls for the NLRB to get involved (which would make it so security guards couldn’t join), Paterson accused the museum of “union-busting.”
As WYPR reported, Mayor Scott supports the Walters’ employees’ union.
“As a strong supporter of workers’ rights, Mayor Scott is carefully monitoring the organizing efforts at the Walters Art Museum,” Scott spokesman Cal Harris said in a statement. “The Mayor will always fight for workers to have the right to unionize, and will defend their ability to do so fairly and freely.”
“RIP Lisa Moody,” someone wrote with chalk in big bubbly letters on the sidewalk in front of Baltimore dance club and after hours spot Club 1722 earlier this week. Moody, a Baltimore house DJ and promoter best known for the seminal house music party Deep Sugar, died over the weekend. No information on the cause of her death has been released.
Moody’s death is another blow for Baltimore’s storied dance culture, which has afforded catharsis and escape for all of Baltimore—but especially its Black working class—for decades even as development and other moneyed interests continue to undermine the close-knit scene. Back in February, Baltimore club vocalist Jimmy Jones died. The Paradox, a nightclub that specialized in house and club music, was demolished last year.
On Nov. 21 at Baltimore Soundstage, what was intended to be the 18th anniversary of Deep Sugar is now a celebration of life for Moody. Baltimore house icons such as Ultra Nate (who created Deep Sugar with Moody) and Wayne Davis will be there alongside house legends such as David Morales and Kenny Bobien, all paying tribute and keeping the inclusive vibes of Deep Sugar alive.
Hogan wants to “refund” the already overfunded police
As we were wrapping up this week’s installment of Battleground Baltimore, Maryland’s Gov. Larry Hogan threw out some red meat we can only imagine he believes will increase his chances of electability on a national level among the frothing law-and-order types that make up much of the Republican Party. Hogan announced his “Refund the Police” initiative, which seems squarely aimed at perpetuating the myth that the police were ever significantly “defunded.” In fact, most departments have received additional funding in 2021, including the Baltimore Police Department. Despite BPD getting additional money this year, Hogan spent his presser criticizing Baltimore and some of its elected officials (including Councilperson Ryan Dorsey and State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby) and suggesting that even more money on top of the $555 million the police in Baltimore get will reduce crime.
“The city of Baltimore is a poster child for the basic failure to stop lawlessness. There’s a prosecutor who refuses to prosecute crime and there’s a revolving door of repeat offenders who are being let right back onto the streets to shoot people again and again,” Hogan said.
We won’t even get into all the ways this is incorrect, we will just point you to Battleground Baltimore’s thread of the week below, which shows the attorneys who work for Mosby (who Hogan accuses of being too soft on crime) successfully arguing for keeping children in jail.
Thread of the Week: @Bmorecourtwatch on children tried as adults
This week’s thread from Baltimore Courtwatch details the arguments presented by the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office for keeping children in jail and illustrates how frequently judges go along with these arguments. There were five cases on Thursday, Oct. 14 (Thursday is dedicated to children tried as adults): The SAO requested holding each of these children without bail, and the judge ordered “HWOB” each time. Among the most tragic is a case involving a child who requested a modification to his home monitoring so that he could attend an after-school event. Because the child’s schedule was not provided to the SAO early, the modification was denied last week. This week, @Bmorecourtwatch explained, “he no longer wants to participate in the after-school activity and has asked the modification request be withdrawn.”
Tweet of the Week: @LisaMcCray on last year’s Columbus Day
“Just wanted to remind everyone of the time Baltimore activists threw a Columbus statue in the harbor and then conservatives tried to take it out and the head came off,” Lisa Snowden-McCray (who will already miss dearly here at Battleground Baltimore) tweeted, capturing the absurdity of the reactionary “Columbus, a genocidal rapist, was good actually” crowd who attempted to salvage Baltimore’s Columbus statue after it was pulled over and thrown into the harbor last year.
In this special Indigenous Peoples’ Day episode of Rattling the Bars, TRNN Executive Producer Eddie Conway speaks with author and activist Ward Churchill about the wrongful imprisonment and deteriorating health of Indigenous political prisoner Leonard Peltier. A member of the American Indian Movement who was sent to prison in 1977 after a dubious trial sentenced him to two consecutive life sentences, Peltier’s continued imprisonment remains a stain on our “criminal justice” system.
Phillip Alvin Jones has been in prison for over 30 years. As the result of a trial allegedly riddled with irregularities and dubious evidence, Jones and his supporters say that he was wrongfully imprisoned at 19 for a crime he did not commit. What’s worse, Jones, who was arrested and tried in Baltimore, Maryland, was transferred under questionable circumstances to Washington State Penitentiary, thousands of miles away from friends and family who would otherwise be able to visit him. Supporters have set up a website and a petition for Jones, who also hosts a podcast called The Wall: Behind and Beyond, which he records from prison. In this exclusive and urgent episode of Rattling the Bars, Jones calls from Washington State Penitentiary to talk to TRNN Executive Producer and former political prisoner Eddie Conway about his fight for freedom and how people on the outside can help.
Eddie Conway:Welcome to this episode of Rattling The Bars. 30 years ago in the state of Maryland, a juvenile got locked up. He’s still in jail serving time, but now he’s in Seattle, Washington, 3,000 miles away from home. So, joining me today is Philip Albert Jones to explain why he’s still in jail, and why he’s 3,000 miles away from Maryland. Thank you, Philip, for joining me.
Phillip Albert Jones: Thank you. And I appreciate you welcoming me to your show.
Eddie Conway:Okay, Philip. If you’ll start at the beginning and tell our audience why you got locked up, how old you were, why you are still in jail 30 years later, and how you ended up in Seattle, Washington, serving a sentence in the state of Maryland?
Phillip Albert Jones:Back in 1990, I was driving down the street in West Baltimore, and I was pulled over by the Western District Police Department after stopping at a light. They jumped out the car with guns pointed in my face, telling me to exit the car. They threw me on the ground, cuffed me up and threw me in the back of a wagon, and took me to the Western District Police Department, and told me that they had reason to believe that I was involved in a shooting that occurred a month before. I told them, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I have no idea. They said, well, we got a witness that you was driving in the car that they say was leaving the scene. So I got charged that day at the age of 19 with attempted first degree murder, attempted second degree murder, conspiracy, and handgun violations.
I got no bail. And I sat in a city jail for a year and a half waiting for trial. And I finally was offered a nine year deal, which I refused, because like I said I didn’t have any knowledge of what was going on. And so I said, I don’t want to take any time. I went to trial for about seven days, and was eventually found guilty after the single eye witness, that perjured herself, testified and said that she saw me. And then Joseph Kopera, the ballistics dude who committed perjury and committed suicide, told the jury that it was more than one gun used, so therefore conspiracy. So my case was screwed up. I was 19, I’m 50 now, and I’ve been in prison for 31 years. I did 16 years in the state of Maryland first. I started off at the Maryland penitentiary. Well, ECI, then the Maryland state penitentiary.
When they closed the Maryland state penitentiary down, they sent us all out to JCI, which used to be the annex. In 1996, they had a huge riot down there, probably like 100 people involved. We all went to the super max for this incident. A lot of people got stabbed, blood everywhere, it was crazy. Kids doing dumb stuff. So I ended up being in the super max for five years. Upon me leaving the super max I went back to the annex, and that’s when they put me on as [seg] saying that I was a leader of one of these groups, which I [was] not. And then, so they decided they wanted me out of state, me and a few other dudes that’s out here with me now. We’re all older now, we was in our 20’s back then. So that’s how I got out of state.
But I had actually filed to come back in the courts of Maryland. And they told me that I have to show that my case is being impacted, and that me being so far away was negatively impacting me, my family life, and me getting out of prison. Because they said they had jurisdiction to send me wherever they want–
Recording:You have 60 seconds remaining.
Phillip Albert Jones:…As a Maryland state boarder. So that’s how I got out of there. I’m going to have to call back though, so we can get back to it.
Eddie Conway:Okay. So you’ve been out in Seattle, Washington, since 2005. And your family is still back in Maryland. How is that impacting your case, and what can they do from that far away to help you? And how does that also impact your quality of life while you’re there, not being able to get visits and stuff?
Phillip Albert Jones: I’ve actually built the whole team around my situation, and my case is actually going good now, because I’m getting a lot of publicity and people are taking notice. As far as my family and me being so far away from Maryland, the only downside of that–Because it’s phenomenal out here, I’m doing a lot of good things I couldn’t do in Maryland. But the only downside of that is that I don’t get the news of what’s going on in the criminal justice world until late. I have to read about in newsletters or have my family go online and try to find out what’s happening. And that’s how I found out late about some of the stuff that was going on with some of these bills and all that. But as far as me being away from here, what I’m doing to get my case recognized and heard and get some lawyers involved, I wouldn’t have been able to do in Maryland because I have a whole platform going on. And I’m all about bringing attention to the fact that I didn’t have a fair trial, and I’ve been doing that effectively.
Eddie Conway: Okay, Phillip. You were a juvenile 30 years ago, and Maryland, the state Maryland, passed a law, and the courts have also made some other legal decisions about juvenile. Juveniles are being released all over the country, in particular in the state of Maryland. Don’t your case fall under those guidelines?
Phillip Albert Jones:They’re saying that in Maryland they don’t recognize that new brain science. So if you was over the age of 17, they’re trying to say that you don’t fit the criteria as long as you have a reasonable chance at parole. But in Maryland, there is no reasonable chance at parole, because you only get one as a lifer. And if they don’t grant it, then you have to fight to get another hearing, and so that’s kind of like no parole. Now, because I wasn’t 17, they’re saying as long as you get an opportunity for parole, then you don’t fit the criteria. These bills they’re passing are excluding people over 18.
Eddie Conway:Okay. One of the things that you say happened is that the expert ballistic witness in the state of Maryland, who had lied on 800 other cases and ultimately he committed suicide, they were releasing those people. He was a key witness in your case. How is that not a situation to get you relief?
Phillip Albert Jones:Yes, absolutely. The state’s attorney used him to bolster a conspiracy case. That’s how come my case held a life sentence if I went to trial. He didn’t have no evidence of no conspiracy. They told him to do that because he started talking about two guns being used and if it was more than one person. But I was originally charged with assault with intent to murder, which did carry no life sentence. And so he definitely affected my case, and the jury sent the note back saying they didn’t want to find me guilty of attempted murder. But the judge told him, you have to, because if you don’t, then you have to find him not guilty of everything, which was a false instruction. But I didn’t have the right attorneys or the right defense set up, and so he got away with it.
But saying that to say, Joseph Kopera, all the people who he affected like he affected me, a lot of them are already gone. They’re trying to tell me that I’d have to file a writ of actual innocence, which I did. They brought me back to court in 2017. I didn’t have an attorney. I ended up postponing it. And while I sat it on [inaudible], I got very sick because of the conditions. So they sent me back here, and then I withdrew the petition without prejudice. So, I still haven’t been heard yet on this issue, although I did go back to court for it in 2017. So I’m still trying to get myself back in there.
Eddie Conway:Okay. Marilyn Mosby has set up an integrity in sentencing unit, and it seems like your case should fall under those guidelines. Have you been in contact with her office and that unit? And what’s the situation with that?
Phillip Albert Jones:Yes. We reached out to Marilyn Mosby like five times. We got two responses. They said that they are going to review my case, but the sentencing review unit has it right now. And the sentencing review unit or the State’s Attorney’s Office is looking through my file. So, my lawyer is waiting and hoping that they will accept my case as one of the ones that they need to go back and look at and review. As far as the integrity unit, I also wrote them. I wrote to all the heads that would give me the opportunity to show that my trial wasn’t fair, or that my sentence was too harsh. So right now, they’re saying that they review it. It has been a couple of months. So we’re sitting on standby trying to see, are they going to make a report or tell us what’s going on?
Eddie Conway:Okay. So do they have you in the gang database? Because some years ago they put me in there and it took me three years to get out. Every year they would call me in, they would take my picture, and they would write up a little report on my activities for that year. So, are they doing that to you? Do they still have you in that gang database and are they taking your pictures every year?
Phillip Albert Jones:I think they left me alone because I haven’t had any of that happen the whole time I’ve been in Washington. But apparently since I’m still here, they have me out here for that purpose, then they must still believe that I’m connected to it in some way. But they should know that I’m not, if they’ve been following me, because my record, all the things I do in here, are anti-gang. And also, I try to mentor the youth about the pitfalls of prison gang life. You know what I mean? That’s not something that you should be doing. Your first day in prison should be spent trying to get back out. And I bet they know that.
Eddie Conway:So what can the public do to help your family or to help your case? Do you have a website set up? Is there some way for people to at least look at what happened to you and why you are still being held 3,000 miles away?
Phillip Albert Jones:Absolutely. Thank you for asking. I have a website, it’s called grantparoletophillip.com. I have a petition. I have a petition also that they can sign on change.org, and also I have a podcast called TheWall: Behind and Beyond for anybody that wants to hear some of the issues that go on inside the criminal justice system and the prison reforms.
Eddie Conway:So we’ll include your address at the end of this broadcast, but tell me, what have you been doing? It sounds like you’ve been working with young people, and you’ve been doing some positive work up in that particular penitentiary.
Phillip Albert Jones:Man, I’m a college student right now. I’ve been taking college for a couple of years. I’m trying to get my degree in business administration. I’ve been taking all kinds of therapeutic and cognitive programs, but I’m also a facilitator of a program called Release Readiness. So I deal in reentry. And what I do is I put on Zoom panels for awareness, and this is how come I shine a light on some of the problems that we’re having in Maryland, as far as the way the system is not working properly. So that’s what I do. I spend a lot of time with that, doing my podcast, mentoring youth, and trying to make the public aware of that we are very behind in Maryland. All the other states have figured out that it’s not about punishment. It’s about rehabilitation, and reforms, and reentry. Because 80% of us are going back to the community, whether they like it or not. So they should be spending more time doing that. So that’s what I do on my show.
Eddie Conway:That was 30 years ago. You are like 50 now, you are a different person than you was 30 years ago. The courts, criminologists, psychologists, sociologists, everybody recognizes that juveniles don’t have mature thinking ability, and that doesn’t really kick in until they’re 24, 25, something like that. So 30 years later, you a different person than you was 30 years ago, and the courts and the parole board should recognize that, and recognize that you deserve a second chance. So have you been making any efforts to go in front of the parole board? And what’s the situation with that and how can people help you with that?
Phillip Albert Jones:Yes, that’s good, I’m glad you brought that point up. I just went up for parole in March. This month they passed, and actually Bloomberg himself was on my parole hearing with another commissioner. And Bloomberg said I’m doing good. He said, “Man, on paper, everything looks right. Keep doing what you’re doing, get that degree.” He said, “But I’m going to give you a rehearing. I’m not going to grant it today, but I’m not denying it.” So I have to go back in 18 months for a rehearing and get a chance to present myself again and all that I got going on.
Eddie Conway:Okay. So what would you have the public do, if you could ask them to do something for you, what would you have them do for you right now?
Phillip Albert Jones:I need the public to write the parole commission, Maryland Parole Commission, on my behalf saying that they support me and that I’ve been locked up long enough and I’m doing good things with my time, and that I should be granted parole.
Eddie Conway:Okay. So, Phillip, you get an opportunity now to say anything that you want to say to the public, so they can hear at least what your feelings are and what your position is.
Phillip Albert Jones:Oh, yeah. First of all, thank you for allowing me to come on and do this interview. I really appreciate that. Second of all, I really just want an opportunity to come back out to my community where they took me from as a child, and show that I can be a positive influence and make a great contribution to my community. My community loves me, and they still need me. My kids need me. And so I would just like to say that, in Maryland give us… You know we haven’t had a first chance, let alone a second chance. I’m not bitter, I’m not upset, but I am ready to go home and return to my family and my community and make a difference. Because as you can see, we’re in a lot of trouble in Baltimore City and we need people out there, man, that’s coming with positive reinforcement and influence. And I want to be a part of that solution. So I appreciate that, man. And thank you very much. It was nice, man, talking to you.
Eddie Conway:Yes, I would just like to echo that sentiment. We need you out here. The community need you out here. People that’s been in prison for 20, 30 years, that’s been working with young people in prison, that’s been mentoring, would be a valuable asset to our community, and would also help us with talking to young people in our community to help keep down that level of violence. So I hope that when the public see this and when your family shares it with people, that the public will come forth and support you and get you back here. Because we need you in the community to help us make the community safer. So, I hope people will look at your podcast and check out your website. And hopefully, good luck to you.
Phillip Albert Jones:Okay, man. Thank you so much, man. And I will do that, and I love platforms like this, man. You’re doing the work, man. I know you been here, too, that you’ve seen what I saw. So, I really appreciate you going out there and still doing the good work for us.
Eddie Conway:Okay. So, thank you for joining me, Phillip.
Phillip Albert Jones:All right. Take care, man.
Eddie Conway: And thank you for joining this episode of Rattling The Bars
Amid a push to divert mental health crisis response to trained mental health professionals and away from police, Baltimore City Councilperson Ryan Dorsey called attention to the fact that Baltimore City Schools sometimes send police to respond when students use keywords on their district-issued laptops that could indicate self-harm.
“Clinical supervisors, school police, principals and designated school staff receive all GoGuardian alerts. During the school day, alerts are forwarded to respective school-based clinicians to respond … In cases where the student is not in school and contact cannot be made, wellness checks are conducted by school police and follow up with school-based clinicians.”
André Riley, director of communications for Baltimore City Public Schools
“[Baltimore City Schools] monitors students’ chrome books for keyword searches indicating interest in self-harm, and then sends police—not qualified professionals—to intervene,” Dorsey tweeted on Sept. 29. “This is crazy.”
Khalilah Harris, acting vice president for K-12 education policy at the Center for American Progress, was disturbed by the fact that students are being surveilled and said that surveillance could potentially lead to an encounter with the police.
“It is unconscionable for any school district to be surveilling their students through technology meant for schoolwork. Likewise, no school district should be inviting police to show up at the homes of their students, and particularly students experiencing mental health crises,” Harris told Battleground Baltimore. “Thrusting children into the school-to-prison pipeline who need medical care is a disgrace.”
André Riley, director of communications for Baltimore City Public Schools, explained the process to Battleground Baltimore. City schools, like many school systems around the country, use GoGuardian, a monitoring service that allows others to see how students are using their laptops.
“Clinical supervisors, school police, principals and designated school staff receive all GoGuardian alerts. During the school day, alerts are forwarded to respective school-based clinicians to respond. Students are assessed for lethality, parents are contacted, referrals are made, and resources are provided,” Riley said. “In cases where the student is not in school and contact cannot be made, wellness checks are conducted by school police and follow up with school-based clinicians.”
School police also monitor GoGuardian after school hours, including on weekends and holidays, and they can choose to do wellness checks, which, Riley explained, “include school police advising parents of the alert, speaking to students and making referrals as needed.” Riley also explained what happens after the initial response to the GoGuardian alert.
“School police also are able to conduct emergency petitions for those students who demonstrate at-risk behaviors,” Riley said. “During the following day, school-based clinicians follow up with students and families to further assess student support needs.”
City Schools did not disclose how many times School Police have been deployed since March 2020, when students switched to remote learning and were given take-home laptops.
The number of times the Baltimore Police Department or Baltimore School Police have transported youth under emergency petition was not known until school advocate and public school parent Melissa Schober obtained the information via public information request. Between 2016-2019, Baltimore police detained students 280 times. School Police assisted with 1,273 emergency petitions from August 2016 to March 2020.
For Schober, what Dorsey called attention to raised more questions than it answered: What happens when school police conduct wellness checks? Do they use screening tools? Do they follow up with the district?
“To me, this is a huge nightmare of accountability when you have unlicensed individuals responding to computer alerts unannounced,” she said.
When questioned, City Schools did not disclose how many times School Police have been deployed since March 2020, when students switched to remote learning and were given take-home laptops.
School psychologist and Baltimore Teachers Union Special Services Vice President Brittany Johnstone explained that City Schools are using School Police instead of paying trained staff to work outside regular hours or relying on third party mental health services such as Baltimore Child and Adolescent Response System (BCARS).
“School psychologists, counselors, and social workers respond during school hours but after hours District Leadership has designated School Police to respond. They could work with outside agencies to have BCARS or other qualified mental health services to respond but nope,” Johnstone tweeted.
As Battleground Baltimore previously reported, Baltimore Police responded to what the department themselves labelled a “mental health crisis” back in August by fatally shooting 40-year-old Marcus Martin, who was armed but alone in his home, leaving his family searching for answers. Police responded because the incident happened in the evening and BPD’s crisis response team only operates between the hours of 11:00AM and 7:00PM.
Dorsey learned of the School Police interventions after questioning City Schools about a citizen’s report that a School Police vehicle was parked outside of Power Plant Live, a hub for downtown bars and nightclubs, on a Friday night. In an email obtained by Battleground Baltimore, City Schools said School Police were investigating the Power Plant incident, and explained the unit was part of the Night Response Unit that monitors school facilities after hours. The email also explained that, since the pandemic, the Night Response Unit had begun conducting wellness checks on students: “When a student conducts a search related to self-harm, it activates ‘GoGuardian’ alerts, which are then funneled to School Police.”
This information raised even more questions for Dorsey and he emailed City Schools officials.
“I’m actually floored that in 2021 we’re directly linking the mental health of students to a police response. That seems about as misguided as can be.”
Baltimore City Councilperson Ryan Dorsey
“Is there any evidence that 3-5 people … monitoring 150 buildings (~37.5 to 1?) is actually producing any result? I’d like to see data on that. Is there any monitoring of these activities?” Dorsey questioned in an email. “I’m actually floored that in 2021 we’re directly linking the mental health of students to a police response. That seems about as misguided as can be.”
For Dorsey, School Police monitoring students’ computers—and possibly arriving at a student’s home based on what that student has searched or typed—runs counter to the numerous conversations about implementing non-carceral solutions to social issues and providing trauma-informed care.
In January, Baltimore became the first city to require officials to train on trauma-informed care through the Healing City Act. But as Baltimore Teachers Union Vice President Zach Taylor tweeted, City Schools are exempt from the Healing City Act: “Unfortunately, as an independent state agency @BaltCitySchools is not required to follow the Healing City Act, but it could still sign-on, engage in the trainings, agree to follow the protocols, etc… but they’ve been silent on the matter and appear uninterested.”
“Everybody in public service should undertake trauma-informed training, but school police should simply not exist,” Dorsey said.
Editor’s Note: Khalilah Harris, acting vice president for K-12 education policy at the Center for American Progress, is a former TRNN host and executive producer.
In this episode of the Police Accountability Report, we provide breaking updates for several critical cases we’ve been covering for months, including a surprising development in the case of Daniel Alvarez, who received a $2500 ticket for changing lanes from a San Bernardino sheriff who had racially profiled him.
We also report on new developments in the felony camping charges against the popular cop watcher Otto the Watchdog, along with the ongoing case against the first Black police chief of a small town on Maryland’s Lower Eastern Shore.
Transcript
Taya Graham: Hello. My name is Taya Graham, and this is Stephen Janis, and we are your hosts of the Police Accountability Report. And today, we have some breaking news updates.
We like to do follow-ups on stories we’ve done to let you know what happened to the people that we reported on, and if we’re able to get them results. And, fortunately, we have some good news.
The first case we’d like to update is the one of Daniel Alvarez. Stephen, can you give us a little background and share what the good news is?
Stephen Janis: We first encountered Daniel when he sent us a video of him being pulled over by a Los Angeles County sheriff for supposedly going too far over a white line before a stop sign. And we did that video. And then after we published that video and got, like, a million views, then he was pulled over by the San Bernardino County sheriff for another totally questionable violation: changing lanes too close.
The officer wrote him a $2500 ticket. We did that story. We put that officer, basically, so to speak, on blast. We put his picture in there. And so, when Daniel went to court to fight this ticket of $2500, the officer didn’t show.
Taya Graham: Well, that’s an interesting coincidence that there were two reports done on this police officer, and he chose not to show. That is a very interesting coincidence, and a happy one for Daniel.
Stephen Janis: Yeah. One would think maybe he had a sense of conscience because you could tell that the charges were pretty much bogus. But nevertheless, let’s watch a little bit of his interaction, and you can tell us.
[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]
Sergeant: I just stopped you because you cut that car off when you–
Daniel: No, I didn’t. I signaled–
Sergeant: Got your ID on you?
Daniel: …and made a lane change.
Sergeant: Need your ID too, sir.
Speaker: Oh, no sir.
Sergeant: What’s that?
Speaker: No, sir.
Daniel: It seems to me that you seen me go by the stoplight.
Sergeant: Ma’am, I need your ID, too.
Daniel: And you stopped me based just because you seen what I look like.
Speaker: The locals even mentioned it, too. The ones following us–
Sergeant: You been on probation or parole?
Daniel: Nope.
Speaker: Mm-mm (negative).
Sergeant: Are you on probation or parole?
Speaker: No.
Daniel: No, he’s not.
Sergeant: Are you on probation or parole?
Speaker: No.
Sergeant: Okay. And you guys are refusing to give me your IDs, right?
Daniel: I thought that they didn’t have to give you their ID if you just stopped me for a traffic violation.
Sergeant: [inaudible] So, are you going to give it to me or not?
Daniel: Can you call your lieutenant or sergeant, here?
Sergeant: I’m the sergeant.
Daniel: Okay.
[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]
Stephen Janis: So, as you can see, he really didn’t have any reason to write Daniel a ticket. But I guess this is a good outcome number one.
Taya Graham: Our next update is on Otto the Watchdog. Otto has unfortunately been separated from his children for almost three years because of felony camping charges that he received. And he’s also had to pay $300 a month for a monitoring device on his leg. So, we have an update in this case.
Stephen Janis: Basically, he was charged with felony camping after, quote-unquote, a Karen called because he was camping with his children, because he was facing a court case over holding a sign, a sign some people found offensive. They charged him with two felony counts of camping. Then you did a very emotional interview with Otto, where he talked about being separated from his children. Let’s watch a little bit of the pain that this caused him.
[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]
Otto: My kids are out there, and I know that they’re going through some stuff, and I can’t even talk to them about it. I can’t even write it. I can’t do nothing. Just have to sit there and watch. And I was afraid that they thought that I abandoned them. So, thankfully, my family is pretty awesome and kept reminding them that daddy loves them.
So, when I finally got to see them again, that was a pretty big deal, man. But it should have never happened. I wasn’t doing anything, at all. I was minding my own business, trying to do what they wanted me to do. I was trying to show up to court, and I just keep getting arrested on the way to court. It’s fucked up.
[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]
Stephen Janis: But the good news is now, that those charges of felony camping have been dropped.
Taya Graham: Yes.
Stephen Janis: He still has to fight the sign charge, but nevertheless there is some light at the end of the tunnel, and he was able to see his children again.
Taya Graham: Right. And the sign charge, I think, is a really clear cut First Amendment case. So we think Otto is going to have a bright future ahead, and we’re very happy to share this news.
Our third update for you is on Michelle Lucas, who is here in our home state of Maryland.
Stephen Janis: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Taya Graham: Michelle Lucas is a pizza delivery woman and grandmother of four who was charged with allegedly passing a $100 counterfeit bill that she received from her workplace. So, Stephen, you have an update on this case.
Stephen Janis: Well, as you know, the charges were dropped against her after we investigated and got in touch with the public defender. They had already gotten her to plead guilty.
[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]
Michelle: I can barely… I had lost prior to this almost 80 pounds. I’ve gained most of it back. I’m crying constantly. I’m scared to take money. I don’t even want to go to the store for nothing, for nobody, not for myself. I’m scared to spend even a dollar, because what if it’s counterfeit.
[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]
Stephen Janis: As you know, Michelle Lucas was charged with two felony counts of passing counterfeit bills from an incident involving an employee she worked with who gave her the money. And she went and bought some liquor for him. And then police arrested her, for some reason. And after we investigated, they dropped all the charges.
But one of the things we talk about in our show is the long-term consequences. And the long-term consequences are that she would still have a record. And if she went for a job, you look up Michelle Lucas, and you’d see that she was charged with two felony counts of counterfeiting. Well, the good news is, now, that they have accelerated her expungement, and so those charges will soon be not on her record anymore.
Taya Graham: And that’s wonderful news, because charges like this can take up to three years to be expunged. So for them to be expedited so quickly is great news for her and for her family, because we know this has put a lot of stress on her and a toll on her health. So we’re very happy to have this good news about Michelle.
Our last and final update is on the case of Kelvin Sewell, a former police chief in Pocomoke City, Maryland, who was charged for not charging someone who had hit two parked cars.
Now, these two parked cars were hit. There was property damage. The insurance paid for it. But he was charged for not pursuing charges against a Pocomoke City resident, which is sort of unusual. So, Stephen, can you give us an update in this case, and give us an idea of what the good news is.
Stephen Janis: Well, first of all, let’s remember that Kelvin was police chief of Pocomoke City. He implemented community policing, making his officers get out of the car and walk. He was fired by an all-white city council, nearly all white, excuse me. And he filed a discrimination lawsuit, and then they brought these charges against him.
Taya Graham: Right. After the discrimination lawsuit.
Stephen Janis: Right. The state prosecutors brought these charges. A very controversial case. Many people said it was retaliation. He’s been convicted twice down in Worcester County by a nearly all-white jury. And he’s appealed the case.
The latest appeal, the Court of Special Appeals, has said that the court must hold a prosecutorial misconduct hearing. And Kelvin must get a chance to have that hearing, to determine if prosecutors acted with some sort of malice or corrupt intent.
And basically, which is kind of interesting, it’s like, flip the script on them. Basically, what they’re alleging is that a witness who was a key witness against Kelvin, a woman named Tonya Barnes, who said he was behaving unusually that night, had recanted to Kelvin and said they’d been putting pressure on her to testify against him.
So, this is a big deal. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know if prosecutors are going to go forward with it, or if even Kelvin will pursue it. But really, at this point, the court has said there’s enough evidence to warrant a hearing about prosecutorial misconduct.
And the point you make is a really good point. The reason this case is so important, besides all the background in Pocomoke, is that they’re basically saying that anytime a cop shows up anywhere, they got to arrest somebody.
Taya Graham: Absolutely.
Stephen Janis: If there’s the smallest hint… And I don’t think there’s anyone in this country that wants every cop following the letter of the law every single day. Things are bad enough as they are.
Taya Graham: Right. If every interaction had to end in arrest in order to protect the officer, you can see how bad things would get, how quickly. That’s why officer discretion is important.
Stephen Janis: Right. So this case becomes really fundamental. It could be case law. Every cop could be watching and saying, “You know what? If I don’t arrest this person every time something happens that has a little slightest whiff of maybe being improper…” So, it’s a very scary case in some ways. So, it’s very important that we keep following up. But right now, we’ll have to see what happens. We’ll update you if we hear anything new.
Taya Graham: And, just to note, this is a testament to our dedication, because we have been following this case for five years. So when we say we follow up and do our homework, we are not kidding.
So, we hope you enjoyed these updates. We know you care about what happens to the people that we interview. You care about them like we do. And we’re so happy to have some good news to give to you.
I’m Taya Graham…
Stephen Janis: And Stephen Janis…
Taya Graham: And we’re the Police Accountability Report. Please be safe out there.
In late 2017, Erimius Spencer was knocking on a neighbor’s door in his apartment building when officers Michael Amiott and Shane Rivera approached him. Without probable cause, they asked Spencer if they could search him for weapons and, having no weapons on him, Spencer allowed the search to proceed. Then the officers told him he was under arrest. When Spencer asked why he was being arrested, he was kicked in his eye and groin, and tased several times while lying on the ground handcuffed.
Along with the cases investigated in Part I and Part II of the State of Injustice mini-documentary series, Spencer’s arrest is yet another tragic example of a demonstrated pattern of brutality by local police against Black residents of Euclid, Ohio. In the third and final installment of this series, executive produced by Black Lives Matter Cleveland, filmmakers Roger Glenn Hill and Brian Douglas continue to document this pattern of brutality by investigating Euclid PD’s treatment of Erimius Spencer as well as multiple cases of officers callously deploying pepper spray on large groups of unsuspecting teenagers. These cases provide further proof of the extent to which Black residents in Euclid, Ohio, routinely find themselves over-policed in their homes, schools, and even their skating rinks.
This TRNN special premiere also includes a panel discussion, hosted by TRNN’s Jaisal Noor, on the State of Injustice series and the ongoing struggle for justice and police accountability in Euclid. Panelists include Terra Stewart, the sister of Luke Stewart (whose killing was the subject of Part I of the State of Injustice series); Christopher McNeal, attorney for Richard Hubbard III and board member of BLM Cleveland; and Kareem Henton, co-founder of BLM Cleveland.
State of Injustice is a documentary series showcasing the systemic failures of Ohio law enforcement across the state. With permission from the filmmakers, TRNN is honored to share the initial three-episode season, which explores police abuse in the city of Euclid, Ohio, with our audience.
Transcript
Speaker: You were positioned as mayor. You were also the safety director. Is that correct?
Kirsten Holzheimer Gail: That’s correct.
Speaker: What does that mean to you? What does that entail?
Kirsten Holzheimer Gail: That means I am the executive who oversees the police and fire departments. I am responsible for the safety and well-being of the community, responsible to make sure our ordinances and laws are upheld.
Kirsten Holzheimer Gail: This roller rink is not the family-oriented roller skating rink that would be an asset.
Speaker: You are supportive of this motion to shut the business down temporarily?
Kirsten Holzheimer Gail: Yes.
Miguel Sanders: Hi, my name is Miguel Sanders, owner of MIG’s PLA-MOR family roller skating rink. People enjoy this place. They love this place. And like they say, after a long, hard day of work, they want to come to the skating rink and leave it on the wood because it makes them feel so good. The city of Euclid and I seem to have a tenuous relationship at best.
Kelley Sweeney: The current operation of the PLA-MOR does substantially interfere with public decency, sobriety, peace, and good order of the city of Euclid, and that nuisance needs to be abated immediately for the life and safety of its residents, visitors, and businesses in the city.
Miguel Sanders: The Wednesday courtroom session was very intimidating, and all I could do was tell my side of the story and be truthful, and hope and pray that the judge is fair. And understands that they really, in my opinion, have no merit for bringing the claims against me and trying to criminalize this skating rink.
Kirsten Holzheimer Gail: You received a letter from the law department declaring your property a nuisance back in June of ’19. Is that correct?
Miguel Sanders: When you provide me a public nuisance charge for a car being broken into by somebody, God knows who, I just don’t think those sort of public nuisance charges are right, because they had nothing to do with people that was in our skating rink. I’ve even identified people breaking into cars, and we’ve contacted the police department when this has occurred. I even have some of this footage on videotape. I was hoping to get an actual appeal hearing in light of the fact that you guys were not willing to sit down and find some type of resolution.
Kirsten Holzheimer Gail: Mr. Sanders, are you aware the reputation of PLA-MOR amongst the teens as being a place to go to fight?
Sanders’ Attorney: I will object to that.
Judge: Sustained.
Miguel Sanders: People have families. They need outlets for their kids. City recently tore down the YMCA. They are in the process of demolishing three swimming pools. If we can’t find a way to accelerate the minds of these teenagers and youth, then that’s going to be a problem.
Diana Hamblin: Hi, my name is Diana Hamblin. I’m a student currently at New York University studying film with a concentration in storytelling of Black experiences, and I’ve also been a resident at Euclid, Ohio, for the past 19 years. And I’ve been in Euclid public schools. No, I do not think the police officers in the high school did anything for the students besides intimidate the students and overpolice the Black students that were at the high school. This girl logged her little basketball game where they pepper sprayed people. Do y’all want to include that?
Interviewer: I would love to get that.
Diana Hamblin: Okay. I’ll try to look it up right now for y’all.
[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]
Girl in YouTube video: 5:49. I’m going to an event. It is called the All-Star Game. Basically, high school basketball teams in our city all playing the game versus each other, boys and girls. [sounds of loud crowd in a gymnasium]
Girl in YouTube video: [screams] Y’all, they just pepper sprayed. People is jumping the fences.
Girl in YouTube video: Oh, my gosh.
Speaker: Suing.
Girl in YouTube video: They is tweaking, though. The police might be in the recording, so if something happen to me, just know. Just know, okay.
[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]
Diana Hamblin: I did soccer in high school, and I saw the police officers kind of interact with the white high school soccer players. Some residents in Euclid are white, and they do bring their kids to Euclid-run events. And I remember the soccer program. They were really nice. They were really cordial, but then I also see students getting stopped, students getting frisked, students getting abused by the police officers at the high school.
Speaker: [Playing from laptop] But we start with breaking news from the Five on Your Side investigators. A Euclid police officer fired over domestic violence charges just got his job back with back pay.
Ivory was fired last summer after he was charged with assault, domestic violence, and aggravated menacing against a woman he was dating. The victim told police Ivory bit, choked, and hit her. He pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct. A second woman accused Ivory of domestic violence twice in 2017. Police say Ivory admitted he slapped the second victim several times. Despite the domestic violence cases, Ivory has his job back tonight.
Diana Hamblin: I’m trying to collect my thoughts about that. Don Ivory getting his job back shows that we have aggressive and we have overly violent cops in the system of Euclid. And even when we try to get rid of the bad cops like Don Ivory, we can’t because of binding arbitration in the contracts that hold him in place.
[VIDEO OF DON IVORY INTERSPERSED]
Don Ivory: Hello boys and girls, welcome to today’s episode of Books for Badges.
Diana Hamblin: This is Don Ivory?
Don Ivory: My name is Officer Ivory, and we are going to be reading Just Going to the Dentist by Mercer Mayer.
Diana Hamblin: I feel like that’s a joke. That’s literally a joke. I think it’s just a joke having him read to the kids on their YouTube channel. He’s not a family-friendly person.
[INTERSPERSED VIDEO CLIPS END]
Erimius Spencer: My name is Erimius Spencer. Well, I was going to go visit a friend, another resident in the building I was a resident in. I was going to go smoke with them, of course. And the police just pulled up on me while I was knocking at their door. And as they approached me, they asked me if they could search me for weapons. And I said, “I know I don’t have any weapons on me. I’m a resident of the building.” They said they were getting a call about suspicious activity, and they searched me.
They searched me for the weapons. They didn’t find any weapons. And all of a sudden they come up, they find the weed and they tell me I’m under arrest. So I ask them, “What am I under arrest for?” They don’t tell me what I’m under arrest. They proceed to knee me in my groin, throw me to the ground, and I’m thinking the original procedure is to cuff you while you’re down, apprehend you and bring you back up. But in this case, they kicked me in my face multiple times while the other one was holding me down and tasing me. And he fractured or broke an orbital bone by my eye, because he was kicking me close to my eye.
That kind of healed with time, but still the mental anguish doesn’t go away. I have to live with that forever. If you look at a police report, he lied at a police report and said I broke his glasses. Come on. And he said I reached for his taser. All of this was supposed to be the things that he made up to justify what he did. It’s not justifiable, did not happen. It was not justifiable. You know what I’m saying? And I still have to live with this.
Christopher McNeal: Euclid, historically, has been a majority white suburb. Though Euclid now is almost 50% African American, their police force doesn’t reflect that.
[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]
Armontay Anderson: Hey, what he do? What he do? What he do? He a innocent civilian. What he do? Hey, get rough with him if you want. It’s on camera. It’s on camera. It’s on camera. It’s on camera. It’s on camera. It’s on camera. It’s on camera. I promise you. He kneed him. He kneed him.
Police Officer: He’s resisting arrest, man.
Armontay Anderson: He’s not, he was just standing there. It’s all on camera. Don’t even worry about it. No, don’t even worry about it.
Christopher McNeal: Historically, in this country, we’ve seen that police forces have been used to punish new and diverse individuals as they enter into new communities in America. It’s almost as though the desire is to make sure that these new citizens and inhabitants know their proper place as it relates to the stratification of society. And I believe that the police and their discretionary functions, when it comes to who they want to arrest, who they want to target for law enforcement and how much force they want to use, ultimately, are where the rubber means road in terms of this racial transition in the city of Euclid.
Armontay Anderson: Can I get your badge number?
Man being arrested: For what reason am I being detained?
Armontay Anderson: Can I get your badge number?
Man being arrested: You’ve got to read me my rights. For what reason am I being detained? For what reason am I being detained?
Armontay Anderson: Look, I… Hey, thank you. Thank you. Hey, excuse me. He told me to stand right here. Please, don’t pepper spray me. He told me to stand right here.
Dr. Richard Montgomery: The white people say, “Well, the police aren’t that bad.” Because you’re not having the same experience. You’re not getting pulled over for that BS. The police have not had this clean slate ever. You know what? I study organization. So when an organization begins, it develops a history, norms and culture and basic rituals that are part of that organization. And without some major paradigm shift, they don’t change. So since we know that police organizations were started originally to patrol and control the freedom of movement of Black people in major society,
[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]
Dr. Richard Montgomery: The question is, in the last 120 years, when was there a paradigm shift that said, “That’s not what we do here”?
Kareem Henton: There was at one time during the Jim Crow era, in which it was unlawful for more than two Black people to stand with one another or congregate on any city street. So when you understand that even though we changed those laws, and thank goodness that we did, the attitude still remained. People tend to get in a panic when they see amounts of Black people congregating. So understand that for a lot of folks, this business owner’s business, because it tends to draw in larger crowds of Black people, it’s not going to be something that a lot of folks want.
And it’s obviously something that officers tend to go in and deal with, with that ancient or historic frame of mind. We got to bring them to heel. If they’re using chemical weapons on children and they found it necessary to do so because the kids would not disperse, think about this logically for a minute. If they were dropped off by parents, where were they supposed to disperse to? When law enforcement is interacting with–
Speaker: Sir?
Kareem Henton: Yes?
Speaker: I’m sorry, but your time is up.
Kareem Henton: When law enforcement’s interacting with young people, you should act in the proper way, and you didn’t do that because you don’t value our children.
Chief Scott Meyer: I would disagree with you. I value your opinion, but I would disagree with you. I and the officers that work for this police department care very deeply about children. I understand that we need to find some common ground. I understand that, and I’m willing to have those conversations, but please, I do want everybody to understand that. I think that’s a commonality amongst us all. I would hope obviously that we all care deeply about children and each other.
As we’ve covered previously on Rattling the Bars, prisons in the US have been a major source of COVID-19 infections throughout the pandemic, and experts have suggested that the reality is even worse than the limited data have shown. Now, as the more contagious Delta variant causes another surge in cases in prisons around the country, certain states have stopped sharing infection statistics with the public, and there is less transparency and oversight than ever before.
In this episode of Rattling the Bars, TRNN Executive Producer Eddie Conway speaks with professors Kathryn M. Nowotny and Zinzi Bailey of the COVID Prison Project about the concerning reality that we simply don’t have good information about COVID-19 infections and deaths connected to the prison system. Kathryn M. Nowotny is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Miami and is a co-lead investigator and co-founder of the COVID Prison Project; Zinzi Bailey is a research assistant professor at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and project investigator for the COVID Prison Project.
Baltimore County State’s Attorney Scott Shellenberger, notorious for his opposition to criminal justice and police reforms, is facing a primary opponent for the first time since he took office 15 years ago: Robbie Leonard, an attorney and activist, will face off against Shellenberger in next year’s Democratic primary.
“When George Floyd’s murder inspired so many activists to take to the streets and fight for meaningful justice reform and police reform, I saw Scott Shellenberger being the singular force trying to stop any kind of progress,” Leonard told Battleground Baltimore, referring to Shellenberger’s opposition to many of the police reforms introduced last summer. “[Shellenberger] testified against police reform legislation in Baltimore County. He testified against police reform legislation sponsored by Speaker Adrienne Jones in Annapolis, and he’s just completely out of step with where the Democratic Party is right now.”
“Scott and I were on opposite sides of every piece of legislation 10 years ago, when I was in the Public Defender’s Office working on their government relations team … He wanted to keep the death penalty. I wanted to repeal it. He wanted to send people to jail for marijuana. I wanted to legalize it, and the list goes on.”
Robbie Leonard, Democratic primary candidate for Baltimore County State’s Attorney
Leonard is an attorney and activist who serves as the secretary of Maryland Democratic Party, and recently represented plaintiffs who successfully sued Gov. Larry Hogan for illegally ending federal unemployment benefits for thousands of Marylanders. Before starting a private practice last year, Leonard represented hundreds of lead poisoning victims seeking remuneration from their landlords. Leonard also worked at the Office of the Baltimore City Public Defender from 2008-2012.
“Scott and I were on opposite sides of every piece of legislation 10 years ago, when I was in the Public Defender’s Office working on their government relations team,” Leonard said. “He wanted to keep the death penalty. I wanted to repeal it. He wanted to send people to jail for marijuana. I wanted to legalize it, and the list goes on.”
Shellenberger opposed making allegations of police abuse public, and penalties for cops who refuse to use their body camera to record interactions with civilians. He also opposed a measure that would require the state prosecutor to investigate allegations of excessive force and criminal misconduct among police. He argued against reducing sentences for inmates sentenced to prison before the age of 25, or are over 60 and had already served lengthy prison terms—and he has defended charging juveniles as adults.
In 2015, Shellenberger called for Hogan to reinstate the death penalty, which was abolished in 2013 after advocates exposed it was deeply racist in its application.
Local activist and artist Duane “Shorty” Davis has long been a critic of Shellenberger, after Shellenberger’s office charged Davis with making a bomb threat after Davis left one of his pieces of art—the kind of decorated toilet he often leaves in public to, as Davis says, “potty train politicians”—in front of a county courthouse. Davis was ultimately found not guilty.
Leonard says he fundamentally disagrees with many of Shellenberger’s positions, and would take a drastically different approach to being state’s attorney.
“Instead of focusing on petty offenses and saddling somebody with a criminal record that’s going to affect the rest of their lives, we need to be focusing our attention on the crimes that actually matter where there’s victims involved, specifically in areas of sexual assault, sexual violence, child abuse, child molestation,” Leonard said.
In 2018, Shellenberger was part of a federal class action lawsuit from rape surviors for allegedly obstructing justice, and sending police to a victims’ house to threaten them with arrest if she continued to press charges, as the Baltimore Brewreported.
Leonard told Battleground Baltimore he has been meeting with women’s groups who advocate for sexual assault survivors.
“They know that it’s time for a change and they support my candidacy,” Leonard said.
This week on PAR, we continue our ongoing investigation into the problem of rural overpolicing and provide a critical update on the killing of Tyler Rushing, which we reported on earlier in the year. Rushing’s case is yet another stark example of cops ignoring the needs of a civilian experiencing mental distress; instead, police brutally deployed a K-9, which bit him repeatedly, before shooting Rushing in the back of the head. Now, a police expert is speaking out, casting doubt on every action officers took the night Rushing died and raising more questions about the use of force by law enforcement and the untold consequences of abusing it.
Transcript
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 with breaking news about a horrifying police killing in a small rural community, a tragic case that demonstrates just how above the law police actually are.
But I want you watching to know that if you have evidence of police misconduct or brutality, please email it to us privately at par@therealnews.com. And please like, share, and comment on our videos, you know I read your comments and that I appreciate them. And of course, you can always reach out to me directly @tayasbaltimore on Facebook or Twitter. And if you can, you can hit the Patreon donate link below in the comments. We have a Patreon, so if you feel inspired please feel free to click the link. Okay. Now we’ve gotten all that stuff out of the way.
Now, several months ago, we showed you this, one of the most horrifying body camera videos I have ever seen. It showed the torturous death of Tyler Rushing at the hands of Chico Police. It was the case we decided to highlight, not just because of its sheer brutality, but also due to the fact it was a prime example of the type of policing we have continued to report on: overpolicing in rural America.
Tyler’s ordeal started when he was visiting a rural county in Northern California called Butte. It’s a sparsely populated area with just 200,000 people, but it’s also home to a highly aggressive form of policing that has led to 42 deaths at the hands of police in the past 30 years, many of them controversial. And that’s where Tyler’s tragic story begins, because what happened to the avid photo journalist during his visit to a small city in Butte called Chico, is a story that begins with the culture of unchecked police violence there, and ends in a tragedy that could have been prevented.
Tyler’s tale starts with an encounter with a security guard. The guard was patrolling the grounds of the Title Company in Chico, when he and Tyler clashed. It was then the guard drew his weapon and fired twice. Despite the fact that California law requires non-law enforcement personnel to refrain from using force, the security guard opened fire. He later claimed Tyler was trespassing and attacked him with a potted plant. But Tyler’s family said he might’ve been scared or unaware that the man was a security guard. Let’s watch. And before I do, I have to warn you, what you’re about to see is very disturbing.
Speaker: [inaudible]. [shouting] you fucking asshole. You fucking asshole. [inaudible] You fucking asshole. [inaudible]. [sounds of metal clashing, mic popping]
Speaker: [radio] Standby, we have a 10-45. [sounds of metal clanging, falling].
[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]
Taya Graham: That was not the end of Tyler’s ordeal. Not hardly. After he was shot, he retreated to a bathroom inside the building where the shooting occurred. Chico Police arrived claiming they were trying to lure Tyler out. However, after only an hour of communicating with him, the cops stormed in, guns blazing, with a K-9 attack dog in tow. The dog bit Tyler in the groin just prior to being shot again. Let’s watch the video again. And I have to warn you, what you are going to watch is very difficult to see.
[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]
Speaker: [inaudible] fuck.
Speaker: [inaudible shouting]. [sound of water running]
Speaker: Watch out.
Speaker: Watch your head.
Speaker: [inaudible].
Speaker: [crosstalk].
[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]
Taya Graham: Tyler was shot through the back of the head. And even as he laid on the ground dying, he was tasered by police while lying in a pool of his own blood. But that’s only the beginning of this story, because since his horrifying death, his father Scott Rushing has been on a mission to hold police accountable. Part of that quest has been an ongoing lawsuit against the officers who killed Tyler. But it’s also been an ongoing struggle for something that almost always proves elusive when police kill. And that’s the truth.
That’s because key evidence in the series of events that led up to the horrible death that we’ve seen on video has been withheld from Rushing and his lawyers. Interviews with the police obtained by a journalist in Chico, California, sheds light on the conflicting stories about why police felt compelled to use violence when other options were available. And so before we talk to Scott, I will discuss this new evidence with my reporting partner, Stephen Janis. Stephen, thank you for joining me.
Stephen Janis: Taya, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Taya Graham: So, Stephen, tell us about this new evidence.
Stephen Janis: Well, I mean, Scott will talk about the evidence that was uncovered by a reporter out in Chico, but what I looked at was the deposition of a police use of force expert and a K-9 expert. And what he said was just stunning about this case of how poorly it was managed and how Tyler did not have to die. Let’s listen to one statement he made.
[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]
Police Expert: With my vast amount of experience and training and the number of searches that I’ve deployed on and the searches that I’ve done and things in training and seen other handlers in action—Not only from my department, but other departments—I have reason to believe that the officer jumped out of the way or stumbled out of the way because the dog was in there and he was afraid of getting bit.
Interviewer: So it’s your understanding the dog was already in there when he turned his back?
Police Expert: …I think so. Or coming in right there, yeah.
Interviewer: Okay.
Police Expert: I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s just so bizarre. And in this case it was just a cluster.
Interviewer: Okay.
Police Expert: There was no organization to this whatsoever.
[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]
Stephen Janis: And then he goes on to say something further that’s shocking. That this whole mess was caused by the mishandling of the canine. And the fact that the canine dog was sent in to a man who was having a mental health break and that this canine attacked him and it never should have happened. Let’s listen to what he had to say there.
[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]
Police Expert: The totality of this incident was nothing more than a bunch of Keystone Cops trying to do something they didn’t have the experience and training or tactics, knowledge, or equipment to do, and no supervision. This was a joke. It wasn’t a joke. This was a catastrophe.
[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]
Stephen Janis: Okay. So the point is, this is a man who has handled k-9s forever, and he’s basically saying, Chico police didn’t know what they were doing and that Tyler Rushing didn’t have to die. I mean, it’s really stunning. And it’s very sad because this is a cop. And he’s saying these people were quote-unquote “Keystone Cops”. So it’s really, really troubling.
Taya Graham: Why is this evidence so critical?
Stephen Janis: Well, I think a lot of times we are supposed to adopt the police narrative that everything that can be done should be done. In other words, if we decide to do it, it was the right thing to do. But in this case, as you can see, these people clearly didn’t know what they’re doing. The problem was, it wasn’t like someone cooking a hamburger or washing your car. It was people dealing with a life or death situation with a young man who was in distress, and the end result was a tragic and horrible death. So that’s why it’s important that we have to listen to this type of evidence to realize that, hey, sometimes police just don’t know what they’re doing. And it has deadly consequences.
Taya Graham: Can you give us a sense of how violent police are in Chico and Brutte? I mean, another young man was killed just weeks before Tyler, right?
Stephen Janis: Yeah. I mean, a couple of months before Tyler was killed, Desmond Phillips is killed by police in his own home during another mental health call. So you can see the police are ill-equipped. There have been dozens of killings over the past 30 years, not a single police officer has been indicted or tried for it. And so really you have a county where police have very little scrutiny and really in some sense are out of control, poorly managed, poorly trained. It’s really a disaster.
Taya Graham: Now I was fortunate enough to actually conduct a sit-down interview with Scott Rushing. Scott was in Washington, DC, to attend a rally for families of the victims of police violence. I caught up with him in DC in a hotel room two weeks ago, and we discussed not just the new details of Tyler’s case, but the profoundly unique sorrow that affects families who lose loved ones to the fatal indifference of American law enforcement. Let’s watch.
[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]
Taya Graham: My first question is, can you give us an update on the investigation, the status of the case, looking into your son’s death?
Scott Rushing: Yes. The new information that I have is through the efforts of a local journalist in Chico, have finally pried out of records of the Chico Police Department, the District Attorney’s Office, the Sheriff’s office, interviews of the officers involved in killing Tyler and the guard just within hours after he was killed. Those interviews were done, would have been July 24, 2017. Tyler was killed about midnight on the 23rd.
So within a few hours, all the officers, I mean the killers, had been interviewed. But, my attorney was not given that information, was not given those videos. In my opinion, they’re very damning. The information finally connects the dots for my attorneys and me to what happened that evening, because those are recollections immediately from the killing.
Taya Graham: So it seems to me that getting these videos at such a late date is a form of suppressing evidence. Do you think this was a coverup? Why do you think you received these videos so late?
Scott Rushing: For one thing, the actual person in charge of the extraction or breaking of Tyler was not who we thought it was. It was implied by the district attorney it was a Chico police sergeant, but it turns out it was the K-9 handler, a deputy sheriff. Because of the dog being used to extract Tyler, the K-9 officer takes control and orders the staging, orders the lining up, they call it staging or stacking of the officers. Who’s lethal, who’s less lethal, who has a taser, who breaks in, and so on.
A young deputy, he was about two years of experience and about a year with the dog, ended up being in charge of the extraction of Tyler. There was a lieutenant on scene with decades of experience, the sergeant who shot Tyler had decades of experience. But the person in charge was a deputy sheriff, the K-9 handler. We were not told that. That was not revealed to us. We didn’t know until a few days ago that the actual person we should have deposed and been talking to was the deputy sheriff.
They knew that there was something odd about the way that dog was used, or misused, the way I alleged. And sure enough, with these videos, we now have that confirmed. Why that was not given to us, is my question for the DA. What are you hiding? What else are you hiding?
Taya Graham: I guess my last question for you is what keeps you going? Why do you keep pressing forward?
Scott Rushing: It’s merely to bring attention to, really, police reform. And the fact that every year, statistically, over a thousand civilians are killed. So even since Tyler was killed four years ago, you think about it, four thousand civilians have been killed since my son. And I’m one of the few people of that four thousand that’s able to even mount a legal action. I’m getting obstructed by the legal system. What about people that can’t afford to do that?
Tyler would not be one who would want vigilantism. That would not be Tyler. He was a very peaceful person, but he wouldn’t want anybody else to be attacked and violated like he was. I believe that’s what he would want. So we have the resources. That’s my motivation. I can’t let the bad guys win.
[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]
Taya Graham: Now, one aspect of this tragedy that haunts me as I watched the body camera footage of this terrible tragedy is how the actions of the officers constitute a chain of causality initiated by a single legal sin. It’s a topic that we’ve discussed before, but bears repeating because it’s ingrained in the culture of law enforcement and has much to do with what happened with Tyler. It’s a legal precedent called “qualified immunity.”
As most of you already know, it’s a standard that allows law enforcement officers to evade legal liability for their actions. Basically an idea that police officers deserve a special shield from any sort of legal litigation. A concept that has made it almost impossible for families of victims like Tyler to prevail in court. And there’s a recent case that reveals just how much this idea enables bad policing and is perhaps illustrative of how empowering it is for police who abuse their power.
It involves a St. Paul-Minneapolis police officer named Heather Weyker. In 2010, the veteran cop was the lead for investigation of allegedly massive case of human sex trafficking. The crimes allegedly encompassed more than 30 defendants in the city Somali community. It was a breathtaking scheme to exploit young girls that led to indictments, arrest, and incarceration.
The case was based on a set of statements from witnesses a judge later determined was unreliable. These allegations were stunning that a 12-year-old girl had been sold for sex by a cohort of at least a dozen men, but it turns out it wasn’t true. None of it. That didn’t matter to Weyker. She continued to lie in court, which led to charges against eight men. All of whom were acquitted. But, even with those facts, the prosecutor appealed a jury’s decision, an appeal which failed. Nevertheless, the defendants had to spend four years in jail for a fake crime.
It gets worse. It gets much worse. One of the fake witnesses got into an altercation with a young woman in 2011, when the sex traffic trial was still pending. The witness attacked the girl with a knife. After the altercation, the witness called officer Weyker ,and she sprang into action. Charges were filed against the teenage girl. She was in prison for roughly a year and charged with witness tampering. I’m not kidding. She was even held in solitary confinement.
That victim sued, and now a US appeals court is in the process of deciding if officer Weyker should be held accountable. Apparently, the St Paul police have forgotten how to do so because, now wait for it, in 2013, Weyker was promoted to sergeant. And just to add another layer to the lack-of-accountability cake, the so-called internal investigation of Weyker is still ongoing, six years later.
But the real question here is how many instances of bad policing have qualified immunity enabled? How much chaos and havoc have other cops sown in the lives of innocent people knowing full well they will be afforded special protection under the law? And how is such a lawless idea actually legal? I mean, isn’t law enforcement always espousing how even the tiniest infraction of the law justifies harsh consequences?
Haven’t we heard police unions denouncing judges for coddling criminals, or handing out light sentences. I mean, it’s the clarion call. They continue even as the US incarcerates a greater percentage of its population than any other country on the planet earth. Think of all the examples about police apply the law to us, that we have reported on, on the show. And now contrast them to how the law applies to them, the police officers. In other words, which sets of behaviors are more destructive?
Now, most of the encounters we report on involve traffic stops, camping, driving a vehicle purchased at a police auction, driving in your own neighborhood, pulling up in your own driveway, recording police from your front porch, holding a sign while giving out food donations. But in each of these cases, law enforcement was ruthless in their prosecution of the law. Many of the people we covered were subject to arrest, protracted prosecution and even prison.
So, returning to the question I already raised: which behavior is ostensibly more destructive? Which crimes inflict more pain on society: a cop who lies so that innocent people spend a year in jail, or a person who doesn’t stop before the white line preceding a stop sign? Which takes the greatest toll on the health of the community: a cop who falsely charges a young woman with witness tampering or a man who holds an offensive sign? Which set of processes extract more resources from all of us: a prosecutor who keeps innocent people in jail to appeal a case based on lies, or a man who drives to a park with his friends and is pulled over for changing lanes?
It seems like an absurd set of questions. Doesn’t it? I mean, it seems like I must be reporting on some sort of insane country, which has unleashed law enforcement so destructive that it inflicts more harm than good. It seems like I must simply be making all these stories up because it just doesn’t make a damn bit of sense. Unfortunately, all the aforementioned contradictions reflect the true state of law enforcement in this country.
Every twisted case is an example of just how out of balance the scales of justice truly are. Every sad and tragic example is a recognition of the reality that we have allowed cops and courts to operate with impunity and without accountability. And that’s the crucial part, because if officers like Weyker can destroy people’s lives without consequences and actually get promoted, then there is no system of accountability. Then the legal system we’ve created has simply turned the law into a cudgel for politics and self promotion.
The reality that cases like Tyler Rushing and the failed sex trafficking case reveal is a literal dystopia where a person can take a life or destroy one and no one has to answer for it at all. I want to thank my guest, Scott Rushing, for coming forward and sharing his incredibly tragic story with us. Scott, thank you so much for your time. And I want to thank intrepid reporter Stephen Janis for his hard work on this piece. His writing, his research, his editing. Thank you so much.
Stephen Janis: Taya, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Taya Graham: And of course, I have to thank friend of the show, Noli Dee, for her support. Thanks, Noli Dee. And I have to thank our new Patreons for joining us. You get a double thank. Thanks, you guys. And I want you watching to know that if you have 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 privately at par@therealnews.com and share your evidence of police misconduct.
You can also message us @PoliceAccountabilityReport on Facebook or Instagram, or @eyesonpolice on Twitter. And of course, you can always message me directly @tayasbaltimore on Twitter and Facebook. And please like, and comment. I do read your comments and appreciate them. And we do have a Patreon link pinned in the comments below. So if work like this is important to you and you can spare a few dollars, it would mean a great deal. We don’t run ads. We don’t take corporate dollars. So anything you can do is appreciated. My name is Taya Graham, and I am your host to The Police Accountability Report. Please be safe out there.
Once again, the NYPD 67th Precinct in Flatbush had parked a car on the sidewalk. Again, neighborhood residents sprang into action, coordinating dialing 311 to lodge yet another complaint via WhatsApp chat groups. Commandeering public sidewalks to park police squad cars is one thing. Then, another wrecked car—instead of being taken to a tow lot— appeared on the same sidewalk by the Snyder Avenue station, as if a portal from a different dimension had opened in the sky, dumping battered and booted cars on this majority-Black and working-class section of Brooklyn.
Then, another wrecked car—instead of being taken to a tow lot— appeared on the same sidewalk by the Snyder Avenue station, as if a portal from a different dimension had opened in the sky, dumping battered and booted cars on this majority-Black and working-class section of Brooklyn.
“The cops have taken over a majority of the blocks by putting abandoned, booted cars. So we’re hoping to see if they could take the booted cars and put them in a tow lot and clear up [parking] spaces for more of the residents,” said Adrian Césaire, 42, who has lived on Snyder Avenue for over 20 years.
The trash and wreckage of bashed-up cars left by the NYPD is not only an eyesore; it’s an affront amid pandemic-related budget cuts in 2020 totaling millions of dollars, which hurt both the jobs of union sanitation and municipal workers and left residents to clean up litter-strewn streets. While across the country states like Minnesota are pushing to enact ambitious reforms, including the disbanding of police departments, Brooklyn residents have more modest aims. They want the NYPD, whose budget is one of the largest in the nation, even after a modest reduction to $98.56 billion for the 2022 fiscal year, to stop trashing their neighborhood—another way, as far as residents are concerned, the NYPD makes their lives more difficult while displaying their contempt for Black working-class communities like Flatbush.
On a gray Saturday in August, I spot a black Mercedes sedan with tinted windows on that sidewalk, its bottom fender hanging off like a busted lip, the Mercedes-logo grill pressed up against the windshield. Next to it are a large dumpster, a white refrigerator, and two black office chairs with exposed padding.
A wrecked Mercedes dumped on the public sidewalk outside the 67th Precinct station house in Brooklyn, New York. Photo taken by Luis Feliz Leon on August 28, 2021.
“Before these dumpsters, the garbage was leaking to the streets and everything,” says Kevon Nesbitt, 40, who has rummaged through garbage at the precinct for over 10 years.
I find Nesbitt diving into the dumpster, masked up and gloved, sorting recyclables to collect the deposit on bottles and cans. He sports a blue T-shirt spelling out his day job as a porter in one of the newly erected buildings that replaced the two-family homes that once lined these streets.
“I have kids. It helps a lot,” he says, describing how many residents turn to recycling as their “bread and butter.” He explains that at least the refrigerator wasn’t put inside the dumpster because a sanitation truck picking it up would compress it and cause an explosion.
He sounds sanguine about the neighborhood. “As the years passed, they turned around and got dumpsters and that makes the place look a lot better, even though you have one or two casualties.”
Kevon Nesbitt, a local resident, rummages through a dumpster searching for recyclables. Photo taken by Luis Feliz Leon on August 28, 2021.
Kevon Nesbitt, a local resident, standing beside a dumpster outside the 67th Precinct station house in Brooklyn, New York. Photo taken by Luis Feliz Leon on August 28, 2021.
The “casualties” are the refrigerator and office chairs on the sidewalk. Asked whether that’s illegal dumping, he says it depends on who’s responsible. “Cops?” I ask, after hearing residents speculate on the provenance of office furniture and other big items. “They have the right to do that, but if someone else in the neighborhood was to do that, that’d be a problem.”
In an email statement, the NYPD acknowledged an increase in wrecked cars, blaming changes in the chain of command, and referencing the hiring of a new commander, Deputy Inspector Gaby Celiba, in January. “At that time there were more than four dozen vehicles at the location awaiting transfer to the tow pound,” an NYPD spokesperson said in a statement, adding that the number has now been reduced “to less than a dozen as of August 28.” Calling a spade a spade is something I believe in, and I saw more than half a dozen totaled and booted vehicles on Aug. 28.
Brooklyn residents voted the 67th Precinct the worst in a March Streetsblog NYC survey and ranked it a top contender along with the 34th Precinct in Washington Heights and 114th Precinct in Astoria. In the last week of July, the New York City Department of Sanitation doubled the number of trucks going out in the area from six to 12 a week, and put Sanitation Department enforcement officers at hot spots for illegal dumping, according to reports from The City.
From July 25 to Aug. 7, across East New York, the Sanitation Department issued 24 summonses for illegal dumping and nine for improper disposal of garbage, and 15 for littering from a car. They also carried out 16 vehicle impounds, according to a department spokesperson.
The trash and wreckage of bashed-up cars left by the NYPD is not only an eyesore; it’s an affront amid pandemic-related budget cuts in 2020 totaling millions of dollars, which hurt both the jobs of union sanitation and municipal workers and left residents to clean up litter-strewn streets.
Data from 311 requests for litter baskets show a whopping 1,076 calls from Brooklyn residents for fiscal year 2021 in comparison to 373 (Manhattan), 314 (Bronx), 486 (Queens), and 124 (Staten Island).
In response to the NYPD’s 67th Precinct allegedly dumping furniture outside the station house, the Sanitation Department said, “All New Yorkers are our partners in keeping the city clean, and all have an obligation to put trash in its proper place.” But the department found no evidence of illegal dumping, which involves leaving bulk refuse on public or private property. Items such as refrigerators can be picked up by calling 311.
The NYPD responded to dumping allegations, saying that “trash items were placed next to the dumpster for trash collection.” A neighborhood resident confirmed that the refrigerator and chairs had been collected.
It’s hard to conclusively settle the allegations of cops engaging in illegal dumping—short of the Sanitation Department putting sentries near the Snyder Avenue station house to surveil them. Penalties for illegal dumping range from $4,000 to $18,000 if the trash is dumped from a vehicle.
After the pandemic hit, the Sanitation Department’s budget was slashed by $106 million, according to a department spokesperson. The funds have since been restored for fiscal year 2022, starting July 2021. In response to the cuts, food scrap drop-off sites were closed in March of last year. Composting was restored in April of 2021, with more than 100 sites in operation and more on the way.
Brooklyn community residents interviewed for this story describe the Sanitation Department as responsive, and they note that coordinated street cleanups are happening. But faced with budget cuts that were only restored a little over a month ago, the department had its hands tied. The result has been heaps of uncollected garbage, a wasteland of towering piles of trash bags. No neighborhood has been spared. As of August this year, the city had received 27,631 complaints, almost certain to surpass the 27,835 complaints residents filed in 2020, according to data reviewed by The City.
The department’s roughly 10,000 employees remove about 12,000 tons of trash from the streets daily, says department spokesperson Joshua Goodman.
“So the idea that one neighborhood would feel their trash collection is ‘poor’ is certainly distressing, given the amount of work involved in giving all New Yorkers the clean and safe streets they both expect and deserve,” he wrote in an email.
Another issue is that the Police Department has commandeered entire blocks to park their squad cars, using the city’s “combat parking” law, which allows squad cars to be parked perpendicularly to the curb. The rationale is to be ready to bolt to the scene of an emergency, but in practice, it gives the appearance of an occupying force.
The Police Department has commandeered entire blocks to park their squad cars, using the city’s “combat parking” law, which allows squad cars to be parked perpendicularly to the curb. The rationale is to be ready to bolt to the scene of an emergency, but in practice, it gives the appearance of an occupying force.
The practice is even more egregious in Flatbush. Cops park directly on the sidewalk, blocking stroller and wheelchair access.
“I don’t really condone that because it’s a mess,” Nesbitt says, pointing to combat-parked cars. “A woman with a stroller can barely even walk through here. What if someone hits a car when someone’s walking past and that car just hits the person and squeezes them in the back? That’s just ridiculous.”
Police also put booted and wrecked cars on the street, blocking sanitation trucks from cleaning all the way up to the curb.
Alexandra Schmidbauer of the Flatbush Community Association can’t remember the last time cops moved the cars to make way for the brushes of a sanitation truck.
“It is up to the 67th Precinct to enforce alternate-side parking so that the street sweeper can have access to clean the street,” she wrote in a July 3email to community affairs police officer Remy Jean-Francois. She offered to help put up signs to ask people to move their cars on alternate-side-of-the-street parking days, so they could avoid getting tickets, but said a big part of the issue is “the booted cars that belong to the precinct which are often totaled and should be in a city tow yard.”
“We only get our streets cleaned when its [sic] for a precinct event,” Schmidbauer added. “I have lived and worked in many different parts of Brooklyn and Manhattan, and I have never seen anything like this. I’m sure it has a lot to do with the fact that this is a predominantly black/brown community, and a lot to do with predecessors in your position because I believe you would like to help make it better but you are probably told that this is just the way it is right now. Anytime I step outside my neighborhood, I am reminded that this is not how it is for most other Brooklyn neighborhoods.”
“Mr. Jean-Francois does not reply,” she wrote in August to Assemblymember Rodneyse Bichotte’s office.
Schmidbauer has made similar pleas to other elected officials, including City Councilmember Mathieu Eugene, whose district office is on Rogers Avenue south of the 67th Precinct. Most recently, she spoke to someone at Public Advocate Jumaane Williams’ office.
What she was told was deflating, she said in a text message on Aug. 29: “There is virtually no hope for the current administration to hold the precinct accountable, and he would try to help me but basically wait for [Eric] Adams to come in.”
As we stroll through the streets near the precinct, on Snyder Avenue, Erasmus Street, and Albemarle Road between Nostrand and Rogers avenues, we encounter booted cars, the refrigerator outside the precinct, car seats, an oversized restaurant menu with no listed price for lamb over rice, and an odd assortment of homespun paraphernalia in black trash bags.
That’s a common sentiment among Flatbush residents—a hard-nosed self-reliance that largely absolves government of its obligations to provide public services for residents.
Schmidbauer sends me an image from her extensive collection of snapshots of litter piling up alongside the curb where the sweepers can’t reach, cataloguing before-and-after pictures of how long trash has been left to fester.
We meet longtime Flatbush resident Versel Talbert, 56, outside his home on Snyder Avenue with a broom and dustpan in his hand.
“If I come in at night, and see debris around, I clean it up before the morning, from what I see. So I grab my broom and clean. I try to keep the environment clean,” he says, adding he doesn’t wait for the city to do it, even though it’s the city’s job.
That’s a common sentiment among Flatbush residents—a hard-nosed self-reliance that largely absolves government of its obligations to provide public services for residents.
I ask Schmidbauer about the pitfalls of bootstrapping it with community cleanups and other beautification projects instead of demanding good upkeep with public services like street cleaning.
“If there was someone else to pick up the trash and plant things and maintain the streets, and constantly ask the precinct to move cars and enforce parking, I would be happy to let them do it,” she says. “But in my experience, I think that there’s nothing being done here. Because this is a neighborhood of disenfranchised people.”
That earnest commitment to community stewardship lends itself to an urban policy that favors market policy solutions and is hostile to unions, treating public austerity as fixed rather than as a contested political arena.
Take, for example, the city’s Clean Curbs program, a collaboration between the sanitation and transportation departments, to enlist private entities like business improvement districts, widely considered vehicles of gentrification, in the administration of public services. “It’s a bit like streeteries, but for trash,” wroteCurbed’s Alissa Walker last year, describing the cumbersome requirement for applicants to design and install decked platforms with sealed containers up to eight feet wide and five feet tall and 20 feet long.
Other alternatives include a community garden Ray Beth Maye, 70, and her neighborhoods maintain on Tilden Avenue to promote a sense of community ownership. Over the course of 19 years, Mama Maye, as her neighbors affectionately call her, has seen overbuilding on the block trammel the quality of life of the community, taking away what she calls “the assorted amenities of life” like laundromats, schools, supermarkets, and parking. As a founding member of the Flatbush Community Association, Mama Maye is hopeful about people coming together.
Ray Beth Maye, a local resident, stands in front of a community garden on Tilden Avenue in Brooklyn, New York. Photo taken by Luis Feliz Leon on August 28, 2021.
“There’s a rule you say, ‘if everybody did what I do, what would the effect on the world be?’” she asks. “I would like to see more people do what I do and what Alexandra does, which is taking responsibility and taking ownership.”
“And I think when you get the energy of the young people with whatever nuggets of wisdom we’ve managed to gather over our years of living, and you get those [those two] working together, then you really have hope for a solid future. Because you give each other hope. That would be my hope that we keep working and expanding,” she says.
She points to practical changes of the mulch for tree guards, cantaloupe, and beans harvested from the community garden to feed the neighborhood.
It’s of course more complicated than an either-or choice about whether to contribute to a community or press demands on the municipal government. Instead, it’s about what demands to make in the first place, and what contributions build collective power as opposed to undermining it. That’s hard work. But Black people shouldn’t have to beg and plead to the city government for clean streets that New Yorkers in whiter and more well-heeled neighborhoods take for granted.
There is a tangled web of interests at play in this kind of volunteerism, which may appear on the surface as magnanimous and big-hearted. This year, Schmidbauer graduated with a public health degree from Brooklyn College, and her academic interest in urban sustainability coupled with the daily experience of walking her dog through a neighborhood strewn with trash provided the impetus to get involved in improving it. The Flatbush Community Association won a $1,500 “Love Your Block” grant from the Mayor’s Fund.
“The irony is incredibly strong that we would get money from the Mayor’s office to basically combat gentrification issues, but then not get any help with the root of the problem,” she says.
It’s as if the institutional body of municipal government took the right hand to gouge out the left eye. Add the NYPD, and it’s the right hand taking a gun and blasting the Sanitation Department’s efforts to rein in illegal dumping to smithereens.
Irony, indeed. It’s as if the institutional body of municipal government took the right hand to gouge out the left eye. Add the NYPD, and it’s the right hand taking a gun and blasting the Sanitation Department’s efforts to rein in illegal dumping to smithereens.
The Flatbush Community Association also got a $1,000 grant from the Citizens Committee for New York City.
The Citizens Committee for New York emerged out of the city’s 1970s fiscal crisis. It intended to rally corporate and real estate interests in an effort to reorganize municipal government away from the reigning postwar social democracy and towards a market ethos and technocratic decision-making. They rejected the proposition of an activist government intervening to improve the quality of life for New Yorkers, embracing instead an ideal of corporate social responsibility buttressed by rugged individualism and austerity.
Historian Kim Phillips-Fein writes in Fear City: New York’s Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics that the 1970s were the turning point when the city was transformed into the “highly stratified society it is today—a city of apartments bought as investment properties for the wealthy of the world even as almost 60,000 New Yorkers live in homeless shelters.”
The city government also reorganized the public sector, beginning to privatize work previously done by municipal workers in unions. “The City pioneered the use of welfare recipients and volunteers to undercut lower-skilled unionized civil service jobs, and it began to forge partnerships with nonprofit organizations to farm out responsibility for managing public amenities to the private sector,” write John Krisky and Maud Simonet in Who Cleans the Park? Public Work and Urban Governance in New York City.
The Brooklyn District Attorney’s office offered volunteers who need to complete community service to help with cleanup, Schmidbauer wrote me via text in September. At an NYPD Build the Block event that same month, she raised concerns about heaps of garbage and bashed-up cars. In response, the NYPD, she says, told her to launch a petition directed at the Department of Sanitation.
Schmidbauer says her commitment to grassroots activism was inspired by reproductive justice activist Brittany Brathwaite, with whom she took a class at Brooklyn College. But she was also fed up with the experience of logging in complaints to 311 and hitting an impasse with city agencies. She had to turn elsewhere for support.
“I just saw that it wasn’t happening for us, and that this neighborhood was just a little bit more ignored than the other neighborhoods I’ve lived in Brooklyn, and that it probably wasn’t going to happen without some grassroots action,” she says.
Schmidbauer and other members of the Flatbush Community Association have been going door to door to talk to their neighbors, searching for solutions and power in each other without relinquishing their ability to exercise power over the city’s governance.
They have powerful models to draw from. In the summer of 1969 in Spanish Harlem, the Young Lords, a militant group of local Puerto Rican activists who modeled themselves on the Black Panther Party, bagged up trash for the Sanitation Department to haul away.
“We had bags and bags and bags of trash. We said, ‘You going to come clean this trash up now or what?’ They refused,” recalled former Young Lord Hiram Maristany, a photographer who documented what came to be known as the Garbage Offensive.
The Young Lords hauled rusted refrigerators, old cars, mattresses, and furniture to Third Avenue near East 110th Street, and set them on fire.
Pablo Guzmán, another member of the Young Lords, described what led to the conflagration in a 1995 article in the Village Voice.
“All we had been trying to do after sweeping up the streets on previous Sundays was talk with Sanitation about once-a-week pickups and nonexistent trash cans, and about how to decently treat people asking for help instead of blowing them off,” he wrote.
Much as New Yorkers are now drawing on tactics from the 1930s to stop evictions during the pandemic, will Flatbush residents emulate the Young Lords in fighting the degradation of their neighborhood by the NYPD and the real estate industry?
“We have enough new housing that people can’t afford,” says Schmidbauer. “The police have enough of a budget. The rights and the control are slipping away from people’s hands. And it’s affecting our quality of life. So it’s just time to make ourselves heard and say ‘enough.’”
On April 16, 2016, Lamar Wright pulled into a driveway to make a phone call when Officers Kyle Flagg and Vashon Williams rushed Wright and tried to pull him from his car. Because he was wearing a colostomy bag, Wright was slow to comply, and officer Flagg tased him before he could explain his condition. Moreover, Wright was initially charged with obstruction, resisting arrest, and criminal trespassing—but those charges were all eventually dropped. On March 27, 2017, Shajuan Gray was arrested over a noise complaint by Officer James Aoki. Gray was dragged outside without her clothes on and charged with resisting arrest and obstruction. Far from being exceptional cases, Gray and Wright’s treatment is part of a demonstrated pattern of brutality and excessive use of force by officers with the Euclid Police Department in Ohio.
In the second installment of the mini-documentary series State of Injustice, executive produced by Black Lives Matter Cleveland, filmmakers Roger Glenn Hill and Brian Douglas examine several instances of violent arrests by Euclid PD officers, including the arrests of Gray and Wright. These arrests occurred both before and after the death of Luke Stewart, the subject of the first installment in this series.
State of Injustice is a documentary series showcasing the systemic failures of Ohio law enforcement across the state. With permission from the filmmakers, TRNN is honored to share the initial three-episode season, which explores police abuse in the city of Euclid, Ohio, with our audience.
In this episode of Rattling the Bars, TRNN Executive Producer and former Black Panther Eddie Conway discusses the differences between prisons in Cuba and in the United States. Of the two, only one incarcerates children, only one deliberately isolates prisoners from their families and communities, and only one uses long-term solitary confinement as a routine punishment—and it’s not Cuba. “In Cuba you don’t have solitary confinement,” Conway says. “Because that’s inhumane.”
Recent developments in a criminal case against a popular Black police chief reveal just how focused American law enforcement is on “bullshit” crimes. The prosecution of Kelvin Sewell for his role in an investigation involving two parked cars has dragged on for nearly six years. Now prosecutors face a hearing over alleged misconduct, but the fact that Sewell was indicted at all raises serious questions about how much law enforcement in America is about projecting inequitable power.
As Brad Naylor and his brother slept in their parents’ home, they were surprised to hear their door kicked open and see guns drawn at 5:00 in the morning. According to the police report, the smell of marijuana lead these officers to enter a home without a warrant and without the consent of the owners. In this episode of PAR, we examine this terrifying experience as another example of the phenomenon of overpolicing, and we explore the high social, political, and financial costs it exacts from small-town America.
On March 13, 2017, officer Matthew Rhodes of the Euclid Police Department in Ohio killed Luke Stewart, an unarmed African-American man who was sleeping in his car when Rhodes and his partner Louis Catalani first approached. Without announcing themselves as police officers or turning on their dashcams, Catalani and Rhodes aggressively tried to wrestle Stewart out of the car, escalating the situation with every passing second as Stewart panicked and put his car in drive. Within minutes, Stewart was on the ground, dead, with three bullets in his chest, one in his wrist, and a fatal shot to his neck. Under the shield of qualified immunity, Rhodes has avoided both a grand jury indictment and a judgement against him in a wrongful death suit filed by Stewart’s family.
In the first installment of the mini-documentary series State of Injustice, executive produced by Black Lives Matter Cleveland, filmmakers Roger Glenn Hill and Brian “BZ” Douglas investigate the killing of Luke Stewart and the fight to hold the Euclid PD accountable for their actions. State of Injustice is a documentary series showcasing the systemic failures of Ohio law enforcement across the state. With permission from the filmmakers, TRNN is honored to share the initial three-episode season, which explores police abuse in the city of Euclid, Ohio, with our audience.
A 73-year-old grandmother with dementia is thrown to the ground and arrested, and the arresting officers are caught laughing while reviewing their bodycam footage. In this episode of PAR, we examine how this case, a horrifying display of cruelty on its own, is also symptomatic of a more widespread culture of brutality that has been cultivated in the police department of Loveland, Colorado. Hosts Taya Graham and Stephen Janis investigate four separate disturbing, brutal arrests in Loveland, and speak with civil rights attorney Sarah Shielke about her fight to secure justice for these victims, and about the need for broader police reform.
This story originally appeared on The Lens on September 7, 2021, and is shared with permission.
Over a dozen civil rights groups are raising questions about why some local jails in Hurricane Ida’s path were not evacuated prior to the Category 4 storm, which devastated much of southeast Louisiana on Aug. 29.
In a Sept. 3 letter to Gov. John Bel Edwards—written by the Promise of Justice Initiative and signed by the ACLU of Louisiana, Louisiana Center for Children’s Rights, and Voice of the Experienced, among others—the organizations requested that “the state provide an answer as to why these vulnerable residents were left in harm’s way, as well an assurance that in the future, confinement in a Louisiana prison or jail does not translate to a potential death sentence during a life-threatening major weather event.”
Many parishes—including Orleans, Terrebonne, Plaquemines, and Acadia—decided to evacuate jail detainees prior to the storm, sending them to state prisons and other local facilities. But two parishes that issued mandatory evacuation orders—Lafourche and St. Charles—decided not to evacuate their jails.
“This was a predictable situation and the state should have been prepared to protect all of its citizens—including those who are incarcerated.”
Mercedes Montagnes, director of the Promise of Justice Initiative
In the letter, PJI says that there shouldn’t have been an exception for people in jail.
“Mandatory evacuation orders should apply to everyone,” the letter reads.
A spokesperson for Edwards, Shauna Sanford, said in an email that “the evacuation of local jails is a local level decision that the sheriff is in a better position to make.”
But the letter from the civil rights groups suggests that the state should “institute guidelines for correctional facilities, particularly in the event of a mandatory evacuation order, and designate evacuation sites for all parish correctional facilities in anticipation of future storms.”
“This was a predictable situation and the state should have been prepared to protect all of its citizens—including those who are incarcerated,” said Mercedes Montagnes, director of the Promise of Justice Initiative, in a statement to The Lens. “If public safety requires a mandatory evacuation of certain dangerous areas for the public, that should 100% equally extend to people in jails and prisons in those areas.”
The sheriff’s offices in both Lafourche and St. Charles parishes have said that the jails are in good condition and have generator power and running water, but did not respond to requests for comment on why they decided not to evacuate.
As for those facilities that did evacuate, the organizations are asking Edwards for assurances that detainees have been or will be returned to functioning jails and for details on how the facilities will be evaluated for safety and health prior to their return. All the detainees from jails that were evacuated, aside from those in Terrebonne and St. Bernard parishes have now been returned.
“We truly hope that nobody who was evacuated will be returned to the jails before basic necessities like food, running water, power, and air conditioning have been secured,” Montagnes said.
People who were evacuated from the Plaquemines Parish Detention Center were returned to the facility just days after the storm, on Wednesday, Sept. 1. Yet the storm left much of the parish without running water or electricity.
But Sanford said that it is up to sheriffs, not the state, to decide when a facility is ready to house people again.
“The local sheriff assesses his/her parish prison prior to the return of inmates to determine whether that facility is inhabitable,” Sanford wrote. “If the local sheriff determines that the facility is not inhabitable, the DOC will work with that parish to either make arrangements to leave inmates in the evacuation location, or reassign inmates to another facility. The incarcerated population that has been returned were returned to facilities that were not structurally damaged, they were only without power, which has been restored.”
People who were evacuated from the Plaquemines Parish Detention Center were returned to the facility just days after the storm, on Wednesday, Sept. 1. Yet the storm left much of the parish without running water or electricity.
The Plaquemines Parish Sheriff’s Office did not respond to inquiries from The Lens regarding conditions of the jail. Plaquemines Parish Emergency Operations and Homeland Security Director Patrick Harvey said that the jail is running on generator power and has access to water, according to a report by WDSU.
Since the storm—with wide-ranging power outages and phone service down—some people have struggled to reach their loved ones incarcerated in places that were hit by Ida. The jails in both Lafourche and St. Charles had phone lines down as of Sept. 2, according to the letter. (The phone at the Lafourche jail was back up as of Tuesday, but Nelson Coleman Correctional in St. Charles was still down.)
The advocacy organizations suggest that the state should develop some mechanism for locating and contacting incarcerated people following a storm, and that there should be free phone calls made available to those who were evacuated to other facilities.
“Without a specific hotline or database available to quickly locate incarcerated individuals, families in Louisiana remain unaware of their loved ones’ health and safety status, and vice versa,” the letter reads. “The anxiety common to hurricane events such as Ida is particularly heightened for people who are incarcerated and for those on the outside who love and care about them.”
Sanford, with the governor’s office, said that the first priority during evacuations was the safe transfer of detainees and making sure they were provided with a safe shelter, but admitted that communication had been difficult.
“Without a specific hotline or database available to quickly locate incarcerated individuals, families in Louisiana remain unaware of their loved ones’ health and safety status, and vice versa.”
Sept. 3 letter sent by the Promise of Justice Initiative to Gov. John Bel Edwards
“Ultimately we have always made arrangements for prisoners to contact their family,” Sanford said. “However, that proved to be a challenge as Hurricane Ida either destroyed or damaged much of the communication infrastructure. Setting up communications during such an evacuation is difficult at best.”
She did not say whether or not the state would consider setting up a database or hotline as suggested by the organizations in their letter.
The letter also requests information on what COVID-19 precautions were taken, and suggests that when detainees are transferred to state facilities, it would provide “an opportunity to create mass vaccination sites for people who would ordinarily be spread throughout the state in local facilities.”
“Vaccination sites could be staffed by the Louisiana Department of Health and would help dramatically increase vaccination rates among Louisiana’s incarcerated population,” the letter reads.
As of late last month, the vaccination rate among prisoners at DOC facilities was 73%, significantly higher than the statewide rate. Much less is known about the vaccination rates—or any information related to COVID-19, such as infection rates, deaths, or hospitalizations—at local jails throughout the state. The DOC has repeatedly referred requests regarding COVID-19 in local facilities to the Louisiana Sheriff’s Association, which has not responded to multiple calls and requests for information from The Lens. Michael Ranatza, the Executive Director of the organization, was unable to be reached on Tuesday.
“The Department of Corrections continues to follow CDC and Louisiana Department of Health protocols and recommendations at its facilities and in the transport of inmates,” Sanford said. “Evacuated inmates were not comingled with inmates at the prison to which they were evacuated.”
Surveillance footage reveals police assaulting an unarmed man on his own property. While the use of force in the video is shocking on its own, what’s even more shocking is the fact that the state of Texas is currently threatening the victim with 10 years in prison. On this week’s PAR, we take an in-depth look at the common practice of stacking charges to intimidate citizens into taking plea deals, as well as the lack of accountability for aggressive police tactics that violate people’s civil rights. We also examine the possibility that police may have targeted the victim in question for previously posting a YouTube video that exposed excessive force.
In recent episodes of Rattling the Bars, TRNN’s weekly show on the violence and victims of the prison-industrial complex, legendary Black Panther and longtime political prisoner Eddie Conway and his guests have examined the 13th Amendment, the exploitation of prisoner slave labor in the US today, and the people who are fighting to put an end to this barbaric practice for good. As a crucial follow-up to this important coverage, Conway was recently interviewed by Robert Scheer on his syndicated podcast Scheer Intelligence, which features “thoughtful and provocative conversations with ‘American Originals’—people who, through a lifetime of engagement with political issues, offer unique and often surprising perspectives on the day’s most important issues.”
For this week’s installment of Rattling the Bars, we are sharing the full conversation between Conway and Scheer on the TRNN podcast feed, in which they discuss the role slave labor has played in constructing the modern capitalist economy, even up to our present day. (This conversation was originally published on Scheer Intelligence on August 13, 2021, and is republished here with permission.)
Taya Graham: Hello. My name is Taya Graham, and welcome to the Police Accountability Report. As I never get tired of saying, this show has a single purpose: holding the politically powerful institution of policing accountable. 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. Today we’re going to do so by reporting on a disturbing video out of a small town in California, where a deputy sheriff kicked a man prone on the ground and knocked him unconscious. Well, what happened after this assault occurred makes the story even more indicative of the theme of this show, because it’s how the system is handling this case that we will unpack and report on in detail.
But before I get started, I want you watching to know that if you have evidence of police misconduct, please email it to us privately at par@therealnews.com, and we might be able to investigate for you. And, of course, you can always message me directly @TayasBaltimore on Facebook or Twitter, and please like, share, and comment on our videos. It really does help us, and you know I read your comments and appreciate them. We have a Patreon for donations pinned in the comments below. Okay, now we’ve gotten that out of the way.
Now, one of the most troubling patterns in American policing is how often cops are above the laws they enforce, especially when it comes to discipline for bad behavior. A lack of holding officers accountable can often lead to more trouble down the road. What do I mean? Well, consider a case we reported on extensively before. It involved the death of a 19-year-old named Anton Black. Anton was walking with his cousin in September of 2018 in a small town called Greensboro on Maryland’s lower Eastern Shore. A Karen called the police and falsely accused him of kidnapping a 12-year-old boy who accompanied him on his walk. It turns out that child was a relative, but that didn’t prevent the Greensboro police officer, Thomas Webster, from accosting Anton, as you can see here in this body camera footage.
I have to warn you the video that follows of Anton being confronted, chased, tasered and choked by police is disturbing, so please fast forward through that footage if you don’t wish to see it.
Webster chased Anton back to his mother’s home, where the young track star and aspiring model hid in a family car. Officer Webster, for reasons that still remain unknown, decided to escalate the situation by smashing the window, even though Anton did not present a threat, a move that led to this. Minutes later, a 200-pound police officer lying his body across Anton’s, an act which his lawyers say led to his death. But the reason I bring up this case today is due to what was learned after this tragic incident. That’s because as police stonewalled the probe into his death we learned that officer Webster had been involved in another high-profile case of police brutality. As you can see in this dash cam footage, Webster had kicked a man in the jaw, breaking it, during an arrest. The case led to charges of assault of which Webster was found not guilty.
But even though Webster was implicated in at least a dozen other cases of brutality in Delaware, he was able to cross state lines and get a job as a cop in Maryland. The reason I bring this case up today is because of the video I’m showing you now. It involves another example of a cop using unnecessary force, and it’s also raising many of the same questions that officer Webster’s track record made clear. Can the system really hold police accountable? That is the question the lawyer for the man seen in this video is asking, after he was knocked unconscious by a San Bernardino county sheriff in May of 2020 during this arrest.
As you can see here in the video, Willie Jones was complying with an officer’s order to lay on the ground after a chase that ended in Victorville, California. But for reasons that have yet to be explained, the cop kicked Mr. Jones in the face and head as he lay prone in a parking lot. So, to find out more, we contacted Willy Jones’ lawyer, Zulu Ali, to get his take on what happened, and the strange deal that was offered to Mr. Jones after the incident occurred, and why it’s raising questions about the ability of police to police themselves. Mr. Ali, thank you so much for joining us today.
Zulu Ali: Thank you very much for having me.
Taya Graham: First, tell us about the circumstances that led to the car stop and chase. When did this happen, and where?
Zulu Ali: The allegations were, I believe, it was June the 16th, 2021, sometime in the morning or after midnight or close to midnight. There is an allegation that my client, Mr. Willie Jones, had committed some sort of traffic violation. In response to the alleged traffic violation, they were allegedly engaged or trying to engage in a traffic stop, and stated that Mr. Jones had avoided or fled their attempts to stop him. But, at any rate, Mr. Jones ended up at a car lot in Victorville, California, which was depicted actually in a videotape or video surveillance that was actually caught, I believe it was a security company that had a video surveillance of this car dealership.
While he’s at this car dealership the officers made contact with Mr. [Jones], and after making contact with Mr. [Jones] they gave him some commands. He was following the commands. He had laid down on his stomach and spread his arms out and was no threat to the officers, was in compliance. The officer then just walked over to Mr. Jones and kicked him twice in the head and then placed him in handcuffs. Mr. Jones advised that at some point in time he was unconscious, and at some point, I think between the time of kicking him the second time and taking him to the patrol vehicle, I believe he remembers some of that, but that’s the long and short of it. We’ve been asked–as of today Mr. Jones was arrested for felony evasion. However, there’s never been any information with regards to why the traffic stop was actually being made or what traffic violation he allegedly was in violation of.
Taya Graham: What injuries did he suffer? I have seen injuries from kicks like this damaging the orbital ridge, loss of teeth, fracturing of the jaw. There really can be severe injuries from incidents like this.
Zulu Ali: He does have injuries. To the extent that I can give details about the exact medical diagnosis of those injuries at this point, I’m not really at liberty to say, but he did sustain injuries.
Taya Graham: Now, according to what we’ve heard from the community, Will was offered a deal not to file a complaint. Can you talk about that?
Zulu Ali: Yes. Once he was actually taken to be treated medically, or taken to the emergency room, then he was taken back to a jail facility or a custodial facility. While he was at the custodial facility, within a very short period of time, he was approached by deputies who gave him some documents to actually sign. My understanding is that this is pretty routine for this particular department, being the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department. They often do that with–I’ve even heard the situations where they try to get people to sign waivers while they’re still in hospital beds. But, at any rate, they approached him and gave him some documents to sign, trying to see if they would release his claims for $4,000. I do know that there are other cases–obviously those aren’t honored in most cases or in any cases that I know of–but they try to get people to sign. They send the [inaudible] and then whenever they cash the money, I guess they try to say that they entered into some sort of agreement, but yeah, that was what they attempted to do.
Taya Graham: As a lawyer, do you think this is ethical?
Zulu Ali: Absolutely not. I think that there’s a lot of problems with that. Clearly you’re dealing with someone, first of all, who is in custody. Second of all, someone who has actually been just treated medically, and within minutes of doing it they’re approached by deputy sheriffs. Oftentimes, I think that many of these cases are probably not even without the county’s knowledge. I don’t even know if the county council, or county, or at least many of the superiors, from my understanding, at least would admit that they know that they’re engaged in that type of conduct. But yeah, that’s extremely unethical.
Taya Graham: What are the legal steps you’ve taken? For example, have you filed a lawsuit?
Zulu Ali: Absolutely. Of course, because of the nature of the lawsuit, it begins with what they call a tort claim, which is an administrative process, which we are in the initial administrative process. Then, once we complete that process–which usually takes anywhere between 45 to 60 days from the date that the claim is filed–then they either accept the claim and it’s resolved. Or, if it’s not resolved, then we will be filing a lawsuit in court.
Taya Graham: What has happened to the officer, and do you think he should be disciplined for his actions?
Zulu Ali: Yeah. He actually has been identified. I do believe that–right now, my understanding is he’s still on administrative leave. My understanding is it’s paid administrative leave, and they’re investigating. My understanding is also the district attorney’s office is in the process of determining whether criminal charges are going to be filed against the deputy. At least at this point I don’t believe that the Sheriff’s Department has completed their investigation, or at least publicly advised the results of the investigation being completed, or the disposition of that. We haven’t heard anything yet back from the district attorney’s office. But he definitely should be, I think he should be criminally charged.
I think that what we observed was someone who was actually committing a crime, and he should be treated as such. I believe that at least what we saw on the video was clearly a criminal offense, and I think that the district attorney’s office should pursue criminal charges against this officer. That was just unbelievable. I know that we see so much of it, and we’ve seen so much of it lately–and when I say lately, I mean, that’s I guess an understatement. It’s been going on for quite some time. We’re just catching it now on video. This conduct and these types of actions by law enforcement officers has to stop.
Taya Graham: My reporting partner Stephen Janis has also been reaching out to the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Office for comment. Stephen, thank you so much for joining me.
Stephen Janis: Taya, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Taya Graham: Stephen, you’ve reached out to San Bernardino County sheriffs for comment. What did they say?
Stephen Janis: Well, number one, they didn’t say anything yet, but what I asked was very specific. I wanted to know, number one, what was the employment status of the deputy? Was he terminated, was he still on paid administrative leave? I also wanted to know if it’s standard practice to offer $4,000 to people who are subject to police abuse. How often does this happen? Is this what they always do? I also wanted to know when the internal investigation would be done, and if they’d be sharing results with the public. Those questions are outstanding, I will follow them, continuing.
Taya Graham: Stephen, this is not the first time we’ve reported on the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department in a possible case of police abuse. Can you talk a little bit about what we’ve uncovered before?
Stephen Janis: Well, Taya, let’s remember just a couple of weeks ago we reported on Daniel Alvarez getting harassed by this San Bernardino county sheriff. We have the video right here. He was pulled over for no reason, and then asked if he was on probation or parole, and then the guy pulled out his handcuffs. So, no, this seems to be a problem with them getting in trouble, and questionable arrests and questionable stops.
Taya Graham: So, finally, we discussed the death of Anton Black and the fact that officer Thomas Webster, who initiated the stop, was able to get a job despite having an extensive record of citizen complaints. Can you tell us what happened and what we eventually learned?
Stephen Janis: Well, Taya, what we learned was it’s very easy for a police officer to shift jurisdictions, or go to a different city or town, and suppress their bad record in another place. Basically, the chief of Greensboro just left out all the bad complaints about officer Webster that he accrued in Delaware, and didn’t submit them as part of the application, even though that’s required by law. Webster was certified without any of that information. It turned out that he had to prosecute the chief for doing that, and he ended up pleading guilty to misconduct in office. But the lesson learned is that it’s very easy to subvert the process where officers can be held accountable for past actions.
Taya Graham: It seems clear to me that holding this officer accountable for his actions is not just going to be difficult, but perhaps impossible. They actually tried to make an unethical deal with Mr. Jones shortly after the incident occurred, which means the likelihood the agency is going to do a fair and objective investigation certainly remains in doubt. But as the story unfolds, and the department makes excuses for the behavior of the cop in question, I’m reminded of a strategy law enforcement has used against us that might be worth considering as a tactic to ensure that cops don’t avoid consequences for their bad behavior, just like they say we shouldn’t either. Let’s call this idea putting the shoe on the other foot, and seeing if it fits. What do I mean? Well, let’s start by recalling a police policy officers and the law enforcement establishment loves, but turned out not to be so popular with the people. I’m talking zero tolerance, a strategy that basically presumes everyone is guilty, and that even the most minor offenses, regardless of circumstance, should bear the full brunt of the law.
The idea was rooted in an essay that was published in 1986 by two social sciences, they called it the broken windows theory. It posited that to root out crime in violent neighborhoods, it was important to enforce even the most petty offenses as harshly as possible. The reasoning was the authors argued, that minor crimes were like a building in disrepair, a sign to the community that their neighborhood was not just unlawful but dysfunctional. The theory was that by strenuously enforcing minor crimes you could send a signal to the more violent criminal that their behavior would not be tolerated. This led to the so-called zero tolerance strategy, a policing tactic that meant when you spit on the sidewalk, or drank a beer on your front porch, or urinated in an alley, you’re going to jail.
In Baltimore, the strategy had devastating consequences. In a city of 600,000 people, nearly 100,000 people were arrested year in and year out for nearly a decade. Tens of thousands of people were charged illegally for drinking a beer on a stoop, or walking through a neighborhood where they didn’t live. The number of arrests were so absurd, a new term was coined, known as a walkthrough, which meant that people arrested would simply be walked through a central booking facility without actually being locked up, all because they’d simply arrested too many people to fit them in the facility. Much to the surprise of the politicians and police unions that touted the idea, this policy was not effective. The number of homicides stayed roughly the same, and today are worse now than ever. But the reason I bring this policy up is because maybe it’s time to give the institution that came up with this destructive policy a taste of their own medicine.
So what exactly am I saying here? Well, how about we have zero tolerance for bad behavior by cops? Instead of paid vacations and promotions when they get into trouble, how about we charge them with the same minor crimes they forced upon us? How about getting suspended immediately without pay when a video like this surfaces? Or better yet, like the rest of us, fired? How about they get a ticket every time they forget to wear a seatbelt, or they get a criminal citation for not mowing their yard? Or how about they get suspended without pay–let me repeat, without pay–as any of us would in the first step of an internal investigation, not the last? Why not apply the same stringent laws to yourselves that you apply to us?
Of course, I can hear the arguments from the police union now. Cops are only human, everyone makes mistakes. It’s the intent of the law, not the letter of the law, that matters. You can’t arrest your way out of a problem. Gee, where have I heard that before? An argument that was met with indifference and skepticism by police unions and partisans who urge law and order at all costs when zero tolerance was destroying people’s lives. Where was the call for humanity when the citizens of this country were subject to the strictest of enforcements of criminal law in the history of any nation? Who was asking for leniency when we became the larger incarcerator of human beings in the history of civilization? That’s why I think it might be worthwhile to apply the same standard to them as they do to us.
Perhaps the officer pictured in the video should be fired first, and rehired if he’s proved innocent later. Let’s call it zero tolerance for bad police behavior. Why shouldn’t they be treated like us? Perhaps it will teach them a lesson that most of us already know. Enforcing the letter of the law has devastating consequences. Maybe it’s time for law enforcement to understand just how devastating that can be.
I’d like to thank my guest, Mr. Zulu Ali, for joining us and explaining the details of this case. Thank you. Of course, I have to thank intrepid reporter Stephen Janis for his writing, research, and editing for the piece. Thank you, Stephen.
Stephen Janis: Taya, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Taya Graham: Of course, I want to thank friend of the show Noli Dee for her support. Thanks, Noli Dee. I want you watching to know that if you have 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 @PoliceAccountabilityReport on Facebook or Instagram, or @EyesOnPolice on Twitter, and, of course, you can always message me directly @TayasBaltimore on Twitter or Facebook, and please like, share, and comment. You know I read your comments, appreciate them, and I try to answer your questions wherever I can. Of course, we do have a Patreon account called Police Accountability Reports, so if this type of reporting matters to you, maybe take a moment and see what we have to offer. We have a few goodies for our patrons. My name is Taya Graham, and I am your host of the Police Accountability Report. Please be safe out there.
The brutal assault on a suspect after a high-speed chase that was captured by a security camera reveals how police have many hidden mechanisms to skirt accountability. In this episode, PAR examines not just the circumstances surrounding the attack on a man who was complying with police orders, but how law enforcement used questionable tactics to limit their own liability for what happened.
To mark the 50th anniversary of George Jackson’s assassination, former Black Panther Eddie Conway and historian Claude Marks talk about Jackson’s life, his extensive library, and the way that he seemed to be able to look 1,000 years into the future. Jackson was killed in a San Quentin prison on August 21, 1971.
Holding police accountable requires defending the First Amendment right to put them on camera. This is why Philip Turner, known on YouTube as The Battousai, fought to solidify that right in Turner v. Driver, a 2017 case decided by the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. However, a shocking video shows Texas police ignoring the law, detaining Turner, and confiscating his video equipment. What the officers didn’t realize is that the case law resulting from the Turner v. Driver decision not only protects citizens’ right to film the police, but was named after the very man whose rights they were violating.
The 13th Amendment outlaws slavery except as punishment for a crime. That means that Black and Brown people in prisons all over the country are forced to work for low or no wages, while others profit. In this episode of Rattling the Bars, Eddie Conway speaks with California organizers Jeronimo Aguilar and John Cannon about why we must fight to eradicate the last vestiges of slavery and how they are using legislation and other methods to get the job done. Jeronimo Aguilar is an Elder Freeman Policy Fellow at Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, where he is working on local and statewide legislative efforts including the Vision Act and Oakland Rejects Slavery. John Cannon is a Policy Fellow at Legal Services for Prisoners with Children and an organizer with All of Us or None, a grassroots civil and human rights organization fighting for the rights of formerly-and currently-incarcerated people and our families.
According to car stop data for June and July of this year, the Baltimore Police Department is making the most car stops in the city’s poor, Black neighborhoods.
In total, in June 2021, police made a total of 2,933 car stops, and in July 2021, 3,046 car stops.
In Baltimore City’s majority Black and heavily-divested Ninth District in West Baltimore, police made 516 car stops in June 2021 and 557 car stops in July 2021.
Those Ninth District stops make up approximately 18% of each month’s stops. These are by far the most stops in the city. The second highest number of stops during the past two months were in the Seventh District, which had 324 stops in June 2021 and 462 in July 2021.
The Ninth District contains some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods, which are often less walkable and bike-able than other whiter parts of the city and are beholden to the city’s poor transit infrastructure—which puts more people into cars in areas where police are more apt to make traffic stops.
The 2016 report “Over-Policed Yet Underserved” by the West Baltimore Commission on Police Misconduct and the No Boundaries Coalition details the disproportionate policing West Baltimoreans experience.
“If the theory of law enforcement is that it acts as a deterrent to crime, the problem in West Baltimore seems to be that the legal response to crime is not being applied fairly and consistently,” the report said. “Many witnesses who experienced the police’s excessive use of force, who were subjected to unreasonable stops and searches (‘stop and frisk’), and/or who were even detained were not committing any crime at the time of their encounter with police.”
The Ninth District includes the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood, which is where Freddie Gray was stopped, transported, and killed by Baltimore Police. In the Ninth District this year there have been 68 homicides and 208 shootings. Earlier this year, residents of the Ninth District’s Harlem Park neighborhood settled with the city as a result of the neighborhood-wide, unconstitutional lockdown of that neighborhood by police ,following the fatal shooting of a Baltimore Police Detective Sean Suiter.
“When they locked down Harlem Park after Suiter’s death it was actually horrible. You couldn’t even go in and out of your house without showing ID,” a Harlem Park resident told Battleground Baltimore. “They want to search your car every day and they want to know who you are and why you’re down here. They just was harassing people for no reason, you know, kicking in people doors.”
A 2018 report about the racist enforcement of cannabis laws from Baltimore Fishbowl co-authored by Battleground Baltimore’s Brandon Soderberg showed that the area code that includes much of the Ninth District had the most misdemeanor cannabis possession arrests in the years following 2014’s cannabis decriminalization (486 of nearly 3,200 arrests).
This information comes thanks to Third District Councilperson Ryan Dorsey, who provided the traffic stop data to Battleground Baltimore. Dorsey requested the information from the Baltimore Police Department, he explained, because constituents in his district were upset about a lack of traffic enforcement as it pertained to speeding, running red lights, and other moving violations which make pedestrians, bikers, and other drivers less safe.
“Residents in my district want far more traffic enforcement. It’s their greatest and most consistent policing request by a wide margin,” Dorsey told Battleground Baltimore. “Meanwhile they see police sitting in patrol cars staring at their phones, or socializing with another, and they feel this is time that could easily be spent to positive effect on traffic enforcement, but isn’t. The community feels it’s being ignored. I requested information I knew would corroborate the constituent concern.”
Dorsey’s district, the data shows, has some of the lowest number of traffic stops in the city. In June 2021, there were 74 stops there, and in July 2021, there were 59 stops.
“Not surprisingly, the information not only affirmed residents’ beliefs that police aren’t policing what people feel is important, but that police are continuing the same disproportionate over-policing of Baltimore’s poorest, Blackest neighborhoods just as they were four years ago when the City entered into the consent decree,” Dorsey said.
The full numbers for car stops are below:
June 2021
July 2021
Council District 1
151
194
Council District 2
113
117
Council District 3
74
59
Council District 4
48
39
Council District 5
185
203
Council District 6
262
138
Council District 7
274
462
Council District 8
140
131
Council District 9
516
558
Council District 10
239
202
Council District 11
217
245
Council District 12
268
297
Council District 13
324
315
Council District 14
72
33
Number of car stops in each Baltimore City Council District in months June and July of 2021
Additionally, there were 50 uncategorizable stops in June 2021 and 53 in July 2021, BPD explained, “likely due to a bad address or format.”
Just how far will the criminal justice system go to quash dissent? The case of popular police auditor Otto the Watchdog is a cautionary tale of how far prosecutors and cops will go to pursue charges against people who hold them accountable.
In this episode, PAR speaks with Otto the Watchdog about his three-year ordeal fighting charges for holding a sign police said was offensive, and why he made the decision not to plead guilty after prosecutors offered him a deal to avoid jail.
For months, business owners and corporate media pundits in the US have complained about a “labor shortage,” claiming that businesses are struggling to find new employees because “no one wants to work.” Rather than enticing applicants with more competitive wages and stronger benefits and protections, though, many businesses are opting to exploit prison slave labor. In this episode of Rattling the Bars, TRNN Executive Producer Eddie Conway speaks with Michael Sainato about his recent report for The Guardian, which details how bosses in the US are exploiting prison labor to maximize profits and avoid paying workers fair wages. Michael Sainato is an investigative reporter and a regular contributor for The Guardian; his work has been featured in outlets like Vice, The Nation, and the Miami Times.
BREAKING: A US court has ruled that our client Asadullah Haroon Gul’s imprisonment in Guantánamo is unlawful.
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