Traffic stops lead to fraught encounters with American law enforcement, which is why this stop between a LA County Sheriff and a local cop watcher is so illustrative of the power of turning the camera around on police. In this episode of the Police Accountability Report, we break down what happened and explore how the techniques used by cop watchers can actually prevent police from making questionable arrests.

Post-Production: Adam Coley

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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’re going to start today by showing a video of a police encounter after a Los Angeles man was pulled over for a red light infraction. But how this story unfolds is so unusual and so outside the norm for police behavior, we’re going to break it down in detail, and why we think it might be an indicator of how cop watchers are more important than ever.

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 and Twitter, and please like, share, and comment on our videos. It really does help us. And if you can, hit the Patreon donate button pinned in the comment below, because we do have some special goodies for our PAR family. Okay, now we’ve gotten all that out of the way.

Now, if there is one maxim that has been repeated by all cop watchers we have interviewed on our show, it is a rule that can be expressed in three simple words: record, record, record. It’s a concept that reporting has certainly confirmed can be quite effective at documenting police overreach. Unfortunately for some of the people who have used it, the end result has been a little less encouraging. Meaning, even when cops are caught on camera, they usually don’t have a problem executing a brutal and sometimes even shocking arrest. Let’s remember this scene when First Amendment auditor, David Bourne, was filming police at an accident in Texas. Even though he was clearly exercising his First Amendment rights, cops didn’t have a problem arresting him for reasons that still remain unclear. Let’s watch.

David Bourne:        I think it was personal. They wanted to retaliate against me. I think for a good portion of it, Rockwell PD behaves for the most part. They’re not near as bad as Dallas or Fort Worth or Baltimore or some of the bigger cities, but they still have bad cops in their department.

Taya Graham:      That’s why when we first watched the video made by Los Angeles resident Tracy McKinley, known as Sip CanSeeAHigherPower, we were blown away to say the least. Not because cops pulled the man over as seen here for a fairly minor reason and then escalated the encounter, that is standard fare for American policing. No, it’s what happened after McKinley turned the tables on the police and then documented the stop with his camera, which led to one of the most unusual police engagements we’ve seen in quite some time. The story started last month when McKinley was driving in Los Angeles with his family, when a Los Angeles county sheriff pulled him over for allegedly running a red light. But the car stop quickly took a strange twist as he decided, not just to record the police, but also, for a lack of a better term, take charge of the situation. Let’s watch.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Police Officer:       Sir, can I please see your driver’s license?

Tracy McKinley:          One second.

Police Officer:        Sir, can I please see your driver’s license?

Tracy McKinley:    Getting out the driver’s license? That’s it. So she won’t being all extra for nothing. You know what I’m talking about? It doesn’t even have to be all this aggressive type shit. Oh, this a ticket, it doesn’t mean to have to be that frustrated. [crosstalk] I’m grown, I can do what I do.

Police Officer:       I’m coming to you professionally.

Tracy McKinley:      You don’t tell me what the fuck to do, lady, you’re knocking on my window. You’re knocking on my window, you’re pissing me off by [tapping] doing some shit like that.

Police Officer:    I can’t see in the back of your window.

Tracy McKinley:     You can see paint.

Passenger:          [inaudible] we’ll be going to jail.

Police Officer:       I can’t see what’s back there.

Tracy McKinley:        So, what?

Police Officer:       What do you mean, so what?

Tracy McKinley:      You can’t see back there.

Police Officer:         We can’t.

Tracy McKinley:     So? That’s what I’m talking about.

Police Officer:    That’s why I asked you to roll down your window.

Tracy McKinley:     Ain’t nobody don’t mean no harm.

Police Officer:       Can I see your driver’s license?

Tracy McKinley:       There you go.

Police Officer:     Presented to me in my hands, please.

Tracy McKinley:      No, I’m not presenting you shit, I’m going to display it to you. Anything else you need?

Police Officer:     Do you have insurance?

Tracy McKinley:     Yes, I do.

Police Officer:      Let me get your insurance card and your registration please.

Tracy McKinley:    Write the ticket. Go ahead. I ain’t giving you shit. I can display it to you. If you got a problem with it, let me know.

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:         Now, not only does McKinley tell police he’s not going to get out of the vehicle, but he actually declines another routine order in a way that practically turns comical. Watch what happens when the sheriff tries to take his license, and let’s listen to him explain what he was thinking when he prevented the officer from grabbing it.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Tracy McKinley:      [laughs] Don’t scare me like that. You just fucking scared me. [crosstalk] So? Don’t do… [laughs] Stop, man.

Police Officer:          Sir, stop reaching for stuff.

Tracy McKinley:       I’m trying to get you that motherfucking license. Fuck out of here, lady.

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:        But that’s not where this story ends. Because as we’ve seen in other cases, police begin what we’re going to call their standard escalation tactics. Or put simply, ordering him to step out of the vehicle. Usually is a prelude to arrest, but McKinley was not having it. Not at all. In fact, as the officer orders him out of the car, he simply refuses. Let’s take a look.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Tracy McKinley:         It’s not fake, it’s not fake.

Police Officer:       I don’t know that if you don’t present it to me.

Tracy McKinley:     Hey, this lady says my driver license is fake. Stop knocking on my motherfucking window. All right. I’ll step out. Thank you.

Police Officer:       Unlock the door.

Tracy McKinley:       Hey, back up some.

Police Officer:         No.

Tracy McKinley:      I ain’t getting out then.

Police Officer:        Okay.

Tracy McKinley:      Hey, she won’t let me get her my license.

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:         And so, as you can see, that’s when things turn truly bizarre, at least in the parlance of American law enforcement. That is, instead of dragging him from the car, something unusual happens. It seems like McKinley is a cop watcher and he somewhat has the officer off balance. Let’s watch.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Tracy McKinley:     I displayed my license to her. I displayed it to her. Was she… Listen, listen to me, listen to me right quick.

Police Sergeant:       Right now you’re giving us a hard time.

Tracy McKinley:        Of course.

Police Sergeant:       And what’s going to happen is you are obstructing our dudes.

Tracy McKinley:      Obstruction is physical, repeat that.

Police Sergeant:      You don’t know.

Tracy McKinley:         Yes I do. I’m telling you it’s physical when you obstruct.

Passenger:        [Baby crying] Tracy.

Tracy McKinley:       Fuck out of here.

Police Officer:        Hand it to my Sergeant.

Tracy McKinley:       I ain’t giving it to him.

Police Officer:      Hand it to my Sergeant.

Police Sergeant:     Give it to me. Just give it to me.

Tracy McKinley:         Y’all just pulled the gun out on me.

Police Sergeant:    I can’t read that.

Tracy McKinley:       Yes, you can.

Police Sergeant:        I cannot read that.

Tracy McKinley:       I’m sorry. You can, I don’t got to ask you no shit like that, nigga. What the fuck wrong with you?

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:      So what exactly is going on here? Are we seeing the first law of Cop Watching: record, record, record, actually succeeding? Did the tactic of putting the officer on camera from the start turn the often skewed tables on the sheriff, looking for the arrest at? And was the legal maneuvering of McKinley more than the police could handle? Well, we reached out to him to ask him just those questions and what he was thinking when it happened. But before we get to our interview, I’m joined by reporting partner, Stephen Janis, who has been examining the video. Stephen, thank you so much for joining me.

Stephen Janis:       Thanks for having me, Taya. Appreciate it.

Taya Graham:        So Stephen, for serious, a really interesting interaction where Tracy presents his ID, but does not actually hand it to the officer. What’s your take?

Stephen Janis:       Well, it’s a really interesting interpretation of the law. What it shows is the law is sort of something that is language, right? So law can be interpreted, it can be sort of bent, or not necessarily bent, but interpreted in a way that could be favored to one party or another. And I think he is demonstrating that there, that you have your perspective on the law. What about if the law was actually fashioned with regards to the people who are subject to it? And I think that’s what makes this a very interesting form of pushback against the police.

Taya Graham:        This is something we’ve seen with cop watchers, this detailed knowledge of the law. Why is this so important?

Stephen Janis:         Well, because really these issues, these broader issues about police power and the ability of police to interfere in our lives or otherwise ignore our constitutional rights are played out in the courts, ultimately, that’s where they end up. I mean, the case law is important because case law is used as precedent to decide other cases. So all these sort of decisions that guide whether or not a cop can stop you for some reason, whether or not you have to go through a checkpoint. All this is decided in court with judges and lawyers. And the fact that activists are taking this and fashioning into law that can help them I think is extremely important.

Taya Graham:         Now, this case involves the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s office, and we’ve encountered them before in other cases. What’s your take on the interaction between Tracy and the sheriffs in the video?

Stephen Janis:          Well, let’s remember one of our biggest videos was covering the arrest of Daniel Alverez by Los Angeles County sheriffs where we caught them on cameras calling him a jerk. I won’t use the word they actually used. But nevertheless, they are notorious for being very aggressive. There’s been a lot of scandals in that department, a lot of questions about racial bias. And I think it’s very interesting that this story unfolded as it did, because this is a department that is known to be really, really aggressive. So I think this is a really unusual outcome and something worth talking about.

Taya Graham:       And now, we are joined by the man who took this video to talk about what happened and his thoughts on police interactions. Tracy McKinney, also known as Sip CanSeeAHigherPower. Tracy, thank you for joining us.

Tracy McKinley:      Thanks for having me.

Taya Graham:           So first, Tell us why the police pulled you over. What are we seeing in this video?

Tracy McKinley:       They pulled me over. Allegedly, I ran a red light. Allegedly.

Taya Graham:      So you displayed your license and registration to the officer. Why didn’t you want to hand them your property?

Tracy McKinley:         From what I understand, there are US codes that say you don’t have to hand over your license or paperwork like registration and insurance to them. That’s what I heard. I read it for myself and I saw a few videos on it. You know what I mean? About it. And so I did it myself. I would’ve given it to her, to be honest with you, Taya. I would’ve given it to her, but she just irritated me from the start.

Taya Graham:         So what did she do that irritated you?

Tracy McKinley:        The tapping on my car, she could have messed my paint up or accidentally bust my windshield. She didn’t know how hard – She was tapping real hard with her flashlight or whatever she had in her hand.

Taya Graham:       And how many officers arrived on the scene?

Tracy McKinley:     It was nine officers out there.

Taya Graham:          Wow. Well, there are a few moments where this could have escalated badly. One moment in particular I noticed where the officer put his hand on the gun, and another when an officer starts implying you might receive child endangerment charges. Were you concerned about where this was headed?

Tracy McKinley:        Yes, I was. I was concerned about it.

Taya Graham:       I noticed before you were willing to interact with police, you made certain your camera was up and recording. How important was recording this for your safety?

Tracy McKinley:     Police out in this country have been hurting a lot of people and I didn’t want to be one of the next hashtags.

Taya Graham:       Now, some people might watch this interaction and say that you were antagonistic with the officers, that you should have handed your license over, and that you should have stepped out of the car. How would you respond to that?

Tracy McKinley:     Bootlicker.

Taya Graham:         Well, that’s an interesting characterization. I feel like maybe you had a reason or goal in mind when you interacted with the officer this way and were so specific about what your rights were in the situation. Did you have a goal in mind? Were you trying to educate the public, or were you trying to educate the police?

Tracy McKinley:       Both, to educate the public and educate the police officer. A lot of sheriffs don’t know a lot of laws. They just go off mere emotions.

Taya Graham:         I have to ask. There are so many who have been injured and even killed by police even while complying with orders; Philando Castile, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, Michael Bell Jr., even Daniel Shaver. Did you consider those incidents of police brutality at any point? Were your cameras or your actions somewhat influenced by incidents of police misconduct?

Tracy McKinley:      Yes, and also my own. I have incidents with them, and like I say, it’s all on the media about all their encounters with people.

Taya Graham:        Tell me about the negative incidents with police officers that you had.

Tracy McKinley:        I can say, a traffic stop I had, they pulled me over because – Actually I wasn’t even pulled over. Actually I was parked. I didn’t have my cameras or nothing on me at the time. They snatched me out there out of my truck and everything. For what? Because I’m parked there. If I’m illegally parked, just tell me to move. Why should I have to do all the extra and you touching on me and all that?

Taya Graham:          Now, do you consider yourself part of the auditor or cop watcher movement?

Tracy McKinley:       I’m definitely part of the cop watching movement.

Taya Graham:           Well then who’s one of your favorite cop watchers?

Tracy McKinley:      Tom Zebra. He tells the truth. He’s not ashamed about life and the truth. I love it. And I want to get out the truth too.

Taya Graham:          Hey, I didn’t realize you’re with veteran cop watcher, Tom Zebra. Welcome back to PAR, Tom. So tell me, why do you think they pulled him over in the first place?

Tom Zebra:           They didn’t pull him over to write him a ticket. They had no, they were pulling him over for one reason, it was to take him out of the car. That was the only interest they had. He cut them short. I just wanted to make sure that you know that, you probably already know that. Because that’s what I record them doing every day, every night. They’re not interested in that ticket. The only reason that ever came up is because they couldn’t get him out the car. They wanted to search him. They’re not interested in giving him a ticket. They want to take him to jail.

Taya Graham:      Now, one of the reasons I wanted to feature this video on the show is because part of our job is not just to report on the state of policing now, but how it’s evolving. And most importantly, to take note and acknowledge what is driving the change we witness as it occurs. It’s an aspect of journalism that is just as important as documenting a specific case or incident, a responsibility to look at the larger trends to see if the cumulative effects of activists and cop watchers to affect change are actually affecting change, and if so, how? That’s why this case is so intriguing. As was revealed in our interview with Tracy, he had learned from the work of legendary cop watcher, Tom Zebra, and he had employed his knowledge of the law to push back against what Zebra described as a pretextual stop intended to lead to something more serious. Meaning this whole incident was not about running a red light.

And that’s why I think this case is so significant. That’s because the process of using the law to project power is usually the purview of police and high-priced lawyers. That is, as much as we think of law as a static set of guidelines of what we can and cannot do, it’s actually pretty malleable in the hands of a skilled practitioner or a power hungry cop.

Look at the controversial cop watcher Eric Brandt. Brandt was of course sentenced to 12 years in prison for making violent threats against judges, words which we do not condone, nor should anyone. But he has also been quite skilled at using the law to achieve goals that have elicited positive results. For instance, his first amendment lawsuit against the Aurora, Colorado, police over his arrest for a tattoo that said, ‘F the cops’, which led to a settlement for Brandt and First Amendment training for police. Or, his successful defense of handing out jury nullification flyers outside of a Denver courthouse that led to the Colorado Supreme Court codifying the right of others to do so.

Like the video we watched today, these victories are, in some sense, addressing an imbalance that has long been tilted towards law enforcement and the powers that be. Generally speaking, it’s the high-priced attorneys hired by rich elites that can bend and twist the law to their advantage. It’s why major corporations don’t have to pay taxes, or why someone like Jeffrey Epstein could run an underage brothel from the confines of his private jet.

Put frankly, a malleable disposition of the law has always been for sale. It’s just that the average American couldn’t afford to buy it. But now we have something different. Let’s just call it folk law or the people’s defense. And we see on the channels of cop watchers and auditors an acute awareness of how the law is a living, breathing body of ideas. We see what could be best described as folk law being applied so effectively, it actually appears to be setting a precedent that puts limits on how easily police can trample our constitutional rights.

Let’s not forget how our guests, the auditor and cop watcher The Battousai, made case law when he challenged an ordinance that said he could not record police facilities in Texas. A ruling which was enforced when he was detained by the police in Plano, Texas, for – wait for it – filming police headquarters there. The point is that I think that what we’ve seen in this story and in others is the people fighting back by refusing to concede the space that elites have often reserved solely for themselves by smartly using the law to push back against the limits of police power, and refusing to concede law enforcement’s sense of entitlement to bend it as they wish. We’re seeing a movement crystallizing around real change.

It’s good to protest and important to air grievances before the government, but what we see here is something different. The tools of the elites and their agents have been turned around on them and used in ways that really seem to catch them off guard. The law, which they tout as absolute for others and malleable for them, has suddenly become even more, interestingly, flexible, in the hands of the people. Isn’t it intriguing that the power of police suddenly seems less potent when confronted with even a cursory invocation of a technical interpretation of what the law actually means? Isn’t it fascinating how in the hands of the people, the law suddenly becomes a tool not just for the powerful, but a sort of equalizer for the rest of us?

I think that’s why the case we reported on today is both fascinating, and an example of a broader issue. It shows, for example, that in a sense, when faced with a camera, police are hesitant to abuse powers in ways that they’re accustomed to. It’s a reaction that begs the question; If what they do is so righteous and legal, then why not do it for all of us to see? If, without public scrutiny, you’re willing to drag a man out of his car and arrest him for running a red light, why on camera is your sense of entitlement and power so different and so less bold? And moreover, this everyman application of the law is the perfect antidote to a usually destructive form of policing we have discussed before on this show. The notion that the most potent form of police power is arbitrary. It’s an idea we’ve seen play out over and over again, where cops simply create their own laws and immediately improvise new powers on the spot.

In a sense, the whole point of using minor encounters over traffic lights and lane changes as an entry point is to invent, prescribe, and create powers that don’t exist and that our constitution doesn’t permit. Which is why covering cop watchers, who use those same laws to fight back, is such an important and intriguing development in the broader story of law enforcement overreach.

I mean, let’s think about it. If police were defined by an actual set of consistent laws, officers would have a hard time writing tickets for cash, making bogus arrests to fill jails, and using violence indiscriminately. If the ambiguity of the law exposed by cop watchers actually governs the bizarre series of car stops we’ve reported on, much of the police-created mayhem we’ve witnessed would’ve been much more difficult to justify. That’s why what we’ve seen in this car stop is so interesting and compelling. Confronted with the actual elements of the law, police power is not so absolute. And when forced to implement their arbitrary and improvised powers on camera for public scrutiny, their tactics and techniques suddenly seem less bold, to say the least.

The point is that for the first time in decades, the cover is being lifted on the underside of American law enforcement. The unconstitutional tactics and legal chaos of their stop and frisk mentality seems to be transformed when it is subject to public pushback and reverse surveillance. And most importantly, the law in its application is no longer the sole purview of the people who want to use the law as a cudgel of injustice and inequality. All thanks to cop watchers and activists across the country, we have covered and witnessed. It’s a sea change that might just be having an effect, which is why we will continue to report on these stories.

I want to thank my guest, Tracy, known as the cop watcher Sip CanSeeAHigherPower for his time and sharing his experience. Thank you, Tracy. And thanks to Tom Zebra as well. And of course, I have to thank intrepid journalist Stephen Janis for his writing, his research, his reporting on this piece. Thank you so much, Stephen.

Stephen Janis:       Taya, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

Taya Graham:            And of course I want to thank friend of the show Noli Dee for her support. Thanks, Noli Dee. And a shout out to the PAR family and Patreons. We 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 tips privately at par@therealnews.com and share your evidence of police misconduct. You can also message us at Police Accountability Report on Facebook or Instagram, or @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 now have a Patreon account called Accountability Reports. So if you have a few dollars to spare, it would really help us keep doing these investigations for you. Investigations and reports the mainstream media simply won’t do. So, please check for a link pinned in the comments below. My name is Taya Graham and I am your host of the Police Accountability Report. Please be safe out there.

This post was originally published on The Real News Network.

This week, PAR continues its coverage of the overt abuses of police power by examining new data that shows just how dangerous—and even deadly—systematic over-policing can be. PAR hosts Taya Graham and Stephen Janis break down several cases that show how police use pre-textual car stops to expand their power, challenge the constitutional rights of citizens, and expand the reach of the country’s law-enforcement-industrial complex.

Post Production: Adam Coley

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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 examining one of the biggest drivers of bad policing that simply does not get the attention it deserves: governmental greed, and how the need for cash is turning cops into variable bounty hunters. 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 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 of course, if you can please hit the Patreon donate link pinned in the comments below, we do have some extras for our PAR family.

Now, if there is one theme on this show that emerges time and time again, it’s just how much police love to make unnecessary traffic stops and profit from them. Through literally dozens of stories we have accounted how cops have pulled people over under dubious pretext and proceed to give them a ticket, or even arrest them without a real justification.

Don’t believe me? Well, consider just a few of our recent shows. There was Arizona driver Perry Taylor, who was pulled over for the mercurial crime of aggressive driving and was subsequently dragged from his car and charged with a crime. Let’s watch.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Speaker 1:   Get out of the car.

Perry Taylor:    I’m asking you to give me a ticket. I’m asking you.

Speaker 1: You’re not getting a ticket.

Perry Taylor:     You’re trying to go for your arrest quota and I’m not going to allow it to happen.

Speaker 1:       Get out of the car.

Speaker 2:      No, don’t.

Speaker 1:       Get out of the car, right now.

Speaker 2:    Don’t. Don’t man.

Speaker 1:        Get out of the car, right now.

Perry Taylor:      For what? For what?

Speaker 1:       Get out of the car.

Perry Taylor:     For what? I don’t feel safe. You see this? I don’t feel safe. [crosstalk] I don’t feel safe. I don’t feel safe.

Speaker 1:       Get out of the car, sir.

Perry Taylor:    Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me.

Speaker 1:   Get out of the car.

Perry Taylor:  Don’t touch me. I’m getting out. Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me. You’re threatening my life right now. So get out of my face. Get out.

Speaker 1:   Put the phone down.

Perry Taylor:      No, I’m not putting my phone down. No.

Speaker 1:    You can leave it recording right there.

Perry Taylor:    I don’t care.

Speaker 1:      I’m trying to be at [inaudible]

Perry Taylor:       No, you’re not.

Speaker 1:       Listen.

Perry Taylor:       I asked you to give me the ticket.

Speaker 1:      Get out of the car.

Perry Taylor:       Okay.

Speaker 1:  Get out of the car.

Perry Taylor:       Let me get out of the car.

Speaker 1:     Get out of the car. Get out.

Perry Taylor:      Let me get out.

Speaker 1:   Get out.

Perry Taylor:     Let me get out.

Speaker 1:      Get out of the car.

Perry Taylor:    I’m asking [inaudible].

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:      Or, let’s not forget Georgia resident George Spradling, who drove a mile from his home to confirm that a police checkpoint had been established nearby, when police then followed him to his driveway and arrested him. Let’s watch.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Speaker 3:      I have every legal right to put you under arrest.

George Spradling:  Well, you just.

Speaker 3:       We’re doing the road check.

George Spradling: Yeah. I heard you doing a road check. I heard you.

Speaker 3:    Okay, you got your license with you?

George Spradling: I do have my license, it’s right here.

Speaker 3:  Okay.

George Spradling:  Hey Daniel, come here.

Speaker 4:      I went down there because my neighbors complained that there was a roadblock on our street, so I went down to see what was going on.

Speaker 3:    Okay.

George Spradling:   They want to give me his license. I live right here.

Speaker 3:      Okay. Might want to give me your license.

George Spradling: No, I did not [inaudible raised voices] [sound of open car door].

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:  Of course, we cannot ignore Daniel Alvarez, the Los Angeles, California, resident who is pulled over by a San Bernardino County Sheriff for driving too close to another car and issued a hefty ticket. Which, incidentally, was dropped when the officer didn’t show up in court. Let’s take a listen.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Passenger 1: No, you’re not going to violate my rights. I’m not going to do anything just because you think it’s right. No, I don’t owe you my ID.

Passenger 2: And next time.

Passenger 1:          Tell me the law that says I got to give you my ID.

Speaker 6:         I’m telling you to step out of the car.

Passenger 1:       No, that’s not the law.

Speaker 6:    It is a law.

Passenger 1:      [crosstalk] No, I am not driving this vehicle.

Speaker 6:  …Look it up on your phone right now. Look on your phone.

Passenger 1:   No, I’m not going to look up the phone that – I am not driving the vehicle. I got nothing to show at this stop.

Daniel Alvarez:  As him, as a passenger, as I’m being stopped for a traffic stop, he has to ID?

Speaker 6:  Yeah.

Passenger 1:    No, I do not.

Daniel Alvarez:  Is that true?

Speaker 6:      Can you tell me the law?

Passenger 2:     Sir, we’re asking you a question, sir.

Speaker 6:     You asking me a question?

Passenger 2:  Yes.

Speaker 6:    [inaudible]

Daniel Alvarez:     But is that the law, that he has to ID himself?

Speaker 6:    You can ask him the questions, it’s not my [inaudible].

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:   But the reason I bring up these troubling stories is because of some of the new data just released by the New York Times, which confirms what we have been reporting on about this phenomena all along. The Times examines car stops across the country because reporters wanted to understand why so many stops turned deadly. As part of their investigation, they found a whopping 400 stops resulted in police killing unarmed motorists who had been pulled over with a broken taillight, with tinted windows. But there’s more, because the Times reporters also had another question. Why, they asked, if car stops are so dangerous, do police pull over millions and millions of motorists every year? And one of the conclusions they reached points to a problem we have been reporting on this show for years: money.

That’s right. The Times found that across the country, department after department relied on cops to generate revenue. And in some cases, fines and fees for traffic stops accounted for more than half the entire budget of a town. In fact, the Times highlighted cities where police were actually given quotas for ticket writing and were disciplined or demoted if they did not meet them. And to get more on the problem and the data and what it means I’m joined by reporting partner Stephen Janis. Stephen, thank so much for joining me.

Stephen Janis:    Tay, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Taya Graham:   So Stephen, first I want to explore one facet of the Times report that we have done some work on, and that is how many stops end with police violence. What did the Times find about why police are so quick to resort to violence, and what did our own reporting uncover?

Stephen Janis:   Well, you know, hundreds of stops for taillights and, you know, license plates askew or whatever end up in people being dead. The police shooting or killing, in many cases, unarmed motorists, which is what the Times found, which is what we have reported on. And what’s really interesting is the reason, and it has to do with police training. We talked about this in the killology training and policing. Police are taught that motorists are deadly, that every car stop is potentially a deadly incident. It’s not true, but that’s what they’re taught. So, they tend to resort to force much faster. They tend to be trained to think that if a motorist makes a gesture, reaches for his or her wallet, that they’re reaching for a gun. And so therefore it’s the psychology of policing and the training of policing that makes it deadly. It makes car stops so deadly.

Taya Graham:      So what were the findings in terms of how intimately police is tied to revenue? And how do those numbers relate to some of the reporting we’ve also done?

Stephen Janis:     Well, for example, a city in Oklahoma collected about a million dollars of its budget from ticket revenue. But what’s really interesting is how this all is driven by the federal government. The federal government writes 600 million dollars in grants tied to writing traffic tickets. So, at least 20 states have quotas for officers in different municipalities. So basically, the federal government is creating this big revenue generator for towns, towns are turning around and making officers write more tickets. How it relates to our reporting is the fact that almost all the towns that have a large percentage of their budget from ticket revenues are under 30,000 people. And that’s what our reporting has found over and over again, that rural policing is overpolicing, and that rural police departments spend most of their time generating revenue. That’s what this report found, that’s what we reported on before, and that’s what’s happening.

Taya Graham:     Now, just from a political and philosophical perspective, why would public safety have to also be a profit center? Why are those two seemingly disparate ideas so closely intertwined in this country?

Stephen Janis:  I think because policing is so not focused on public safety in many instances. That policing is part of the capitalist ideology to kind of create a system of inequity that creates wealth for very few and leaves the rest of us behind. And part of that is the rhetorical power of policing. So, policing comes to intertwine with some of the worst aspects of capitalism. That’s why, philosophically speaking, policing in many cases is about projecting power and using that power to continue and to sustain a system of inequality.

Taya Graham:    Okay. But before I let you go, I wanted you to update our viewers on a couple of stories we’ve been following.

Stephen Janis:        Yeah. It’s really funny because people will make a comment, well, the police never talk to Stephen, but I always give them the courtesy of asking before we publish a story. But what’s really interesting is once we publish a story and it gets tens of thousands of views on YouTube, they start calling. For example, if you look at the case of Chris Dixon, the police chief from New Mexico called me and said his officer wasn’t the one who arrested Chris Dixon, it was actually the county sheriff. So, that’s actually true. But the police officer you see who’s talking to him is from the town, but I wanted to make that clarification.

And also, the Arizona State Highway Patrol called Perry Taylor – You might recall Mr. Taylor was pulled over and dragged from his car for supposedly drag racing – Well, they called him after our video was posted and said they were investigating the incident. But it’s really interesting. The internal affairs officer told Taylor, I think what the cop did was right. That just shows you the problem with policing, police can’t police themselves. But, believe me, the police get back to me. It’s just once the video comes out and they’re embarrassed that they call us. So, I just wanted to make that clear. They do call me back. It’s just after we get 50,000 views.

Taya Graham:        Now, the aforementioned pension for profit and policing is not limited to traffic stops. And that’s not the only way crony capitalists compulsively corrupt a process that is supposed to be focused on public safety. Consider this story about efforts to legalize pot in Minnesota that got little attention, but says quite a bit about the real incentive behind American law enforcement. As the Minnesota legislature was exploring the impact of legalized marijuana, there was pushback from the union which represents police officers throughout the state, that caught our attention, but received very little coverage elsewhere. Their concerns? Legalizing pot would be bad for business. Literally for their cash flow. I’m not kidding. The union said that legalizing pot possession would actually be bad for both police budgets and the paychecks of their members. It would result in fewer bonuses and overtime for cops, and fewer bodies to fill local jails and high price prisons.

The bottom line is that the union was all but admitting that a major facet of law enforcement had literally nothing to do with public safety, but instead was a means to generate revenue. We have a name for this type of warping of a public process by fiscal concerns. It’s called neoliberalism. The idea that anything the government does, it will do better under the auspices of a for-profit ethos. In other words, nothing is worth doing for the community unless there’s a buck to be made. It’s an idea that is responsible for many of the miseries that the American public endures on a regular basis. It’s why our healthcare system is both unaffordable and often ineffective. It’s why young people are consigned to a lifetime of debt just to attend college. And it’s also, according to both our reporting and the New York Times, why rural police trawl the highways like bounty hunters searching out unsuspecting motorists to fleece them for cash and belongings all in the name, supposedly, of public safety.

And let’s remember the money collected through fines and fees doesn’t even include the nearly 2 billion dollars annually police sees under the auspices of civil asset forfeiture, which is this bizarre legal process that allows cops to take property of people never charged and often not even convicted of a crime. But this mess also raises another more intriguing question about the overarching impetus for our massive law enforcement-industrial complex, a fundamental question about how we decide what is legal and what is not. It’s a query we often ignore, but it is certainly worth considering now. What exactly is a crime? What I mean is if you consider how many infractions and supposed violations of the law result in monetary gains, then how do we trust a process that decides what is and isn’t illegal? What I mean is, have we ever considered that the underlying philosophy that defines what types of behavior we deem illegal might simply be corrupt?

I was thinking about this question when Stephen and I traveled to Denver, Colorado, to work on a longer piece about Eric Brant. Brant, as many of you know, was sentenced for 12 years in prison for allegedly making threatening statements about judges, a story we’ll shed more light on later. But what made me think of the concept of what is a crime was actually something a bit tangential, but still vital to explaining why I’m asking the question. While we were there in Denver, everywhere I went, I saw billboards, signs advertising not just soft drinks or fast food, but advertisements touting marijuana. Spread throughout the city were large messages enticing me to visit a local dispensary and buy any form of weed I could possibly want. Wall to wall entreaties to visit the nearest store and pick up joints or nice boxes of chocolates infused with THC.

Of course, this is hardly news. Colorado was one of the first states to legalize pot. But what made it so striking to me was the cognitive dissonance that surrounds this relatively new, and obviously thriving business. That’s because I come from a state that, while it has legalized medical marijuana, in 2010 spent $100 million, according to the ECLU, arresting and incarcerating people for the possession of it. In my city of Baltimore alone, police would make nearly 6,000 arrests annually for simple marijuana possession. How am I, and you, supposed to reconcile, that in the state of Colorado, I can walk into a dispensary and talk to a friendly budtender and pick from a wide selection of plants to enjoy, and in the relatively nearby state of Wyoming, I can literally be locked in a cage just for having the remains of a joint in my car.

How can I, in one locale, buy THC in all possible consumable forms imaginable, and in other states have my property seized for just possessing a pipe used to smoke it. How can anyone make sense of a system where corporations can profit off a plant while people have literally lost their freedom for being near it? How can one country entertain two completely incompatible ideas? Well, I think that’s a good question. To me, it’s a uniquely American form of cognitive dissonance that I think says more about how the law is both conjured and applied than any other example I can think of. I mean, how many people are sitting in jail right now locked in a cage for possessing weed, while the Uber rich get richer off of selling it elsewhere. How many lives have been destroyed by a SWAT raid or a search warrant written at the behest of a pot arrest while major corporations are turning it into another source of propagate profits?

What I’m trying to point out is that living in the country where, on one hand, pot is a source of riches for some, and for others an absolute source of misery, literally points to the absurdity and credibility of our system of laws in general. I mean, let’s not forget the story of Dr. David Allen, who was arrested for researching the beneficial effects of marijuana after authorities tried to seize his ranch. He was uncovering the fact that pot can actually save lives, and they were simply trying to use an unjust law for unjust enrichment. The point is that the concept of turning a product of nature into a source of indiscriminate power and profit reveals just how insane our philosophy of governance and law really is. Maybe the idea that a naturally healing and proven beneficial flower is somehow twisted into a legal source of unchecked authority and profit exposes just how far astray law enforcement really is from the concept of justice.

And that’s supposed to be the idea, right? Justice, not tickets, and fees, and fines, and stats. Not charges, and prisons, and pensions for cops. The whole point of the criminal justice system is to create a community defined by fairness and equity. That’s why when we read about towns or report on cities where ticket fines constitute half of the budget, or when we hear that police have quotas to write tickets and are begging for the power to seize property, we have to stop and ask: What really is the point here? What really is the underlying goal? And how on earth does this benefit our society to turn a badge into a cash register? Well, that’s the question we will continue to ask on this show. 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 really appreciate it.

Taya Graham:    And I want to thank friend of the show, Noli Dee for his support. Thanks, Noli Dee. And a very special thank you to our Patreons, including PAR super friend, Shane Busta. We appreciate you. And if you want to have me shout you out, go to our Patreon page and become a PAR super friend, or an official patron like Calvin M., Steven D., Rob B., Celeste S., PT Tumblebug, [inaudible] live, Tamara A., Dante S., and of course, my mom. Hi, mom.

And as always, 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 email us tips privately at par@therealnews.com. And of course, you can always follow us on Facebook or Instagram at Police Accountability Report or @eyesonpolice on Twitter. And you can always follow me directly @tayasbaltimore on Facebook or Twitter. And please like, and comment on our videos. We do read your comments and appreciate them, and I try to answer your questions whenever I can. My name is Taya Graham, and I am your host of the Police Accountability Report. Please be safe out there.

This post was originally published on The Real News Network.

The arrest and incarceration of New Mexico resident Chris Dixon provide yet another stark example of the Kafkaesque nature of contemporary police power. Dixon was arrested after police tired to force him to consent to an illegal search of the business where he worked. But the actions of the officer, coupled with the fallout Dixon faced, show that American law enforcement deliberately wields its arbitrary and heavy-handed power to sow chaos and erode the rights of the people.

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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 do so by highlighting how this encounter captured on video with a New Mexico cop led to the illegal jailing of one of our viewers. But it’s not just the seeming miscarriage of justice we’ll be covering, we’ll also take a close look at how officers often use arbitrary power to override the constitutional rights of citizens, and in doing so, erode the very foundations of democracy itself.

But before we get started, I want you 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 you might notice there’s a patreon link to donate below. So if you want to, and if you can, there’s some extra there for the PAR family. Okay. Now we’ve gotten that out of the way.

Now, on this show, we obviously highlight bad arrests and scenarios where cops simply make bad choice., But a video sent to us by a viewer in Artesia, New Mexico, highlights another factor of police overreach that warrants attention. It’s a video of an encounter between an Artesia, New Mexico, cop and a viewer named Chris Dixon.

Dixon was working in a pawn shop when police arrived looking for the owner. The police had a warrant for the owner’s arrest, but not a search warrant of the premises. So they made an unusual request. They asked Chris to give them permission to search without a proper warrant. And this is where the example of an unusual type of police overreach occurs because Mr. Dixon was faced with a dicey dilemma: He himself was on parole, a fact that the cop seems to use to put Mr. Dixon in an even more precarious predicament, and get him to concede to an illegal search, or go to jail. Let’s watch.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Speaker 1:         Chris, nobody wants anything from you today. We just want to get Kevin taken care of. Hey, relax, brother. You’re fine.

Speaker 2:         So you don’t care if I go look just to make sure Kevin’s not in there.

Chris Dixon:          Kevin is not in the pawn shop.

Speaker 2:           So I can go look?

Chris Dixon:       It’s not my place to give any kind of consent.

Speaker 2:           You live there?

Chris Dixon:          I don’t live in the pawn shop. I live in my house. My house is an apartment.

Speaker 2:           That inside the pawn shop?

Chris Dixon:       [inaudible] –

Speaker 2:          So can I look in your apartment?

Chris Dixon:         You can look in my apartment but there’s nobody –

Speaker 1:           Hey Chris, right here. Right.

Chris Dixon:        Where’s my wife at?

Speaker 1:           She was walking over there. We’ll let you go over there in just a minute. We just want to make sure everything is safe first. Okay?

Chris Dixon:       Can I leave with my wife please?

Speaker 1:            Hey, just a second. Okay. Chris, you know me.

Chris Dixon:         I know.

Speaker 1:             All right. You know I’m not going to feed you no bullshit. We just want Kevin, dude. That’s all we want.

Chris Dixon:          Hey, well, I’m not involved in no –

Speaker 1:           Oh, I know you’re not, dude because your name didn’t come up until I heard them say, Chris Dixon, I ain’t seen you ass in forever man. Which is a good thing, right?

Chris Dixon:          Look, look, I’m healthy –

Speaker 1:           No, you do. You look like you’re clean, man.

Chris Dixon:       I am. I’ve been going to church and all. Give my life to God now.

Speaker 1:            That’s what you need to do brother. That’s what you need to do.

Chris Dixon:       I got married and am doing the right thing, man.

Speaker 1:         Well good. So then you got nothing to worry about, right?

Chris Dixon:       Can I please leave?

Speaker 1:            Here, just one second. Okay.

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:      But that’s not where the story ends. Hardly. Because the cops kept pushing him, offering to give him a positive reference for compromising the rights of his employer. Bear in mind, Dixon was not accused of committing a crime. The police were searching for the owner of the property, but instead of focusing on the perpetrator, they hoisted the entire burden of upholding the law on Dixon, and they offer to reward him for compromising it. Let’s listen.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Speaker 1:           You’re not under arrest, but for right now, I’d like for you to stick right here, okay?

Taya Graham:      I don’t want to be that [crosstalk] –

Speaker 1:           Well, I know you don’t want to be here, Chris and I don’t want to be bothering you, but we need to try to get this stuff resolved so we can get things going. Okay? If Kevin would just come out, man we’d leave and let everybody do their thing. Let you get back to doing work, or whatever it was you were doing. It don’t matter, bro. I know you’re not trying to get in no trouble because I know you don’t want to go back.

Chris Dixon:         No, I’m not trying to go back.

Speaker 1:         How long did you go back to… How long were you up for this last time?

Chris Dixon:          It was almost five years.

Speaker 1:             Five years? Why would you come back here?

Chris Dixon:          Well, my mom needed my help. She had a stroke.

Speaker 1:          Okay. Now, that’s respectable. A lot of guys that come back here, man they come back for the wrong reasons and end up getting in trouble. Chris, you and I both know that.

Chris Dixon:       That’s why I stay away from everybody. I’m not out on the street no more or nothing. I work and I stay home. Thank you. That’s it. There’s no [inaudible] or nothing right there. I promise.

Speaker 1:        Relax. You’re cooperating, which is a first for you in some things with law enforcement. You know that? It’s appreciated too.

Chris Dixon:        Yeah.

Speaker 2:          So yes or no. Are you going to unlock the door or give us the keys to unlock it? Because if not, it’s getting booted. We’re going to damage your door. So either show me the key to unlock the damn door or it’s getting booted.

Chris Dixon:        I have no keys to that.

Speaker 2:              How the hell you get in?

Speaker 3:          Why did you lock it? That’s my question.

Chris Dixon:         It automatically locks on its own.

Speaker 3:         It automagically locks.

Speaker 2:           You got a front door pad or anything?

Chris Dixon:          The front door and the back open by itself and it always stays locked. I have no key to that. Being honest with you.

Speaker 1:          Yeah. Because he keeps asking –

Speaker 2:          Okay, here’s your problem. You lied a couple times. You didn’t cooperate in the beginning, so I really don’t believe what you’re saying. So just don’t bother talking because –

Speaker 1:           He keeps asking if he’s free to go.

Speaker 2:         No, he’s not free to go. Because if he’s in there, he’s going to jail. [crosstalk].

Speaker 1:           Okay. Let me go explain that to him real quick.

Hey.

Chris Dixon:          – In our apartment.

Speaker 1:           Okay, Chris.

Chris Dixon:        Hold up. If you look, we go in there and that’s where we get dressed at.

Speaker 1:         Chris, this is the one thing we need to talk about, okay? And you know me, I’ve always been pretty fair with you. Have I not?

Chris Dixon:          Yeah.

Speaker 1:            Okay. I don’t want anything to happen with you.

Chris Dixon:       Yeah.

Speaker 1:          If he’s inside there…

Chris Dixon:        He’s not inside that building, I swear.

Speaker 1:           Okay. But right now though –

Chris Dixon:         Yeah, y’all –

Speaker 1:           …We can’t verify that. I want to believe you, Chris. I really do. I want to believe you.

Chris Dixon:         I’m on Scott’s shoes, on God and everything I love.

Speaker 1:          So I would love to tell Lorenzo that you cooperated with us. All right.

Chris Dixon:        Well you could.

Speaker 1:         I’ll make that phone call for you. If everything works out in your favor and you cooperated with us, I will call him personally for you and tell him that you cooperated with us during this, because that looks good on you. Does it not?

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:      So you have a man trying to do the right thing. Preserve the rights of his fellow citizen while complying with the law. A man who has righted his life after youthful run-ins with law enforcement, and who was forced into choosing between his hard fought progress for a better life, and knowingly compromising the constitutional rights of another. And when he chooses what many would consider the honorable response, police locked him away for 57 days. Let’s watch what happens next.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Speaker 1:          Well, here’s the thing –

Speaker 2:             …Fucking lied to me. When people lie to me and we’re doing shit like this –

Speaker 1:         If you want him to go –

Speaker 2:             …They go to fucking jail.

Speaker 1:         Okay. If you want him to go then he’ll go. I’m just trying to play that other side of things. I’m not trying to take any decision making process away from you at all, and you know that. I’m not ever going to take that away from you.

Speaker 2:        You’re trying to talk me out of taking him to fucking jail. He’s a lying piece of shit.

Speaker 1:            Do you want him to go? Then he’ll go.

Speaker 2:          Yeah, he needs to fucking go [crosstalk].

Speaker 1:           All right. Then he’s going to go for [REO]. This is the last time I do this shit.

Hey Chris, go ahead and turn around for me, man.

Chris Dixon:          Why? What did I do?

Speaker 1:          I’m going to arrest you for REO.

Chris Dixon:        For REO, what’s that?

Speaker 1:            He can explain it all to you here in just a second. Resisting, invading, obstructing –

Chris Dixon:       I didn’t do nothing wrong though.

Speaker 4:           Go and turn around, Chris.

Speaker 1:            Yeah. Turn around Chris.

Chris Dixon:        But I didn’t nothing wrong though.

Speaker 1:           Turn around, Chris.

Speaker 4:            Just turn around.

Chris Dixon:         I didn’t do nothing wrong.

Speaker 1:           Just relax for a minute. Just relax. Just relax.

Chris Dixon:       Babe, I didn’t do nothing wrong.

Speaker 4:         You’re on me. Back up.

Speaker 1:         I’ll explain everything to her too and everything. Chris. This was his decision over there, Chris.

Speaker 4:           Give us a minute. Okay?

Speaker 1:           All right.

Chris Dixon:          I didn’t do nothing wrong though. That’s the guy we check in with, right there.

Speaker 4:           Just hang tight, okay.

Chris Dixon:          [inaudible].

Speaker 1:          Chris, Chris, Sergeant [Centerfield] will explain to you here in just a second.

Chris Dixon:        I’m going to go back.

Speaker 1:           Put him in the backseat of mine I guess, right now.

Chris Dixon:       [Inaudible] wrong.

Speaker 1:         I’ll talk to you here in just a second, okay?

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:      But before we talk to Mr. Dixon about the event that led up to his arrest and the consequences for him, I’m joined by my reporting partner, Stephen Janis, who is 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 Stephen, you’ve reached out to the police department. What did you ask?

Stephen Janis:     I wanted to know why they arrested him. It didn’t make any sense to me. He wasn’t a judge. He wasn’t a police officer. It wasn’t his place to have to make a judgment on a warrant, or whether or not a warrant was legal, or whether not cops have the ability to enter. In a sense, when you think about it, they were putting the burden on him of an illegal search, where they could go back and say, yeah, well he said it was okay, if it was illegal, and really putting him in a criminally liable place. So instead they just arrest him, which is even worse. So really, none of it made sense to me. I asked them to make sense of it. I will let you know what I hear.

Taya Graham:      Now what happened to the charges against Mr. Dixon?

Stephen Janis:      Well, once a prosecutor saw this case and how flimsy it was and how illegal it was, they dropped the charges. The charges were dropped. The problem is, he’d already spent 57 days in jail, so it really didn’t matter. And this showed you how police power is so dangerous, because it didn’t matter if they were making an illegal arrest, he had to suffer with the consequences, not the police.

Taya Graham:      Now we’ve talked often about the disruptive power of the police. How would you characterize the officer’s behavior in this video and what it says about police power in this country?

Stephen Janis:      Well, what the police… You can see the absolute impetus for arbitrary police power. The point of it is to be arbitrary. The point is to violate the law. The point is to put people like Mr. Dixon in predicaments that have no good resolution, because that’s what makes their power hegemonic. That it can’t be reasoned with or otherwise interpreted through the law, or come from a source of laws or adjudicated laws. It’s simply whatever they decide. And that’s what makes them powerful, and that’s what this is an example of.

Taya Graham:       And now, we’re joined by the man who had to deal with this disturbing challenge, both to his rights and to his future, Chris Dixon. Mr. Dixon, thank you for joining me.

Chris Dixon:       And thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure too.

Taya Graham:      So why did the police approach you?

Chris Dixon:         They were there for a warrant for another individual who owned the RV park and pawn shop and stuff, and me and my wife were employed there and we were working at the pawn shop. So he had some pretty bad charges, and when they came to go, and I guess apprehend him and arrest him, my wife had walked out with the dog to use the restroom, and then they called my name out. And then, when I went out there, that’s when they ran into me and then they approached me and stuff.

Taya Graham:       What are we seeing in the video? What were the police trying to get you to do?

Chris Dixon:       Oh, they were trying to allow me to give them consent to go into the building to search a building without my consent. It didn’t even belong to me. The building didn’t even belong to me, so I couldn’t give them consent to search something that doesn’t belong to me. So they thought just because I walked out of there, that I could let them back in. But it had a business door and a lock, it stays locked on the outside, but unlocked on the inside. And even if I did want to provide them a way to get in, I couldn’t anyway, because I didn’t have no access to that.

Taya Graham:      How did the officers respond when you said, well, I literally can’t let you back in because I don’t have the keys. How did they respond to those facts?

Chris Dixon:          Yeah, I told them that and they were getting pretty pissed off at me.

Stephen Janis:       And the lying.

Chris Dixon:          Yeah, thought that we were lying to them and stuff, and pretty much demanded me to allow them to go in. And I showed them, look, these are my keys… I even pulled my keys out of my pocket. I said, look, I have no key to get in. And the officer snatched the keys out of my hand to go and try to, yeah, let himself in.

Taya Graham:     So the police said, things will go good for you if you cooperate. What did you take that to mean?

Chris Dixon:         At that time, I wasn’t really educated on my constitutional rights and what I could and could not do, because in this small community, you do what the police tell you to do or you go to jail, pretty much. So I was uneducated. So yeah, I feel like now, since that I educated myself, and I went back, and the charges have been dropped, yeah. I see that they had violated my rights, and they really did violate me for really no reason.

Taya Graham:      Did the police actually have a warrant to search, and why would they bother you if they did?

Chris Dixon:       They didn’t have a warrant to actually search the place, they had a warrant for the individual. So they had to wait to get their warrant signed by a judge before they could enter into that premises. That’s why they kept me there, and they had illegally detained me. Because I kept on asking them, can I leave? Can I leave? They would not let me leave. I’m like, well, why are you still holding me? And then he said, well, now the issue has changed. If he’s in there… Which they already knew that he wasn’t in there already and they said, he’s in there. You’re going to go to jail for this and that. Which, I was still on probation at the time. So yeah, they had kind of a little control thing over me at that time.

Taya Graham:      What were you charged with, and were you arrested?

Chris Dixon:         I was arrested. They charged me with resisting, evading or obstructing an officer. Which, if you watch the video you could see that I was totally cooperative with them. You know what I mean? But I just did not allow them to go to the building, and I could not give them access to get into the building. They eventually blew the doors off the pawn shop, went in there, and they seen that he was not in there and they should have released me. Because the whole time they kept on telling me, well, if he’s not in there, you’re good to go. We’re not here for you. You’re going to be good to go. And at the end, they totally lied to me, and I wound up being in jail for 57 days.

Taya Graham:        So how did this disrupt your life to be incarcerated for 57 days? How did this affect you emotionally, or even financially?

Chris Dixon:          All the way around. My whole life. My whole life has been affected by this. We lived there. We worked for room and board and a little bit of money on the side to get the pawn shop going for the RV park. So when I got arrested, they wound up throwing my wife out. We lost everything.

Stephen Janis:     And homeless on the street.

Chris Dixon:          My wife became homeless on the streets. I was in jail. I had no way to… We totally lost our whole life right there. And we had to start all over from scratch when I got out.

Taya Graham:        So what actually happened to the man that they were trying to serve the warrant on?

Chris Dixon:          They found him in another residence behind the pawn shop. Not in the pawn shop, but at his own residence in an office where they initially tried to go find him in the first place. And the lady that was there that was working for him, that is also his girlfriend, that also had the bad charges on him at the time, she was the one right there in the office who did not allow the cops to come in either, until they finally got a search warrant and they searched the pawn shop first. And then, they went back into the back where the residence were, into a whole ‘nother trailer, and they searched the trailer and they found him in there.

Taya Graham:      Do you feel that the officers were using the fact you were on parole to influence you or manipulate you? Why does the officer say, “I didn’t like the old Chris Dixon?” I feel like there was a lot going on there.

Chris Dixon:          He kind of tried to lift me up, I guess. I feel like I was really, at that time being manipulated in the fact that he was just acting like he was my friend, just to try to get information out of me, or try to make it look like, oh yeah. You’re doing the right thing, this and that. And then at the end, turn around and put handcuffs on me and throw me in jail. After he said he was going to call my probation officer and let him know that he had positive contact with police, and try to really butter me up pretty much. And I was like, cool.

I’ve never had that before. When I was younger, yeah, I got in a lot of trouble here in town when I was younger, being wild and being a teenager, and just getting into trouble and stuff. I’ve paid for the mistakes. I paid my price to society for what I’ve done and everything, and now when I was trying to actually do right and change my life and do the right thing, and it just gets all shattered out, thrown out the window, over rights being violated.

Taya Graham:       You worked hard to change your life. You paid your debt to society. Five years incarcerated. How hard is it to get out of the criminal justice system once you’re pulled in? It seems like you were finally getting back on track, and then you’re pulled in for a very superficial charge.

Chris Dixon:         For me, I’ve been in and out, incarcerated, quite a bit, a lot of part of my life from my mistakes. And then also now, since I’ve been educated, I’ve seen a lot of times where I’ve been incarcerated where they actually have violated my constitutional rights. Because when you’re uneducated and you don’t know, they can keep you in that cycle and stuff. But once you educate yourself, and you go and pay your debt to society, and you start to just try to do right and get on the right track, they’re always going to look at you as that one person that… Hey, there’s a criminal. Hey, there’s a drug dealer, or hey, there’s that person.

They’re always going to have that label over your head, especially in a small community like this. And so they’re always going to be right there harassing you and trying to catch you on anything. They think you’re an easy target, and so they’re going to keep going after you. And that’s the cycle that is always right here in Artesia, New Mexico. The same cycle all the time. And it’s really hard to get out of that until you…

You just kind of pull yourself out of that environment. That’s the only way it’s going to be able to change where you’re not going to keep getting stuck in that cycle. Because every time I go to jail, it’s the same people in jail all the time, and it’s a revolving door. It’s the same people, same people. Violation, probation, anything they can get you on, especially after you’re off probation and stuff.

I’ve completed all my probation, parole and stuff, in jail and stuff and so now since I’m free, I have no more of that over my head. It makes it a lot easier, and knowing your rights make it a lot easier too so that way the cops just can’t come up to you and say, give me your ID. And trying to just be in a policing state, which this is not.

Taya Graham:       So what is happening with the charges against you? What is your status?

Chris Dixon:          I think they realized that they had messed up. Because they really have no evidence to stand on and if you look at the criminal complaint, it’s nothing but lies. You can count the lies in there compared to the body cam. You can see exactly where they lied at. They asked my wife if they could search the building. Well, my wife told them no, but in the criminal complaint, they said, yeah, she gave them consent. Well if she would’ve given consent, she would’ve had me open the door for them to come in. But no, she didn’t. So they let her move on down. So obviously they lied to manipulate the system to try to make an arrest.

Taya Graham:      So why did you stand up for your rights? Having a record makes you vulnerable, and you know how hard the criminal justice system can come down on you, and you knew it could be used against you. Why did you stand up to them?

Chris Dixon:        Well, after I got released and stuff, I just got tired of being bullied by the police all the time. Getting bullied, thinking that they have control over me. And then once I educated myself and I realized, hey, look, these guys actually work for us. They really don’t have that much authority over us until we break the law. Once we break the law, then that’s what gives them the authority over us. For them just to come and try to harass an innocent citizen, it’s not right. They need to be trained differently, and they really need to get their egos out of the way so they can do their job better.

Taya Graham:       This case reveals an important truism about America’s law enforcement-industrial complex that is more profound than it seems on the surface. Once you are in the system, it never truly lets you go. Yes, it’s a stark example of how fixated the system is on keeping people in the grips of our carceral state. And yes, it is another tale of law enforcement overreach writ large.

There is something even more intriguing about Chris Dixon’s dilemma in the way the officer behaved. An aspect of the officer’s actions that need to be unpacked and better understood. That’s because what we saw in the beginning of the video is something that is often written off as cops simply behaving badly, but is actually an example of an extraordinary anti-democratic impulse that courses through the veins of our entire law enforcement body.

What do I mean? Well, it has to do with power and the inherent limitations on it, allegedly woven into the fabric of our democracy. The idea that our constitutional republic was created to prevent power from being wielded arbitrarily. That our laws and rights could not be annulled at the behest or the whims of an individual. That there were checks and balances designed to protect us all from any sort of arbitrary despotism. But what we have witnessed time and time again on this show is police officers chipping away at these rights through one bad incident after another.

In fact, we have seen over and over again how police seem to contravene the idea that power should never be arbitrary. In a sense, American policing, as it is currently constituted, espouses just the opposite. They are the purveyors of arbitrary power. And as we’ve witnessed over the course of the past few decades, the way these powers have been exercised has become more and more extreme.

But why does this matter? Who cares about a couple bad arrests, or if someone ends up in jail for a few weeks? Why does it matter if cops seem to thrive over overreach? Isn’t that just the reality of being a cop? Well, let me explain. I think the arbitrary expansion of police powers is an example of a phenomenon that is more corrosive than it seems on the surface. I think the reason cops have been given so much discretion to violate our rights is purposeful. It’s clear that the ability for officers to make up laws on the spot is a symptom of a broader disease that has infected our democracy.

Put simply, it is the full expression of latent fascist impulses that find their form imprinted on a badge. The culmination of all the forces of inequality and economic hardship that can only be maintained and preserved through arbitrary power. In a sense, it is the best tool in the toolkits of the elites who don’t like democracy or accountability, and must erode our rights, one unlawful order at a time, in order to get rid of it.

Just consider the war on drugs. The now 50 year cop-empowerment program that has led to more destruction and chaos than any other government policy I can think of. A recent study reveals just how much the idea had little to do with drugs, and more about suppressing rights and spreading the aforementioned latent fascism that is the topic of this show.

It was a study commission by the world renowned Johns Hopkins shortly after our city state’s attorney, Marilyn Mosby, stopped prosecuting drug possession arrests. The policy was met with stiff resistance from both the police department and police union officials. But Mosby said mass drug arrests were an ineffective policing strategy that led to unjust arrests and unnecessary incarceration. But most importantly, concluded that making drug arrests did little to make the city safer.

Well, it turns out, she was right. The study found that dropping hundreds of cases did not increase crime. In fact, of the 700 people spared prison due to the strategy, only seven reoffended, and the report also noted the lack of drug prosecution did not lead to more complaints from the public. In other words, corralling people and placing them in cages for the possession of a substance actually has nothing to do with public safety. What a surprise.

But think about the implications of this study on the horrifying war on drugs. Think about what it says about the billions of dollars spent and the millions of lives destroyed by the fascist policies fashioned at the behest of this so-called war. Think of the human cost, the families separated, the property seized, the rights annulled, all in the name of an unjust policy that made no one safer, but instead established poor communities and turned cops into super spreaders of viral fascism.

And just a side note, if the war on drugs was effective, would we be facing an epidemic of opioid overdose deaths? Last year, over 93,000 people died from drug overdoses. Does it sound like the war on drugs is working to you? It’s a startling revelation that starts with a single idea: That a person empowered with a badge can chew up our rights and spit them out in the name of a war on the people they purport to serve. That police officers are not just the arbitrators of laws, but inventors of them. A psychological suppression force equipped with the alarming power to criminalize space, seize our freedoms, and conscript our rights, at the behest of a war on substances.

It is a disturbing rebuke of the breathless embrace of drug war. Warrior cops and police heroics touted by politicians in the mainstream media. A startling experiment that proved the corrupt portrayals of poor communities as safe harbors for criminals and drugs is just a purely fictional myth created to sustain the onward march of unjust power, an assault no less on the very foundation of our democracy. It’s also the reason we will keep reporting on police and their use of arbitrary power, because your rights and ours are worth preserving.

I want to thank our guest Chris Dixon for joining us and for sharing his story with us. Thank you, Chris. 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:    Thank you for having me, Taya. I appreciate it.

Taya Graham:      And of course, I want to thank friend of the show, Noli Dee, for her support. Thanks, Noli D. And of course, a very special thank you to our patreons. We really appreciate you. And I want you watching to know that if you have any evidence of police misconduct or brutality, please share it with us and we might be able to investigate for you. Please reach out to us.

You can email us tips privately at par@therealnews.com and share your evidence of police misconduct. You can also message us at Police Accountability Report on Facebook or Instagram or @eyesonpolice on Twitter. And of course, you can always message me directly @tayasbaltimore on Twitter and Facebook. And please like and comment. You know I read your comments and appreciate them. And we do have a patron link pinned in the comments below if you feel inspired to donate. Please consider it. We don’t run ads or take corporate dollars, so anything you can spare is truly appreciated.

My name is Taya Graham, and I am your host of the Police Accountability Report. Please, be safe out there.

This post was originally published on The Real News Network.

The mysterious death of Rey Rivera made national headlines when the case was investigated on the Netflix reboot of Unsolved Mysteries, which became the number one show on the popular streaming platform. Many viewers who have learned about the case are skeptical of the police theory that the young filmmaker jumped to his death from the roof of the Belvedere Hotel in Baltimore’s Mt. Vernon neighborhood. In Part 1 of this three-part podcast series, TRNN investigative reporters Taya Graham and Stephen Janis re-open the unsettling case that has captivated audiences and amateur detectives alike, exploring new evidence that points to a more sinister theory of how Rey Rivera died.

This podcast was originally published on Oct. 13, 2020.

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Transcript

Stephen Janis:    Anyone who watches crime dramas could reasonably conclude that when someone is murdered, barring bizarre and extenuating circumstances, the case is solved. That is, through high tech forensics, moral resolve, or simply the near mythic competence of American law enforcement, killers are ultimately sent to jail. But as an investigative reporter who has worked in one of the most violent cities in the country for nearly 15 years, I can tell you, this is not true.

Taya Graham:     And that is the point of this podcast, because unsolved killings represent more than just statistics. It’s a psychic toll of stories untold that infects an entire community. The final violent moments of a victim’s life that remain shrouded in mystery.

Stephen Janis:     I’m Stephen Janis.

Taya Graham:        I’m Taya Graham.

Stephen Janis:     And we are investigative reporters who live in Baltimore city.

Taya Graham:     Welcome to The Land of the Unsolved.

Welcome to The Land of the Unsolved, the podcast that explores both the evidence and the politics of unsolved murder in Baltimore. Today, we’re going to revisit a case that has received international attention. A mysterious death that still continues to reverberate throughout the city.

Stephen Janis:    It’s the death of Ray Rivera, the 32-year-old filmmaker that disappeared from his North Baltimore home in May of 2006.

Taya Graham:     By now, thanks to the Netflix show, Unsolved Mysteries, the entire world knows the story. Rivera left his home in a rush carrying only his keys and a credit card, never to be heard from again. Eight days later, his partially decomposed body was found in the conference room of the Belvedere hotel in Baltimore’s Mount Vernon neighborhood.

Stephen Janis:    A hole in the roof above where Ray lay led some to say he committed suicide. The theory was that he jumped to his death for reasons that remain unknown. But others, like his family, vehemently disagreed. Shortly after he was found I spoke to his wife, Allison, and his brother, Angel, and they were adamant. Ray had every reason to live.

Taya Graham:        That’s because Ray was newly wed. He had just started his own film production company. He was planning to move back to California, where he had met his wife, and he just finished a screenplay. Hardly the life story of a man who was going to kill himself.

Stephen Janis:     But again, there was a hole in the roof. The mysterious sequence of events that led to his disappearance, hints of danger before he died, including twice when an alarm went off in his home.

Taya Graham:        But much of that evidence didn’t make sense. Ray didn’t tell anyone where he was heading the day he disappeared. Found on the roof near the hole where he died, one flip flop and a cell phone, not broken, but in full working order. And even more troubling, no witnesses who had seen him at the hotel. Surveillance video of the upper floors of the hotel inexplicably erased. His car was found in a lot nearby, but there was little indication of how it was parked there. All of it intriguing, but not conclusive.

Stephen Janis:    And that was the problem with the case. With so little direct evidence, it’s hard to draw conclusions, except one: That Ray, for reasons unknown, had jumped or been pushed from somewhere, that somehow he had made his way to the top of the Belvedere hotel or the adjacent parking garage and jumped, or was pushed, to his death.

Taya Graham:        It’s worth noting that Ray, a tall, handsome water polo player was hardly someone who could sneak into a public building and leap into the abyss unnoticed. He had the appearance and demeanor of someone who stood and always left an impression. That fact by itself made the idea he fell from a height even harder to believe.

Stephen Janis:     And then there was his family. I spent many hours talking to his wife, Allison, listening to her talk about the man she called her soulmate, recounting his ambitions to make a movie about a water polo player, and his generosity of spirit, and his love for family and friends. The bottom line, there was simply no evidence Ray had ever considered or would consider suicide.

Taya Graham:     Still, there was the hole. The gap in a flimsily constructed roof that kept the focus of the police staring upward to the ledge of the building, both hard to access, and even harder to comprehend as the place where Ray spent his final moments. A fact that allowed investigators to write the case off as suicide and the medical examiner to rule Ray’s death as undetermined, leaving the case in limbo and his family in despair.

Stephen Janis:     But enter Unsolved Mysteries, the Netflix reboot, which highlighted Ray’s death in its first episode. The show was a massive hit, reaching number one in the country and putting Ray’s death on center stage. Since then myself and investigative reporter Jayne Miller, who appeared on the show, have received dozens of tips. And among them was one that caught our attention. Not because it referred to a specific person, but because it addressed the most problematic aspect of the case.

Taya Graham:     The person in question is a scientist, not a cop. Her name is Miryam Moya, and she specializes in studying the impact of accidents on the human body, among other disciplines.

Miryam Moya:     I’m a forensic expert that has been, and can be, called upon to testify at trial. These include homicide cases, vehicular and otherwise, using the technique of aviation mechanics as applied to impact, which is exactly what I’ve done in this case. I conducted an analysis as to whether the injuries coincide with what is alleged to have caused them. I’m a postgraduate level criminal justice professor at the United Nations University, and have experience in educating world leaders on issues relating to conservation, safety, maintenance, and security of road and traffic matters.

Stephen Janis:     During our first interview, we discussed the trajectory of Ray’s fall, how she, like other people, suspected his leap off the top of the Belvedere was improbable.

Taya Graham:        That of course was due to the speed Ray would’ve been traveling to land where he did on the second floor concourse.

Stephen Janis:       But during our discussions we learned she had not seen the autopsy, a piece of information she felt could help her really delve into the details and come up with a fresh perspective on Ray’s death.

Taya Graham:        And so we provided it to her. And a week later, she’d come up with one of the most intriguing theories on what happened in May of 2006 that we have heard yet. First, she had much to say about the extent of Ray’s injuries, especially how his injuries were distributed across his body.

Miryam Moya:     The conclusion of the autopsy, of course, I didn’t have much information about it before, but from what I’ve seen now, after reviewing it, and what stands out to me now… I’m not a medical doctor, but I’ve conducted many autopsies, particularly autopsies involving incidents like motor vehicle accidents, et cetera, throughout my career. What I see, is that it’s impossible that someone can land feet first through that hole in the roof, like he supposedly fell through, because he had a fractured tibia and fibula on his leg to such an extent that the bone was sticking out, but only on the right side. But he didn’t have these injuries to the left leg. And it would be impossible for him to land on one leg, and have the other one not fracture also.

He also had injuries and fractures to his groin and pelvis. But again, only on the right side, not on the left. It is impossible for him to land on one leg and land on his feet. And from the positioning of his body, it is evident that he would’ve had to have landed feet first. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have had those leg injuries.

Taya Graham:        But what was most intriguing was her sense that Ray’s injuries were much more similar to what she had witnessed studying car accidents. That Ray had not fallen from a building, but was hit by a car.

Miryam Moya:     After reviewing the autopsy, I’ve determined his injuries correspond more to someone who has been run over by a car. Because in those cases, there are specific areas that will break like the sternum. Yes, as was shown in the autopsy. But he does not have any arm breaks or left leg breaks. He has injuries throughout different areas of his body. He has contusions, lacerations, and other injuries on his skin that correspond more with being hit or beaten in some fashion. They don’t correspond to falling from a building. He would not have been able to land vertically. At any rate, if he were to throw himself off the parking garage, which is 7.71 meters, around 20 something feet or more, he would’ve landed in a horizontal position, never a vertical one. So he could only land feet or head first.

Taya Graham:     A conclusion that made her question the suicide theory.

Miryam Moya:     When a suicide victim lands on their feet, their head is still going to split. You can think of it like, and it’s been described like, cracking a Chestnut, for example. Because the cranium splits completely, like a shell would on a nut. Raised cranial bones are broken, but not to the extent we would see from someone who had fallen from a height of… His cranium would have split entirely, and his arms have no fractures. Plus, there are no abrasions or fractures in his left leg.

Another detail is that the broken flip flop that is of the shoes he had on, those flip flops, it’s only slightly scuffed. And it is the strap of the right sandal that is a bit broken. The right side, which corresponds to the side of the body with the most damage where there are broken leg bones. On the left side, the sandal for the left foot is intact. So the hit or hits, or simply if it was a car that hit him and ran him over, these impacts would’ve come from the right side. When he falls, if he were to fall, it would have to be through the hole. He wouldn’t have fallen on his right side. He would’ve had to fall vertically. So the injuries would’ve shown up equally on both sides of the body. That’s just how it works. So that’s the way it is.

Stephen Janis:    Now, it’s important to remember that the medical examiner here still believes Ray fell from a height. I also ran those conclusions by noted pathologist, Dr. Sorell Whit, a doctor who has performed many high profile autopsies, and he felt the ME’s conclusion was right.

Taya Graham:      But what is most intriguing about her theory, is that it explains a great deal about the case that has thus far been inexplicable. Why didn’t anyone see Ray in the building? If he had jumped, why didn’t anyone recall hearing anything?

Stephen Janis:      Why would a young man so afraid of heights either voluntarily, or even under duress, throw himself off the top of a building? Why doesn’t any of it add up?

Taya Graham:      Which is why Myra’s perspective is so compelling.

Miryam Moya:      Because a death can happen in one of three ways. You’re either thrown from, you jump from, or you fall from the building. Homicide, suicide, or accident. And it wasn’t an accident because I mean, you’re not just going to scale like 35 meters up or 40 meters, roughly 114 to 130 feet. It’s not an accident because you’re not up there working, for example, on or in the building. So only two options are left, suicide or homicide. And when the suicide theory doesn’t correspond to the hole and where the body would’ve landed, what you have left is homicide. Why? Because the physical evidence, the evidence left at the scene, as well as the evidence as to the state of his injuries and the marks to his body, shows that it couldn’t have been a suicide.

Taya Graham:     If Ray didn’t fall, if his injuries don’t match the profile of a suicide from a height, if the hole in the ceiling is nothing more than a ruse, well then suddenly the case of Ray Rivera becomes much less of a mystery, and more a tale of murder most foul.

Stephen Janis:     And to discuss the implications of that, we’re joined by investigative reporter, Jayne Miller. So we’re here with Jayne, investigative reporter, the best investigative reporter in Baltimore, I think, Jayne Miller, right?

Taya Graham:      Absolutely.

Stephen Janis:      I think we can all agree on that. Who probably knows more about this story than anyone. And I guess that the most interesting thing about what we just heard, is this analysis that it’s mathematically impossible for him to have jumped and to land where he landed, at least off the… We’ll start with the building first. Jayne, what are your thoughts about that? Because, always it’s been this sense that he jumped or fell from somewhere. But now she’s saying, at least from the hotel perspective, that’s not possible. What comes to mind when you hear that?

Jayne Miller:         Well that’s been really a question from the beginning, and I think part of the fuel for this question is the lack of evidence of anybody seeing him in the building. As we know that there’s just nobody that puts him in the building in that period of time, that he would have to be in the building to end up in that room, which was part of the building on the ground floor or on a lower floor. And so the fact that you have that hole, and that question, allows for consideration of other theories. And then when you add that Allison Rivera hired an engineer to do a calculation that calculated he would have to have been traveling at 11 and a half miles per hour to reach that point, and that’s nearly impossible to reach that with that. There’s not a whole lot of distance up there on the top of that roof.

And certainly you couldn’t reach that crawling along the ledge. So I think that the analysis that says, wait a minute, we can’t make this work. It’s not surprising. And it is only exacerbated by the lack of conflicting evidence to a theory like that. So some people theorize, oh, he had to come out of a helicopter. You know, when you… Let’s go back. When you think about how this all unfolded, again, because there is no witness that puts him in any part of that building of the Belvedere. It was just kind of an automatic assumption. Oh, the body’s on the floor in that room, hole is in the roof, and okay, well then he must have gone through the roof.

Stephen Janis:       Right. And that’s what’s interesting. We’ve always been working out that assumption that because there’s a hole and there’s a body underneath it, he comes off the roof.

Jayne Miller:         And because there are certain things that belong to him, glasses flip – Whatever, cell phone, on that surface of the roof that had the hole in it then, oh, well he had to go through the roof. And then you look at the… Which we have video from when this happened from our helicopter, that really shows the size of the hole is, the size of the hole indicates he would have to go perfectly. Something would have to go through straight through vertically.

Taya Graham:        Exactly.

Jayne Miller:         Can’t go splat, can’t go… It’s not that the roof caved in, in any fashion, it looks like something went through a weakened spot of it. That’s what it looks like. So it is almost… You’d almost expect there to be conflicting theories.

Stephen Janis:     Right.

Jayne Miller:         Because there’s just no evidence to explain why he was in that building.

Taya Graham:        I also think it’s interesting that Ms. Moya said that if he had come off the parking garage, he would’ve made an elongated hole.

Jayne Miller:         He would have to.

Taya Graham:     What do you think of that?

Jayne Miller:         That’s right. No, I agree. I mean, if you stand on the parking garage at any point where he would have to be to get to that point, it’s a long way. It’s a stretch from the parking garage. There’s been discussion of whether he was hit on the parking deck and propelled. But still if that was hit by a vehicle or something like that, I mean, again, this is a case with wide open theories. And so, but again, that would require a different kind of hole in the roof than we have.

Stephen Janis:    Well, and so it’s interesting because we went even deeper into this. She went even deeper and said, and this is another component of that. So let’s recap, we have this situation where he couldn’t have come off… It looks very likely that there’s not a point where he could have come off that makes any sense with the hole and where his body was. Right?

Jayne Miller:        And the injuries.

Stephen Janis:     And yeah. So it almost makes it seem impossible. But the next thing she looked at were the injuries, which I thought was even more interesting because she’s saying, one half of his body has injuries that are much more reminiscent of being hit by a car or some other type of injury rather than falling because…

Jayne Miller:        Brutalized.

Stephen Janis:    Yeah, right.

Jayne Miller:         Very brutalizing injuries. And there’s a lack of certain injuries, if I recall correctly. Didn’t have a broken neck.

Stephen Janis:     Right.

Jayne Miller:        Had really only superficial injuries in certain cases.

Stephen Janis:     Yeah.

Jayne Miller:        His hands weren’t injured.

Stephen Janis:      Right. And she fixated on that. Because she said, if he had been falling, let’s say head first, he would’ve put his hands out.

Jayne Miller:         One would think.

Stephen Janis:     One would think. But he had very few abrasions in that area.

Jayne Miller:         And then he has that really severe leg injury.

Stephen Janis:      One leg.

Jayne Miller:         Compounded. Correct. Compound fractured.

Stephen Janis:     Which she said is another reason that it’s impossible for him to have fallen from a height, because only one leg is a compound fracture, and said much more reminiscent of having something roll over half your body or something.

Jayne Miller:         Or in a way that you would be struck by something, that’s correct. That’s correct.

Stephen Janis:     Right, right. So what do you think, I mean, do you think this is leading up to the idea that maybe this was a great case of misdirection, where we’re all supposed to look up at the hotel?

Jayne Miller:         That’s a really good question.

Stephen Janis:     And keep talking about him getting…

Jayne Miller:         About the hotel. About the hotel building, coming off the roof.

Stephen Janis:      Coming off the roof. And, but on the other hand, with her conclusions, it seems pretty clear that it’s mathematically and physically impossible that he fell off the building. So are we looking at something where it’s time to start considering a different theory that he was put in that room? What do you think?

Jayne Miller:      Well, yeah, sure. And I think that, look, we all know that this is Baltimore, which has year after year after year, including at that time in the mid 2000s, has a very high homicide rate. So the homicide division of the Baltimore Police Department is built to investigate your typical homicide. I hate to call any homicide typical, but in Baltimore we have a particular characteristic of our homicides, which generally nine times out of ten involve gunshots, involve some kind of dispute, turf war, whatever between people who know one another, are acquainted with one another. So the kind of investigation that homicide detectives in a city like Baltimore do most of the time involves shell casings, security camera video.

Stephen Janis:     Right.

Taya Graham:     Right.

Jayne Miller:         Maybe a witness that wants to drop a dime on someone, maybe an informant, that’ll give you some information. Maybe every once in a while some DNA evidence or fingerprint evidence that really can come through for you, but certainly not… This is not a typical case that any homicide division in a municipal police department is going to handle. And you just have a lot of entanglements to the life of Ray Rivera at the time of his demise. And without clear evidence that he took his own life, and without clear evidence that someone else took his life, that you’re in this place. And sure, I think that it would be really a useful exercise for someone to really try to figure out what happened here and to go back through… I mean, there are people that I’m sure that, based on how quickly the posture of this case went to suicide at the time in May of 2006, I’m sure there are a whole lot of people that have never been questioned.

Stephen Janis:      That seems clear. One thing, we have some notes from the detectives and we’re going to be looking at those, but the investigation only went on for a couple weeks.

Jayne Miller:         Oh, and it very quickly went to suicide. And that again was, I’ve pointed out a couple of times about the timing here. I mean, think about what was going on in May, in the summer of 2006. We had Mayor Martin O’Malley, who had run for mayor on the promise of lowering the number of homicides.

Taya Graham:      Right.

Jayne Miller:      And never really hit that number, but definitely was trying to run on a record of violent crime reduction. And right smack in the middle of that you’ve got this case involving a rather high profile individual, because of his connections to the Hopkins polo team, and his connections to his former employer and others, and very persistent relatives that really wanted to get to the bottom of what happened to him. So this wasn’t the… It’s just not the kind of case you want dominating the headlines every day.

That’s for sure. And so, yeah, I can remember at the time of how quickly it went to suicide. And then it just kind of fades. One thing I think that’s important is that we don’t have a process in the state of Maryland, to my knowledge, that you have in some other states, where you can have a coroner’s inquest where it takes a different form of inquiry. There may be something like that. I think the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner used to have, at any rate, kind of an infant death review process. But sometimes you need a different kind of investigatory process that may allow you to take more time, whatever, but to pursue… Issue subpoenas, et cetera, that might get you fresh information.

Taya Graham:     So, just so people understand, how did the medical examiner rule his death in this case?

Jayne Miller:         Undetermined.

Taya Graham:        Undetermined?

Jayne Miller:      Yes. Which is a very important element of this whole situation, because again there’s no finding of, was it an accidental death? Was it suicide? Was it homicide? It’s an undetermined finding.

Taya Graham:      It seems that you’re alluding to the idea that perhaps it was in the favor of the police department and for the mayor at the time to perhaps bury some homicides or violent crimes in the undetermined category, is that a fair statement?

Jayne Miller:       Well I don’t know if you can call it buried. I wouldn’t use that word. But if you have an undetermined case, that means that something’s got to happen, something’s got to give, somebody’s got to come forward or something has to develop to give you a lead, to give you information. When a medical examiner makes a ruling like that, what they’re depending on the investigation and the investigatory material that’s provided by the police department, in terms of the circumstances of this individual’s… At the time of his disappearance, at the time of his death. So had been a suicide note, clearly a suicide note, we may have gotten that kind of ruling. Had there been evidence of a gunshot obviously, and no gun found, then we would have a homicide ruling. But the fact that this was ruled undetermined means that the medical examiner could not determine the manner of death, because there wasn’t enough information to determine the manner of death.

Stephen Janis:       Well, let’s do the Occam’s razor application to the idea that Ray did not fall, where it makes things much more simpler. So one of the things that was interesting when I was talking to the producers of Unsolved Mysteries, they were talking about how that roof itself is extremely fragile. It’s not like a normal roof, right? That you could literally peel it back with your hands. And that when the detectives went out on the roof, they went out flat.

Jayne Miller:         That’s right.

Stephen Janis:        Because they were scared.

Jayne Miller:        Falling through it. Yes, correct. That’s right. That is correct.

Stephen Janis:        If Ray doesn’t fall, a lot of things start to make sense, like the things about his flip flops and everything being separate from his body, being on the roof itself. The fact that no one saw him at the hotel. And then you and I went, walked around a little bit, and it would be possible right, to get his body into that second, that concourse without going through the hotel.

Jayne Miller:       Oh yeah. Oh yeah. There’s multiple ways you can do that. From the garage, you can do that from the ground floor. I mean, there are multiple ways to get it and through that building. Yes. That’s correct.

Stephen Janis:        And it also will explain some of the injuries, the fact that the injuries aren’t consistent with a fall. A lot of things start to make sense when you stop looking up at the top of that building and start looking at the ground floor itself, and both you and I have been contacted by a lot of people. We don’t have any proof of this, but there are some people who believe that Ray was either beaten or brought there. Right? I mean…

Jayne Miller:        There’s no question that since the episode aired on Netflix to take on this case, 14 years later, it’s remarkable actually. I’m sure you feel the same way. It’s remarkable how many people…

Stephen Janis:      Passionate.

Jayne Miller:       Yes. And, first of all, you have people that just have a theory, but we have indeed heard from people who have pieces of information. We have indeed heard from folks who have pieces of information that are pertinent to the time and contemporaneous with the time that have been helpful, and have been worth checking out. But this remains this kind of box of puzzle pieces that are, boy, I’ll tell you, to try to fit them in together.

Taya Graham:      So Jayne, would you say that it’s a consistent theme that people believe that it wasn’t a jump, that it wasn’t a fall to his death?

Jayne Miller:        I would say that of the people that speculate on theories, of the people that have looked at the geometry that’s required for certain things to happen, angles, et cetera, I would say that yes. That there’s a lot of skepticism that that’s indeed what happened to him.

Stephen Janis:      And I mean, I think, like I said before, what that does is that simplifies this case quite a bit, because once you… the hole, itself, the idea that he fell gives that ambiguity, but once you get rid of that, then you just have a body that’s been brutally beaten, and that’s an entirely different case. And I think that’s what you’re talking about in terms of homicide.

Jayne Miller:       Right. And well you also do have his stuff up there. But I’ve often wondered, and this is strictly, I’ve often wondered, but it’s provoked by the knowledge we have that when… I thought it was a contractor, when anybody was on that roof, it’s so fragile that they spread out, so they wouldn’t poke through it.

Stephen Janis:      Right.

Jayne Miller:        And so that raises the question is whether somebody was standing on it and stuck their foot through it, because it’s like being in your attic and you don’t realize that, oh, that’s the insulation, right. There’s nothing there. And so there is that, there are those items that belong to him that weren’t damaged, that are on the top of that roof somewhere near that hole. And so the question is then, I know that detective Bear’s theory about that is that it felt staged.

Taya Graham:        Yes.

Stephen Janis:         Yeah. I mean, there’s no doubt about that. And once again, the idea that he didn’t fall from anywhere fits that theory, and everything starts to align when you start looking at it from that perspective, and you stop looking up at the building. And someone was talking about how they could have taken his stuff and thrown it up through the hole, and then it looks like it fell there. But of course it didn’t, right? I mean, that was very simple. And I think people should look at the hole itself, the roof. I had some people look at it who were contractors, who said it doesn’t have the… It really is flimsy to say the least, I don’t know, I don’t build roofs, but if it’s incredibly flimsy, it means it would be easy to create a hole.

Or like you said, mistakenly create a hole. But the truth is that the body could… Ray’s body could have been brought in there. He could have been beaten there. You can’t rule it out. [Miryam Moya] analyzes car accidents, and what happens to the body in a car accident. And she’s saying, this is incredibly consistent with someone being either hit by a car or beaten, one way or the other, but not with a fall. She’s adamant about that. And I think that raises some really important questions. That we can get beyond this idea of the fall, that I’ve always thought of as kind of weird, but especially there’s no evidence. And I think that creates this great gap that you’re talking about with a homicide, right? They solve point and shoot murders.

Jayne Miller:      This is not a point murder, that’s right.

Stephen Janis:       This is not. And whoever did it, let’s say, let’s speculate that someone did do this. They were pretty smart about how they set it up to make it very difficult for our homicide unit to address it.

Jayne Miller:        Sure. And well, and any… This is not just the Baltimore homicide unit. I mean, any homicide unit, this is not what they’re built for. This is not how they… We’re not talking about the kind of Scotland Yard type TV show here.

Taya Graham:      Right.

Jayne Miller:       At all. I mean, they have a case about every day, day and a half consistently in the city of Baltimore, and they’re not built for this kind of case that really may require sorting out very complicated situations that Ray may have been involved in, may have known something. I mean, I know a lot of people believe that, that he must have known something. And we don’t know.

Stephen Janis:         Yeah, he was a whistleblower. I get a lot of tweets from people or I get a lot of messages, people saying he was a whistleblower. He stumbled onto something, but of course there’s never anything definitive about it, you know?

Jayne Miller:        No, but what we do know, and this comes from his wife, Allison, is that in a few days prior to his disappearance, is that he seemed to be really rattled about something. And we know that.

Stephen Janis:         Well, and what you always bring up is that he makes a phone call. And says, I figured it out. Right? You’ve talked about that.

Jayne Miller:       That’s the situation that seems to be the information, is that the Sunday before he left the message and yes, the message was, hey, I figured it out.

Taya Graham:          Wow.

Stephen Janis:        All right. Well, so this is great. I think we are making some progress here.

Taya Graham:       Absolutely.

Stephen Janis:       We’ve now got the files and Jayne, myself, and Taya are going to review them, and get back and come back. Now just to tell people, if you hear some background noise it’s because of COVID, and we’ve had to record this outside.

Taya Graham:         We had to record this outdoors.

Stephen Janis:         And so I apologize for the trucks and whatever, but we want to do this. We want to keep reporting on this story. And Jayne, we really appreciate you. Your knowledge is incredible and if anyone’s going to solve it, it’s going to be you.

Taya Graham:      Absolutely.

Stephen Janis:      We’re just coming along for the ride, basically. It’s okay. That’s okay. I don’t mind being a supporting cast member to you.

Taya Graham:      Neither do I.

Stephen Janis:      What our next step is, we’re going to present this evidence to the medical examiner’s office and the police, and we’re also going to review the 300 page file that we just got from the police department. And then in two weeks or so, we’ll get back and we’ll update everyone on that. Okay?

Taya Graham:       Absolutely. We’ll be back in two weeks.

Stephen Janis:         So, Jayne, thanks for joining us. We appreciate it. We’ll see…

Jayne Miller:        Fascinating case. Absolutely.

Stephen Janis:        All right, we’ll be back.

Taya Graham:       Thank you for joining us for The Land of the Unsolved. The Land of the Unsolved is produced for Ace Spectrum Productions. It is edited by my co-host Stephen Janis. If you enjoy this podcast, please consider hitting the support button and donating. Every penny counts. Also, if you’d like to read more of our work in print, Stephen and I have written three books on policing, a all available on Amazon, Why Do We Kill: The Pathology of Murder in Baltimore, You Can’t Stop Murder: Truths About Policing in Baltimore and Beyond, and The Book of Cop: A Testament of Policing That Works. All are available on amazon.com. We’d also like to thank our associate producer, Katherine Concepcion, for her work translating the interview with Myra and for helping to put together a transcript that made this show possible. My name is Taya Graham.

Stephen Janis:       My name is Stephen Janis.

Taya Graham:         And thank you so much for joining us for The Land of the Unsolved.

This post was originally published on The Real News Network.

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.

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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.

This post was originally published on The Real News Network.

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.

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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.

This post was originally published on The Real News Network.

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.

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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.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Speaker:    [shouting] Hey, hey, hey [inaudible]. Hey, hey. Stop. Stop. Stop.

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.

This post was originally published on The Real News Network.