Deaths and Injuries in Police Custody

[Andrea]

Cleveland police officer attacked woman and then arrested her on false charges, court records say

http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2017/10/cleveland_police_officer_charg_12.html

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A Cleveland police officer is accused of attacking a woman and having her arrested under false pretenses.

Sgt. Christopher Graham, 38, is charged with assault, unlawful restraint, both first-degree misdemeanors. Graham was arrested on Thursday. Cleveland Municipal Judge Ronald Adrine set a personal bond for Graham.

Graham, who was hired as an officer in 1996, will be arraigned Friday.

Graham has twice been the subject of civil lawsuits filed by people who accused him of similar behavior. Both lawsuits resulted in cash settlements, and Graham was allowed to return to the street.

The most recent incident happened Sept. 12 at the Sunoco gas station on Lorain Road near West 136th Street, according to court records.

Graham attacked the woman, had her arrested and booked into the city jail on a charge of assaulting a police officer, court records say. He filed a false police report that led to the woman being charged with a felony, according to court records.

Court records do not say what provoked the attack. Cleveland police officials have not responded to messages Thursday seeking more information regarding the incident.

Cleveland Fraternal Order of Police President Brian Betley did not immediately respond to a phone call seeking comment.

Graham twice has been the subject of lawsuits filed by people who accused him of abusing his police power.

In 2003, he had two patrolmen arrest his then-live-in-girlfriend on a trespassing charge after an argument despite the fact that the woman lived at the Oak Park Avenue home.

The city settled that lawsuit for $14,000.

Two years later, Graham issued a man a traffic citation shortly after arguing with him over a parking spot outside a coffee shop in the city's Collinwood neighborhood.

The two argued again and Graham told him: "You're assaulting me." The two fought and the man initially slipped away from Graham and ran.

Graham chased him down inside the coffee shop, tackled him and cracked him on the back of the head with his metal flashlight. He then threw the man into a rack of coffee mugs, which fell to the ground and shattered, and beat him again over the head with his flashlight, until he bled, according to the lawsuit.

The man said the officer pinned him to the floor with a knee in his chest and his hands around his neck until other officers arrived.

Graham handcuffed and arrested the man on charges of assault on a police officer and resisting arrest.

He was taken by ambulance to a hospital, where they treated him for his head injuries and stapled shut his wounds before releasing him back to police custody.

A grand jury declined to indict Graham on Dec. 12, 2005.

The city paid $7,500 to settle that lawsuit in 2007.

It is unknown if Graham was disciplined for the two incidents.

[Andrea]

Bodycam footage shows Utah police shoot man as he runs away

http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/08/us/patrick-harmon-utah-police-shooting/index.html

The Salt Lake City Police Department is the latest US police department to come under scrutiny after bodycam footage shows an officer shooting and killing a man, even as the man appeared to be running away.

An officer shot and killed Patrick Harmon, a 50-year-old black man, as he was being arrested on the evening of August 13.

On Wednesday, after a seven week investigation, the Salt Lake County district attorney concluded the officers' use of deadly force was justified because the officers said they feared Harmon was going to hurt them, according to a letter the district attorney sent to the Salt Lake County Sheriff and the city's police chief detailing his investigation into the incident.

Bodycam footage shows Harmon running away from police before he is shot by Salt Lake City police Officer Clinton Fox. The officers later said Harmon threatened them with a knife.

"That video is horrifying. It is just not right," Antionette Harmon, Patrick's older sister, told CNN. "I'm not understanding none of this, how it was justified or anything. It's not fair."

Harmon said her brother was bipolar, schizophrenic and possibly homeless.
Police claim Harmon had a knife.

Harmon was stopped by a police officer on the evening of August 13 after he rode a bicycle across six lanes and a median, according to a narrative laid out by the district attorney, Sim Gill. Harmon was required to have a "red rear tail light on his bicycle," the officer told him.

The officer called for backup after Harmon provided "a couple different names" when he was asked for identification, according to Gill. The officers discovered felony warrants were open for Harmon's arrest -- one of which was for aggravated assault, Gill's report says. As they tried to put handcuffs on him, he ran. The officers chased after him.

In the bodycam footage, of which there are three angles for each of the officers, released by the Salt Lake City Police Department, Fox can be seen shooting Harmon three times as he runs in the opposite direction.

The officer who initially stopped Harmon, Kris Smith, fired his Taser, according to the district attorney's report.

Fox later told investigators that as Harmon was running away, he stopped and turned back toward the officers with a knife in his hand, yelling, "I'll f***ing stab you."

"Officer Fox said he feared if he didn't immediately use deadly force, Mr. Harmon was going to stab him and/or the other officers," Gill's report says.

In his investigation, Gill weighed the testimony of all three officers present -- Fox, Smith and Scott Robinson.

Smith and Robinson's accounts of what Harmon said before being shot vary slightly from Fox's. Smith told investigators he heard Harmon say, "I'm going to cut ..." the report says. Meanwhile, Robinson said he heard Harmon say, "'I stab' or something to that effect," according to the report, though he said he "couldn't remember Mr. Harmon's exact words."

Gill's report says Harmon can be seen in the bodycam video with a knife in his hand, and that investigators took photographs of the knife at the scene.
Ultimately, the district attorney's office found the shooting was a "'justified' use of deadly force," and chose not to pursue criminal charges against Fox.

Harmon's death is the latest to revive concerns into police officers' use of deadly force against black men throughout the United States, as other officer-involved shootings have done in recent years.

"Really, black people don't matter, homeless people don't matter," Antionette Harmon said.

Adriane Harmon, Antionette's daughter, described the video as "heartbreaking" and "horrifying," and vowed to seek justice on behalf of her uncle.

"I want to fight the decision," she said. "I don't believe that (DA decision) was justified. (We're) looking at attorneys now."

In a statement sent to CNN on Sunday, Jeanetta Williams, the president of the Salt Lake City chapter of the NAACP, said the organization was investigating Harmon's death.

"It seemed like more could have been done by the police officers to apprehend Mr. Patrick Harmon than shooting him in the back as he ran," Williams said, adding Harmon was simply afraid.

The statement points out the officers "were a lot younger" than Harmon, and they could have easily tackled him. "He was never given the time to heed the officers' command before they shot him," she said.

Lex Scott, founder of The United Front civil rights organization, called for police accountability.

"District Attorney Sim Gill has denied the people of Salt Lake City justice repeatedly. At this time he needs to hold police accountable or we need a new district attorney," she said.

[Andrea]

Sevier deputy suffered panic attack while armed, couple charged with causing it

http://www.knoxnews.com/story/news/crime/2017/10/16/sevier-deputy-suffered-panic-attack-while-armed-couple-charged-causing/759465001/

SEVIERVILLE, Tenn., — A Sevier County Sheriff’s Office deputy opened fire without warning in a mobile home park, suffered an apparent panic attack four minutes later and was forcibly disarmed by a paramedic, body camera footage shows.

Deputy Justin Johnson did not mention the panic attack in his report on the December 2016 incident, and he remains on active duty, court records show.

Brian Keith Mullinax, 41, and his girlfriend, Tina Carrie Jo Cody, 37, spent 42 days in jail on felony charges, accused of causing what was described in court statements as a "panic attack" and which a detective called "some type of cardiac event." They remain under prosecution on misdemeanor charges, court records show.
Gunfire, panic

A spokesman for Sevier County Sheriff Ron “Hoss” Seals did not return a phone message. It’s not clear from court records whether the sheriff’s office conducted an internal investigation, ordered psychological testing for Johnson, or required him to undergo counseling or additional training.

Cody was unarmed and being held on the ground by Johnson and paramedic Blake Gregg when Johnson fired four shots toward a set of mobile homes, paused and fired three more, the video obtained by the USA TODAY NETWORK - Tennessee showed. He ran away from Cody and Gregg toward Sharp Road.

“Shots fired,” he told dispatchers. “We need help.”

Four minutes later, Johnson was kneeling over Cody, who had remained on the ground, with his gun still in his hand when the video showed he began hyperventilating and running backward away from the mobile homes and Cody.

Paramedic Michael O’Connor ran toward Johnson.

“Pull it together,” O’Connor told Johnson. “Look at me.”

Johnson continued to hyperventilate while pointing his gun toward Cody, Gregg and the mobile homes.

“Give me your gun,” O’Connor repeatedly said. A still hyperventilating Johnson continued to grip the gun. O’Connor eventually wrested it from his hand.

“Let go of it,” O’Connor said.

Johnson continued to hyperventilate.

“Easy, buddy,” O’Connor said as he trained Johnson’s gun toward the mobile homes. “I got it under control. Calm down. It’s OK.”

One minute and 30 seconds after Johnson began hyperventilating, his breathing slowed.

“I’m OK,” he said. “I’m OK.”

O’Connor handed Johnson his gun back. He had hyperventilated so strongly one of his contact lens popped out of his eye, the video showed. He tossed it away as he trained his gun toward the mobile homes, where an unarmed Mullinax was facedown on the ground with his arms extended.

The video showed Mullinax obeyed Johnson when – after Johnson had fired seven shots and ran away – the deputy ordered him to the ground, and he never moved from that position during or after Johnson’s panic attack.

Mullinax is set to stand trial in Sevier County Criminal Court on Tuesday on a charge that he assaulted Johnson. A lower court judge already dropped felony charges against both Cody and Mullinax, and a grand jury refused to indict Cody for causing the panic attack. She remains charged with resisting arrest.

The couple spent 42 days in jail because they were too poor to post bond and did not get a preliminary hearing within 10 business days as the law requires, records showed. It’s not clear why from those court records.

Records and video showed the following:

Johnson was called to the mobile home park at 794 Sharp Road by paramedics. A “morbidly obese female” had fallen inside one of the homes and was complaining about landlord Robin Sutton – Cody’s mother – and Cody, Johnson wrote in his report.

The woman was disoriented, he wrote, and “didn’t know what day or time it was that she had fallen.” Sutton was on the front porch, the video showed. Cody was in the yard. She and Mullinax lived in a neighboring mobile home.

Among the woman’s claims was that Sutton and Cody had stolen her purse. As the woman was still talking, Cody walked to a fence and climbed through it into a field. Johnson drew his gun but ran away from the field, around a mobile home and onto Sharp Road. Cody was standing in the field facing Sharp Road.

“Don’t move,” Johnson yelled.

Cody turned and ran, pulling off her jacket. Johnson, gun in his right hand, used his left hand to pull her onto the ground, and paramedic Gregg helped Johnson hold her down.

'I heard a male voice'

Mullinax walked onto his porch with a cell phone in his hand. The porch was facing Johnson. But Johnson wrote in his report he heard a noise behind him.

“I heard a male voice coming from a short distance behind me shout, ‘I’ve got a gun, (expletive),’” Johnson wrote. “I turned to notice (a suspect) pacing wildly on the porch of a nearby mobile home and then squat while aiming an object at me that appeared to be a firearm in his hand. I immediately discharged my weapon.”

Johnson issued no warning and fired over Gregg’s head.

Mullinax, records show, did not say he had a gun or threaten to harm Johnson. He had a cell phone and yelled at Johnson that he was filming the deputy’s handling of girlfriend Cody.

Johnson immediately ran away after firing the shots. When he returned to the location in the field where Gregg still had Cody on the ground, he yelled at Mullinax, “You drop that (expletive) thing. Do it now.”

Mullinax dropped the phone and got on the ground. He yelled a complaint but did not threaten violence.

“You shut the (expletive) up,” Johnson said.

The deputy told dispatchers everything was fine.

“I’ve got him on the ground,” he said, adding Mullinax was unarmed. “I don’t know what he did with it (the object in his hand).”

A short time later, Johnson’s panic attack began.

Court battle brewing

Johnson wrote in his report that he opened fire “in defense for my life” and the safety of the paramedics.

SCSO Detective Johnny Bohanan later added notes to Johnson’s report about the panic attack. They were brief.

“Because of the assault on Johnson and the fact that he was taken to the hospital with injuries and may have suffered some type of cardiac event as the result of this assault by both the male and female and all the statements and evidence, I charged” Mullinax and Cody with aggravated assault, Bohanan wrote.

Prosecutor Ron Newcomb has declined comment. It’s not clear if the trial will take place Tuesday. Several are set. Defense attorneys were not immediately available for comment.

Attorneys John S. “Stan” Young III and Cameron Bell confirmed this week they are investigating the incident to determine if there are grounds to file a lawsuit on behalf of Mullinax and Cody.

[Andrea]

Police used a Taser on a grandfather, who's now in intensive care. They say it was for his safety.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/10/21/police-used-a-taser-on-a-granddad-whos-now-in-intensive-care-they-say-it-was-for-his-safety/?utm_term=.239c6fca43a0

Albert Chatfield has good days where he’s clear-eyed and lucid, quick with a joke and more than capable of taking care of himself in his home just north of Charleston.

But his family had begun to worry about the 86-year-old’s bad days. They fear it’s the earliest stage of dementia — blocks of time where he’s foggy about who or where he is, afraid of nonexistent dangers and wary of strangers.

Police encountered him on one of those bad days, his family’s attorney said, and their early-morning encounter in Kingstree, S.C., left Chatfield hospitalized in intensive care, bleeding from the brain and breathing only with the help of a ventilator.

Chatfield’s family is hoping for optimistic news from his doctors, who worry he won’t survive his injuries.

From the police, they simply want answers.

“They messed up big time,” their attorney, Justin Bamberg told The Washington Post, adding that he believes officers in Kingstree need additional training.

“This is a case of a mental-health issue, and officers not being properly trained to handle these situations. Not everyone that you run into that isn’t listening to you is a danger. Maybe they need help. Instead of helping, they put him in intensive care.”

Last weekend, Bamberg said, Chatfield had been confused, and called 911 several times. The subject matter was unclear, but authorities were worried enough to call his family. They made arrangements to take him to the doctor the next day.

Something went wrong before then.

Early Monday, someone called 911 saying a driver was behaving erratically, preventing a vehicle from turning. The wayward driver was Chatfield, and things got worse when officers arrived, according to the Kingstree News.

Chatfield sped away from police, running red lights, making turns at random.

His erratic behavior continued after he finally stopped at Main and Brooks streets. Officers ordered him to the ground, but he wouldn’t comply. Instead, he took what officers described as a fighting stance, according to a police report obtained by the Charleston Post & Courier. Then he started jogging backward.

One of the responding officers shocked him with a Taser, which uses a jolt of electricity to seize a person’s muscles.

Chatfield crashed to the ground, hitting his head and injuring his nose. Pictures sent to The Washington Post showed him with gashes on his face as well.

Police Chief James Barr could not be reached for comment on Saturday. He told news outlets that Chatfield’s adversarial nature was the ultimate reason for the use of force.

“You have an elderly man still charging and he wants to fight the police so they got the [Taser] pulled on him to try and calm him down so they could talk to him,” Barr told the Kingstree News. He said Chatfield continued to resist officers after they handcuffed him and led him to the sidewalk.

“After we got the medical report now we understand why he was doing what he was doing,” Barr added. “But for officers’ safety and his safety, that’s why he was tased, because he was in a rage and trying to fight in the middle of the highway. We didn’t want the man to get hit.”

On Saturday, Bamberg said he took issue with the department’s rationale for using force. Chatfield wasn’t a danger to officers or other people — and he was outnumbered by police officers much younger than him.

“They are saying that due to traffic in this tiny town, we tased him for his own safety, and I find that extremely problematic,” Bamberg told The Post. “If traffic is what you were concerned about, why would you completely incapacitate an individual so he can’t get out of the way of traffic.

“It’s a clear lack of Taser training — a clear lack of understanding Constitutional restraint to use force on an individual. I think it is inhumane.”

The incident comes as police departments are under intense scrutiny for their use of force against suspects, particularly minorities.

Chatfield is black. The officer who shocked him — Stephen Sweikata who’d worked in Kingstree since April — is white. Bamberg said he didn’t think race was explicitly at play, although they have not received dash cam footage and other evidence.

In 2015, 995 people were shot dead by police officers. Of those, 259 were black — more than one in four, according to a Washington Post database on police shootings. So far in 2017, 782 people have been shot and killed by police, 183 of whom were black.

Family members told the Post & Courier they were shocked to find themselves members of the fraternity of families who’ve had violent encounters with police. They have not ruled out a lawsuit, Bamberg said, but for now the focus is on Chatfield’s health.

And they were trying to reconcile the jovial, funny patriarch of their family with the police description of a man so threatening an officer had to pull out a Taser.

“He wouldn’t hurt anybody,” his daughter, Jodi Mack, told the Post & Courier. “He would only make you hurt laughing.”

[Andrea]

How Rikers Island and the failing justice system killed this public defender’s young, opioid-addicted client

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/rikers-island-justice-system-killed-young-opioid-addict-article-1.3579406

He was incarcerated, caged, stripped of his family, friends, and dignity. And just four days before his 28th birthday, he was dead.

When Selmin Feratovic died early Thursday at the Otis Bantum Correctional Center on Rikers Island, he had been incarcerated for nearly seven months but had not been convicted of a crime.

I was Selmin’s public defender. When I met him, the first thing I noticed was his shy smile. He seemed like a kid with his messy hair, soft voice, and a grin that would unexpectedly snake across his face and then disappear as suddenly as it appeared.

He was unfailingly polite. I was always “Miss Anisha.” He always asked me how I was doing, if I was okay. And when we were finished talking — after I told him, again, that he wasn’t going home on this court date either — he would thank me for trying to help.

“I’m sorry, Selmin, I just wish I could get you out,” I would say to him.

“What are you sorry for, Miss? You didn’t put me here,” he would reply.

It’s true, I didn’t put him there. But I couldn’t get him out. And now he’s dead.

Thus far, the New York City Department of Correction, which governs Rikers, has refused to provide Selmin’s lawyers or his family with his cause of death. But they don’t have to, because I already know what happened.

Selmin was killed by a system that overcharged him, incarcerated him, ignored him, and ultimately failed to protect him. He was a victim of the opioid epidemic, the war on drugs, and anti-immigrant policy. His tragic death is an entirely predictable consequence of the criminal justice system as it currently dysfunctions.

In March, Selmin was accused of entering an apartment laundry room and trying to pry open the coin machine. Nothing was actually taken, and no one from the apartment identified Selmin as the person seen in the laundry room. But based on surveillance video, police believed he was responsible and arrested him.

In a gross example of overcharging, the Bronx District Attorney’s office charged Selmin with burglary in the second degree; a class “C” violent felony, carrying a minimum prison sentence of 31/2 years. At his arraignment, the judge set Selmin’s bail at $50,000, refusing to lower the amount requested by the prosecution for this young man whose previous involvement with the criminal justice system resulted in no convictions, but made it abundantly clear he needed help, not incarceration.

The bail that was set was not a reasonable amount that would ensure his return to court, as the law requires, but an amount designed to keep him incarcerated.

It amounted to a death sentence.

For months, his social worker, his immigration lawyer and I labored to get Selmin out. We knew that guilty or not, his struggle was drugs. He needed treatment because, like so many others, Selmin was trapped by opioid addiction.

In 2011, he was grievously injured in a motorcycle accident, underwent surgery and was hospitalized. Doctors prescribed oxycodone. It wasn’t long before Selmin became dependent. Still in pain, he learned that heroin had the same effect as oxycodone, and before he knew it, he was spiraling.

With the support of his partner, Nicole, Selmin fought to get into treatment, but his addiction was indomitable. There were countless trips to the hospital, late-night ambulance rides, and emergency phone calls.

Selmin’s battle with drugs was well known to the DA’s office. They knew he was going through more heroin a day than the heaviest users, and was dangerously close to an overdose. They knew he wanted help and was willing to take a plea involving inpatient treatment.

They also knew that Selmin — who came from Montenegro to the U.S. legally as a child — was a lawful permanent resident, not a citizen. Pleading guilty to felony burglary could result in deportation and permanent separation from his family.

Still, the DA’s office was intransigent. They offered drug treatment, but insisted that Selmin plead guilty to a felony charge. However, that felony plea could trigger deportation proceedings, landing him back in the country he had left as a child, away from the drug treatment program and family whose support he would need to rehabilitate himself.

Selmin’s choices: on the one hand, he could plead guilty and get out of jail, only to be put in ICE detention and deported. On the other, he could plead not guilty and stay in the only country he’s known, but remain caged as he fought his case. Incarceration or deportation.

I begged for an alternative. What about misdemeanor criminal trespassing with mandatory inpatient treatment? Or what about releasing Selmin into a program without forcing him to plead guilty? Then, if he succeeded, he could plead to a lesser charge and avoid deportation?

The DA was unmoved.

I tried to persuade different judges to release Selmin into a program and let him fight his case while getting the treatment he needed.

They replied that this would only be possible if the DA is on board.

No matter how hard we tried to explain this catch-22, the prosecutor and the judge refused to act.

If Selmin were a U.S. citizen, he could have taken their offer, gotten out of jail six months ago, and received the help he was desperate for. If Selmin were rich, he could have paid bail and fought this absurdly overcharged case from the safety of his home.

Nicole was notified of Selmin’s death not by jail officials, but by another prisoner who called to convey his sympathies. For hours, his family couldn’t even get confirmation from the DOC of his passing. Even in death, this system is unwilling to show Selmin the basic human decency he and his family deserve.

Selmin was so much more than the charges he faced, and he deserved none of the pain he endured. He was a father to two cherubic babies, a son to hardworking immigrant parents, a big brother to siblings who adored him, and a partner to a girlfriend who never gave up on him.

His death should be a clarion call for accountability, systemic change, and true justice.

[Kätzchen]

I've been following the oxycontin crises back in NYC via other media outlet news sources and it's just terrible!

To me, it's an dirty shame that this crises is not only an tell tale sign (red flag) about police brutality, but it's an indictment
On the justice system, the law system, the medical industry and pharmaceutical industry and the way that even the FDA seems to turn an blind eye on an multi-stakeholder issue between multiple agencies nation wide.

Also, it would appear that whistle blower organizations seem to not be able to blow up the triangulation of multiple parties who are getting rich off this 'Madoff' type rip off. That makes me think that even Wall Street is part of this problematic social crime, as well as citizens who won't rise up against this willful and intolerant type of ignorance, when really, imho, it's not ignorance driving the process, but corruption at every level of social agencies and the judicial system.

If it's left unaddressed, then it seems to me that social justice will never be employed as an social corrective. Which, if true, then shame on everyone for not ....doing the right thing.

[Andrea]

Bike ride turns to fearful encounter with police

https://freepressokc.com/bike-ride-turns-to-fearful-encounter-with-police/

Fear led to more fear Thursday morning as Kelsey Pierce was riding her bike to work at the Tower Theater on NW 23rd Street.

A sudden encounter with Oklahoma City police officer James Herlihy at NW 21st and Dewey led to what Pierce described as “complete fear” when the officer handcuffed her and placed her in the back of his patrol car.

The turn of events was set in motion by a fearful Mesta Park neighborhood resident who called 911 around 9:30 a.m.

911

An OKCPD call log obtained by Free Press shows the resident saying there was a white male and white female “on bikes riding around the area looking in driveways.”

The log also shows the caller thought they might have been “looking to see who was home.”

Pierce somewhat matched the description of the reported white female because she was wearing a dark top and carrying a backpack.

That was the pretext for Herlihy stopping Pierce.

“Someone called about a female with a black shirt on with a backpack looking in people’s driveway,” Herlihy told her about one minute and 35 seconds into the encounter.

Jail threat

But it was the officer’s response to her impatience that shifted her feelings to fear.

“At some point he asked me if I wanted to go to jail,” Pierce told Free Press in an interview Friday.

“I’ve never been to jail. I’ve never been in handcuffs. I’ve never been in the back of a cop car.”

While waiting on headquarters to run a warrant search which showed nothing, Herlihy searched Pierce’s belongings without her permission.

Free Press obtained the video of the whole encounter captured by Herlihy’s body-worn camera, one of hundreds now in use by OKCPD policy.

Complaint

Pierce called in a complaint to the department because of what she believes to be aggressive behavior on the part of the officer for little reason.

While waiting for the warrant search Herlihy engaged in a short conversation through the patrol car window with Pierce.

She told him she was stumbling with responding to him at first because he startled her.

“Obviously you weren’t, that’s why you are in handcuffs in the back seat of the car, because you were throwing stuff at me,” Herlihy said. “You handed the ID card to me like you wanted to use it as a weapon and throw it at me.”

One entry in the call log shows that Herlihy tried to back up the assertion of the license being thrown. But, the video shows that Pierce simply handed the license to him.

Shock

Some of the many people who regularly bike through Mesta Park were shocked when news of the encounter started to filter out onto Twitter Thursday night.

Chad Hodges is one of the original organizers of DNA Racing, a pro bike racing team based in OKC.

And some openly asked what might have happened if she had not been a white woman riding through a predominantly white neighborhood.

Pierce told us Friday that she has a new appreciation for the kind of fear that black people feel when they are stopped for seemingly small infractions and treated like criminals.

She was aware of the disproportionate stops police have made Oklahoma City’s past, but this event seemed to make it all more real for her.

“This is minute in comparison,” said Pierce. “But, feeling that way every day when you are walking out the door would be enough to make me stay home for the rest of my life.”

Legal questions

Her attorney, Bryce P. Harp, questions the legality of the stop.

He cited the Fourth Amendment against unreasonable searches and seizures.

“First, any person that is stopped by a law enforcement officer has the right to know why they are being stopped,” said Harp.

He said that Pierce’s being detained in the way she was amounted to an arrest in that she was not free to go.

“She was not given her due process right,” Harp said.

Recent Supreme Court decisions allow searches connected to an arrest, but it is based upon a lawful arrest having been made.

“If she had been lawfully arrested, then they could have searched her stuff without her consent. But it was not a lawful arrest, so it was an unlawful search,” Harp said.

Investigation

Captain Bo Mathews with the OKCPD held a news conference on the matter at police headquarters Friday afternoon.

He said the matter would be investigated at the Division level but would not be referred to internal affairs investigators.

In response to a question by Free Press, Mathews said that the procedure for handling disciplinary matters like this one have a clear path defined by the officer’s contract negotiated by the police union and the department.