“Riots And Results”: The Next Time A Suspect Dies, People In The Community May Now Be More Likely To Take To The Streets
Yesterday, I wrote about how the explanation Baltimore police gave for the death of Freddie Gray was almost impossible to believe, and apparently, state’s attorney Marilyn Mosby felt the same way after her investigation, because she announced today that she is charging six officers with crimes ranging from negligence to second-degree murder (you can watch her statement here). In a post at the Plum Line this morning, I raised the question of whether you could argue that the violence that occurred in Baltimore on Monday led to this prosecution and therefore produced some of the accountability people in Baltimore want so desperately. Here’s a piece of that post:
The violence led to a huge increase in media attention, and even if much of that coverage was sensationalistic, there was also a lot of attention paid to the substantive issues involved. Those included the Baltimore police’s record in dealing with the public generally, and in particular the use of “rough rides” as a method of abusing suspects, which is a likely explanation for how Freddie Gray came to have his spine broken in the back of a police van.
All that national attention put every public official under pressure to not only bring calm but also to confront the issues that have the people of Baltimore so angry: The police commissioner, the mayor, the governor, and yes, the state’s attorney. While every official would like to believe that he or she would make all the same decisions regardless of whether there are people chanting in the streets and news cameras parked outside their office, they can’t possibly be immune.
I have to confess I’m not completely sure what the answer to the basic question is. I’m not at all comfortable endorsing violence as a political tactic, particularly since it not only claims innocent victims, it also tends to be less effective than nonviolent protest over the long run. But there’s no question that Monday’s rioting instantly made Baltimore and Freddie Gray a national issue.
On the other hand, it’s entirely possible that if the nonviolent protests had simply continued and grown, there would still have been a prosecution. Though I know very little about Mosby, she doesn’t seem like she’s being forced into this against her will. One important question is how the rest of the Baltimore officials who are also under a microscope respond. What kind of police reforms are they going to initiate, and how effective will they be? We probably won’t know the answers until long after the national media’s attention has shifted elsewhere.
There’s also the question of whether the events in Baltimore, including this prosecution, have any impact on what happens in police departments around the country, with regard to both police abuse and accountability for it. Suspects die in police custody all the time, after all, and prosecutions are pretty rare. Changing both of those things will take a long time, but the next time a suspect dies, the people in the community where it happened may now be more likely to take the streets, and the prosecutors are going to be asked why they aren’t issuing an indictment like the prosecutor in Baltimore did.
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect, May 1, 2015
“It’s Hard For Me To Understand”: Experts; You Can’t Break Your Own Spine Like Freddie Gray
On Wednesday night, The Washington Post leaked an alleged report from the Baltimore Police Department, which claims that Freddie Gray, the 21-year-old who died a week after his spine was fractured while in police custody, “was intentionally trying to injure himself” in the back of a Baltimore Police van.
The report, whose author is unknown, cites a single source: an unnamed second man who was in the van with Gray for a short time, but could not see him.
But if Freddie Gray was trying to break his own spinal cord in the back of a van, according to experts in spinal trauma injuries, it might be the first self-inflicted injury of its kind.
“I have never seen it before. I’ve never seen somebody self-inflict a spinal cord injury in that way,” says Anand Veeravagu, a Stanford University Medical Center neurosurgeon who specializes in traumatic brain and spinal cord injuries.
“It’s hard for me to understand that, unless those terms (like ‘intentional’ and ‘injure himself’) are being used incorrectly. It’s hard for me to envision how a person could try to do that,” he says. “It would require them to basically hang themselves in a car where there isn’t anything to hang yourself with.”
Veeravagu says that there are only a few ways you can injure your spine in a similar way to the injuries that ultimately led to Gray’s death. One, he says, is by a sharp injury, which is a direct penetrating injury—either somebody with a knife “who knows what they’re doing, or something else that cuts through, like a gunshot wound.”
The other way, more pertinent to Gray’s case, is by trauma, where the bones are fractured and the ligaments are torn as a result of force or impact.
“It is very difficult to sever your spinal cord without a known fracture,” says Veeravagu. “Often, when patients come in with this kind of injury, you’ll find they’ve been either in a car accident or something similar to that kind of impact.”
There are times where Veeravagu, who is a former White House Fellow, has seen suicide or self-harm by means of a spinal cord injury, but it’s always by hanging, or by using an apparatus Gray couldn’t have on-hand.
“Unfortunately, sometimes people attempt suicide by hanging themselves. It’s one of the only ways I’ve seen where you can (commit suicide or intentional self-harm) by spinal fracture. They kick their chair out, they fall, they snap their neck. It results in immediate spinal cord injury,” he says. “But it’s very hard to see how somebody could attempt suicide by a spinal cord injury without the use of something else.”
But it’s even in those instances, he says, patients often don’t die of a spinal cord injury. And most who are taken to the hospital in time after suffering spinal cord injuries—self-inflicted or not—survive the trauma.
“Most spinal cord injuries are not fatal if patients are taken to the hospital,” Veeravagu says. “Most survive.”
Outlets covering The Washington Post’s leak have called the claims from the unnamed source “a twist” and a “new narrative (that) questions police brutality claim.” On Wednesday night, CNN’s broadcast ran a breaking news banner that read: “BREAKING NEWS: WASH. POST: GRAY TRIED TO HURT HIMSELF,” and the video remains on CNN’s Youtube page.
The Washington Post’s initial report does not reach out to any medical professionals to determine the feasibility of the leaked document’s claims.
The official police report of Gray’s arrest was scheduled to be released publically on Friday, but police delayed the release on Wednesday.
“I’m surprised they released that piece of information without a more detailed account,” says Veeravagu.
Another trauma surgeon, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the political nature of the case and because he is “surprised time and again by what I previously believed to be impossible,” thinks that it’s “highly unusual (if not impossible) to deliberately make yourself a quadriplegic while shackled in the back of a police van.”
There are, Veeravagu says, situations that would make Gray more prone to a fatal spinal injury, however—like if someone or something applied pressure to his spine as it snapped.
“Certain conditions make people more prone to spinal injury. If you were to apply leverage to the spine at certain points, it basically converts the spine to a long bone,” says Veeravagu.
Veeravagu also says it’s possible Gray’s spinal fracture could have occurred before entering the van—and that symptoms of his broken vertebrae could have been delayed until he was placed in the van.
“That is possible: It’s possible to have an injury to your spinal cord that gets worse over time and eventually progresses to complete paralysis,” he says. “Did he have an expanding blood clot in his spine? Did he have an exact fracture to his spine? Both are important to understand. If the family does an autopsy—finding that out, that’s ideal.”
By: Ben Collins, The Daily Beast, April 30, 2015
“Deflecting From The Full Truth”: Prisoner Was Wrong; Freddie Gray Didn’t Kill Himself
Before the second prisoner was even in the police van, Freddie Gray asked the police for medical assistance.
So you have to wonder why on earth a man who had just asked for help would then try to hurt himself—as the second prisoner supposedly concluded after he was picked up at the next stop a few minutes later.
The opinion of the second prisoner is reportedly contained in a search-warrant application prepared by a police investigator and now leaked to The Washington Post.
Somebody leaked the sealed document for a reason, just as the police were preparing to turn over the results of their investigation to the Baltimore state’s attorney. There is nothing to stop the Baltimore Police Department from also publicly disclosing its major findings, as it largely did after its initial investigation soon after Gray’s death. The only significant detail the BPD added on Thursday while announcing its probe was complete was that private security video indicated the van had made an additional, previously unreported stop.
But what the police have already disclosed is enough to suggest why the second prisoner might have believed Gray was trying to hurt himself—and why he was almost certainly mistaken
After the stop where he asked for medical assistance and medical assistance was denied to him, Gray seems to have resumed signaling his need for help by the only means available—by banging on the inside of the van.
Gray may even have imagined that the police were heeding him when the van stopped again a few minutes later.
Imagine his desperation when he realized that the van had stopped only to pick up another prisoner. Gray’s resumed banging must have been all the more insistent, all the more frantic.
As reported by The Washington Post, the second prisoner came to the conclusion that Gray was trying to hurt himself without ever actually seeing him, the two of them having been separated by a metal partition.
The second prisoner could only have based his opinion on the sounds of Gray banging against the inside of the van.
And the banging must have been pretty frantic indeed for it to seem that Gray was trying to hurt himself.
More likely, what sounded to the prisoner like an effort to self-inflict injury was a renewed plea for assistance.
Gray had learned at the time of his arrest that the police seemed deaf to his cries of pain.
All Gray could do once he was locked inside the van was bang on the interior. And that banging prompted the police to make three prior stops.
At the first, the police found Gray to be “irate” and “combative.” They then placed him in leg irons.
Gray also could have simply been frantic, and he had kept banging loud enough for the police to stop a second time five minutes later, and call for a cop to check on him in the back.
The purpose of that banging seems to have been made clear when Gray asked for medical assistance.
The police response was apparently limited to lifting him off the floor of the van where he had apparently fallen and returning him to the bench.
The van then rode on with Gray continuing to signal his distress, along that way making a third stop for reason the BPD has not disclosed or simply not yet determined. He most likely thought that his banging was prompting a fourth stop when the van again pulled over, and that medical assistance might be near.
But all that happened was another prisoner was loaded aboard, unseen and unseeing behind the metal partition. Gray was now apparently so desperate in his banging for help that he led the other prisoner to believe he was trying to injure himself.
Just six blocks later, the van arrived at the police station. The banging ceased, but not because Gray believed that he was getting help. It stopped because he was unconscious.
Medical assistance finally came in the person of paramedics who transported him to a shock trauma hospital, where he later died.
Now it is up to the authorities to tell us what they know before leakers manage to deflect us from the full truth.
At least we already know enough to reach a conclusion: If it sounded like Gray sought to injure himself in that van, it was after he had been making those very same sounds to signal he needed help.
The banging that second prisoner heard was the banging of a man who was just six blocks away from being beyond all help.
By: Michael Daly, The Daily Beast, April 30, 2015
“Police Morale Can Wait”: How The Baltimore Riots Should Reshape Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s Agenda
Out of the many invisible and all-powerful forces that govern our universe, the cruelest must be Time. Whether you’re asking it to slow down for selfish reasons or to speed up for someone else, it doesn’t make a difference. Time is relentless and uncaring; it does not listen and it will not stop.
But even though it is ultimately an egalitarian ruler, wreaking havoc on the old, young, good and bad alike, Time seems to hold a special grudge against Loretta Lynch, the woman who, after an unprecedented delay, was finally sworn in on Monday as the 83rd attorney general in the history of the United States.
The first indication that Time has it in for Lynch was also the most obvious: the Senate’s 167-day-long dawdle. But while it was obviously wrong to make the first African-American woman ever nominated for the post wait so absurdly long to be confirmed (only two of Lynch’s 82 predecessors waited longer), I’m hesitant to throw the fault entirely on Time’s shoulders. The attack was launched by Republicans, after all; Time was merely their weapon.
But the second piece of evidence that Time may be holding a particular grudge against the attorney general was more palpable: the riots that convulsed Baltimore this weekend and paralyzed the city on Monday. Because although Lynch obviously had nothing to do with the disorder, the riots’ fires show with blinding clarity that Lynch’s first goal — which is “improving police morale,” according to the Times — is entirely premature. The wanton destruction of property cannot be legitimated; but simply criticizing anarchy and praising law enforcement won’t bring the mayhem to an end. And it won’t provide justice.
In many ways, the chaos in Baltimore is just the latest iteration of one of America’s saddest and longest-running stories. It is another example of what Martin Luther King once called “the language of the unheard.” King was speaking then of the riots that traumatized much of the country during the summer of 1966. But the social ills he described as kindling for the riot’s fire — poverty, police brutality and malign neglect — are, despite the nearly 49 years that followed, still powerful forces in America today.
For this particular moment, though, it’s Baltimore Police Department’s documented history of lawless violence that’s been identified as the riots’ inspiration. Protestors and rioters — who, it’s worth noting, are usually not the same — cite as their catalyst the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old African-American man and Baltimorean. On April 12, Gray was arrested by officers from the BPD. When police detained Gray and put him in a van for transportation, he was walking; by the time the trip was over, he had a broken neck. He died on April 19th.
No one yet knows for sure exactly what happened to Gray during that trip and in that van. There are reports that he was taken out at one point and beaten, but an autopsy showed no injuries except for those to his spinal cord and neck. The BPD has already admitted that its officers did not provide Gray with the necessary medical care. But the main question — Why was he able to run from the police in the morning, but struggling to breathe by nightfall? — has gone unanswered, though an increasing number suspect the widespread, grotesque practice of giving “a rough ride” is to blame.
Yet the fact that such a thing could happen, and only become a major story after the activism of peaceful protesters (and the destructive hijacking of violent rioters), is exactly the problem. The fact that the BPD’s reputation is such that many Baltimoreans heard Gray’s story with weary outrage rather than shock or indignation is exactly the problem. The fact that the BPD rank-and-file evidently feels so comfortable with extralegal brutality, and are so accustomed to wielding it, that demands for accountability has left them panicking — that, too, is exactly the problem.
I’m quite certain that, at least to some extent, Attorney General Lynch would agree. But that’s why it’s so unfortunate that news of her interest in “finding common ground between law enforcement and minority communities” came when it did. Because once the last stone is thrown, the fires are put out, and the state of emergency in Maryland is lifted, what Baltimore and the countless places in the U.S. like it will need is not another conversation. And finding “common ground” won’t be what America needs from its attorney general or its Department of Justice.
What will be needed instead is for the authorities in Baltimore, Maryland and D.C. to stop pandering to the police unions who demand carte blanche in the field and an endless line of officials singing about their valor. What will be needed instead are signs that the authorities take fears of the rise of the “warrior cop” and police militarization seriously, and that they will no longer see the deaths of people like Gray as “tragic.” Because they’re not cosmic acts of injustice; they’re crimes. To suspend (with pay) the officers who may be responsible is not enough — and Lynch needs to make clear that she understands that, and that her predecessor’s groundbreaking report on Ferguson, Missouri, was no aberration.
What will be needed, in short, is for the people most apt to use “the language of the unheard” to feel that someone who matters is finally listening. And that those in public office prove with actions that they believe it when they say an African-American life is worth no less than a cop’s. Now is not the time for Lynch to focus on making law enforcement happy. Now is the time for her to promote equal justice. Improving police morale can wait.
By: Elias Isquith, Salon, April 28, 2015
“Police Brutality In The High Desert”: You Have To Wonder How Many Other People Have Been Beaten This Way
Maybe the San Bernadino County deputies thought that when Francis Pusok rode a stolen horse into the desert he was galloping himself into a rare realm devoid of civilians with cellphone cameras.
Maybe they thought the only helicopter on the scene was the police chopper circling so low overhead as to spook the horse.
Maybe they failed to notice the NBC news helicopter hovering higher above with the kind of zoom-in camera used to record countless car chases.
Maybe they imagined they had momentarily escaped to that pre-video time when the unwritten rule seemingly everywhere in America was that if you make the cops run you are subject to a beating.
Or maybe they were just so worked up by chasing this 30-year-old alleged horse thief that they did not care who might record what.
Bad enough that Pusok had taken off in a motor vehicle when the deputies arrived at his house on Thursday morning with a search warrant arising from an identity theft investigation.
But then Pusok abandoned the car in Hesperia some 40 miles away and allegedly hopped on a horse. He rode off into a stretch of desert that until Friday was best known for a clothing-optional natural spring.
His pursuers could not keep chasing him in their squad cars and they were not likely to catch him on foot. A police helicopter picked up a team of deputies and set them down in Pusok’s path.
The police chopper then rose and banked back around, swooping low enough to alarm the horse, which had been doing Pusok’s bidding with obvious reluctance.
Upon seeing one of the choppered-in deputies angling on foot toward him, Pusok tried to veer away, but lost his balance and fell from his mount.
The deputy lost his footing at the same time, but drew a Taser as he rose. A second deputy with a Taser came running up just as Pusok was getting back up.
Pusok threw himself face down, either because of the Tasers or the realization that further flight was futile. He immediately extended both hands straight out and then quickly placed them behind his back, apparently on hearing a standard command from the deputies.
He may have imagined that instant compliance would save him from the deputies’ wrath.
That may have been so if this had been just a Throwback Thursday violation of Section 487a (a) of the California Penal Code, which covers “every person who feloniously steals, takes, carries, leads, or drives away any horse, mare, gelding, any bovine animal, any caprine animal, mule, jack, jenny, sheep, lamb, hog, sow, boar.”
Pusok had committed the far graver transgression of making the deputies chase after him by car, helicopter, and finally foot in the desert heat.
The new chopper video shows that the two deputies were no sooner upon Pusok than one of them kicked him in the head. The other kicked him between his splayed legs
Both deputies then punched him again and again. Two more deputies approached. One joined in the kicking and hitting. The other patted the horse on the hindquarters to shoo it away from the pile-on.
That deputy refrained from striking Pusok, as did a fifth deputy who appeared. The fifth one happened to be black. Pusok happened to be white and, if nothing else, the continued pummeling proved that you do not have to be a person of color to be subject to police brutality, that it does not arise only from racism.
Yet another deputy strode up and joined in the beating. The deputy with the horse held the reins and gently patted the animal, comforting it.
A ninth deputy came up when everything seemed to be over. He then began repeatedly kicking Pusok, making it a total of seven deputies to assault the prone prisoner with 17 kicks and 41 punches.
None of the nine deputies appeared to look up and the clattering of the police chopper may well have masked that of the news helicopter. The deputies may have had no idea that this would not be just another arrest.
They certainly learned otherwise when NBC News aired the video, which then flashed through cyber space via YouTube. San Bernadino Sheriff John McMahon announced on Friday that he was putting 10 deputies—including a sergeant and a detective—on leave. Those who did not actually strike Pusok will apparently have to explain why they did nothing to stop the beating.
“I am disturbed and troubled by what I see,” McMahon told the press. “It does not appear to be in line with our policies and procedures.”
Pusok had been taken to a local hospital, charged with felony reckless driving and horse theft. He had a previous record that included shooting a dog, threatening his girlfriend, possessing a firearm while a felon, and kicking out the window of a radio car after he was placed in arrest.
The fact that Pusok had once shot a dog might leave people more inclined to think he deserved a beating than if he had shot a person.
But this particular run-in with the deputies involved only a horse. And, however gentle one of the deputies was with the creature, that seems to have had nothing to do with the beating.
The department is already under federal investigation for alleged brutality at the county detention facility. And a San Bernadino deputy was convicted of assault last year for repeatedly kicking a handcuffed man in the chest and groin.
“Oooh, that had to hurt,” the deputy said with a laugh, according to court documents. “You’re gonna (expletive) hurt in the morning.”
Now seven deputies may well find themselves charged with a gang assault that has the look of a ritual formed in the days before video.
You have to wonder how many other people were beaten this way and left with only their word against that of the deputies.
Just as the video from South Carolina makes you wonder how many unarmed fleeing people were shot by a cop who afterward insisted he fired only because he feared for his life.
Had there been no video in the San Bernadino beating, the deputies could have just said that Pusok fell off the horse.
As for Pusok, he should give thanks he was not back in time all the way to the days when horse thieves were just hanged from the nearest tree.
By: Michael Daly, The Daily Beast, April 10, 2015
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