Punishing Police Officers
PTSD or Racism: Metallic and a bullet hole in a police officers cruiser result in "KILL EM ALL" comment
This week I covered the punishment of a 20-year-career Colorado Springs police sergeant who commented “KILL THEM ALL” and then “KILL EM ALL” on a June Black Lives Matter protest live stream. Here is the article, below are some thoughts and behind the scenes reporting that dig into the question of accountability for police.
Was it PTSD or racism and in the end does it even matter?
Key points:
A 40 hr unpaid suspension and lateral movement out of a special division was not an adequate punishment for community members.
The officer seems to be suffering from PTSD and anxiety from reading the Internal Investigation interviews. [This is not confirmed but read the interview to come to your own conclusion]
He was involved in two major shooting incidents in the last five years, including one where an officer was killed and another where he won a medal of valor after getting shot at by a dude with a rifle from an apartment building.
Job evaluations show no foul marks the last six years. [These were obtained through open records requests. I reviewed 187 pages of redacted evals. It showed at least since 2014 that he’s met or exceed job expectations.]
His actions, though acknowledged as damaging by the police department, are not extreme enough and were ruled to not have INTENTIONALLY caused violence against protesters to cause him to be fired.
A petition has gathered over 2500 signatures calling for his firing.
His bosses and the mayor cannot fire him without risking legal proceedings from the officer that could challenge his termination. By policy, he’s been adequately punished.
So if he can’t be fired, the community feels betrayed here and there are no other options, what can be done?
Read the full article here.
In reviewing the internal documents, even with redactions, it stuck out to me blatantly that the officers is struggling with PTSD. In the current system there seems to be no way to rectify that the officer is struggling due to mental health, that his actions were incredibly damaging and that the punishment is completely inadequate to mend bridges with the community.
His suspension is not minor in the scheme of police getting punished, but looks like a slap on the wrist to people outside of law enforcement.
I interviewed Martin Lewis, a vet who founded the local grassroots organization that started the petition to fire the officer.
Lewis is no stranger to PTSD, he was medically discharged from the military and would not have chosen to leave if it had been left up to him.
“You can't leave that up to the person who's suffering from that illness,” he said.
He sees the signs of PTSD in the officer and is looking at policy changes that have allowed the officer to continue to work with mental health that could compromise his ability work as an officer.
Colorado Springs June 2020 protests.
In the internal affairs' interview, Wrede said that he was completely “professional” the entire time he was in uniform responding to the city’s George Floyd sparked protests. But when he got home, he couldn’t help but think back to the bullet hole in the officer’s windshield that was shot by an unknown suspect in May and think “Damn, what if?”.
The cruiser was shot on the second night of protests and the interview seems to show that Wrede started began to get panic attacks and bad anxiety after that.
“We expect warriors to be resilient and part of resiliency is denial which didn't work out for me very well,” Wrede said. Lewis still thinks that Wrede needs to be fired.
It sounded to Lewis like Wrede need help, and maybe he’s gotten help, but it hasn’t been enough in his view.
“You have to look at this and say, I got to actually be able to maintain my professionalism. And if I can't because of PTSD, then it might be time for me to hang up my coat. Which what you said. He said that and he's still there,” Lewis said.
“We need to actually look into changing the policy to when police actually go through these things, we're actually acting and helping them instead of just continuing to put them out there,” Lewis said. He views the week suspension and reassignment as putting the officer “right back out there”.
“Not only should CSPD follow the standard for everyone, they should be held to a higher standard because they enforce it,” Lewis said.
So without any community process to hold the officer accountable, the only solution for those who want more accountability is to fire the officer. And the only option for law enforcement and city government is to function within policy which limits their actions.
It’s interesting to me because the justice system so often fails the people on the other side of the blue uniforms, but in this case it seems to have failed and be failing the officer as well. When justice systems are only punitive can healing of individuals or communities occur? Thoughts or comments -> drop me a line or a song @ lj@dawsons.us.
News
Kamala for VP: Flashback to her attempt to use an airplane safety model to stop police shootings. [The Marshall Project]
note: we have lots of thoughts about Harris and her past as a prosecutor so stay tuned for the following weeks as we cover elections.
Goodbye: Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best resigned after the Seattle City Council took its first major action to cut resources from the city’s police department. [KUOW]
Sexual predator: “Two inmates are suing the Oregon Department of Corrections, top prison officials and several corrections officers for more than $10 million, accusing officials of allowing a sexually predatory employee to target and sexually abuse the two women.” [Statesman Journal]
Broken Locks: A June prison riot in Texas was caused by heat and COVID-19, but locks opened with soap made the chaos possible. [The Marshall Project]
Use of Force: Nearly half of the people in Aurora (where Elijah McClain was killed) struck, tackled, pepper sprayed, Tased or shot in 2019 by police officers were Black. Black people make up 16% of the city’s population. [The Denver Post]
wrong dude, $1M bail: Bad eyewitness identification and inaccurate accusations lock innocent people up before trials. [Criminal Legal News]
Lost dead body: The Federal Bureau of Prisons lost a dead man after failing to notify his family for months he died of COVID-19. His body still hasn’t been recovered. [WUSA9]
Not so easy justice: Why today, even if it’s a good day to “arrest Breonna Taylor’s killers” probably won’t be the day it happens due to a “self-defense stalemate” and a supreme court ruling that “officers can invoke self-defense even if their behavior was objectively unsafe or likely to provoke a violent response”. [The Marshall Project]
Opinion: Boston bomber cleared from death penalty as district court stands to validate fair trial rights concerning unbiased jurors. [Brennan Center]
#Fuck12: Bold claims lead to feet dragging and distancing from the dirty work of real law enforcement dismantling in Minneapolis. [The New Yorker]
Trapped: Eligible for parole, these inmates are dying of COVID-19 in Florida. 14 out of 63 dead inmates were eligible. [Orlando Sentinel]
Long read: While we’re on the theme of police departments and as shootings swell across the country, it’s worth learning about Baltimorian’s efforts to stop violence and confront the police exacerbating it.
Because of the time Mullen spent in prison on a murder charge, he is what the program calls a “credible messenger,” a community worker who is able to gain trust on the streets to stop violence before it spreads.
“I definitely have a responsibility to make an amends with the community,” Mullen told The Intercept. “I fucked it up so I have a moral duty, you know what I’m saying, to try to give back.”
He gathers information about potential outbreaks of violence and uses his connections to stop the spread of shootings and retribution through mediation.
When Mullen urges someone not to shoot or retaliate for a prior shooting, they might actually listen because of his life experience and the understanding that he won’t involve the police, he explained.
“They could trust that I’m not gonna allow a situation to come back and bite them in the ass,” Mullen said. “They could trust that if me and my crew get them together … [they] ain’t got to bring no weapons.”
Being a credible messenger doesn’t just mean people will listen to you; it also means people will talk to you. You have to know who was responsible for a shooting and why in order to know who might retaliate.
Interrupters are often reluctant to talk about particular mediations in order to maintain this trust, but in a public talk in 2016, Dante Barksdale, the Safe Streets outreach coordinator who hired Mullen back in 2012, described a shooting he came upon. He quickly learned that the beef went back to 2004 when “A” testified against “B.” Both ended up in jail, and when A came home in 2015, B’s brother “C” went to shoot A. C’s gun jammed, and A shot him instead. A few months later, C’s brother, who had no stake in the original beef, shot A. Understanding that 11-year history enabled Barksdale to get in the middle of the conflict and stop it from escalating further.
Having that kind of knowledge sets violence interrupters at odds with the police. Cops would like that information, but they can’t get it from Safe Streets because the program views violence as a public health issue. Mediation is governed by a street-level version of doctor-patient confidentiality. According to Slutkin, for an interrupter to talk to the police would be like a doctor sharing the result of an HIV test with someone other than the patient.
Educate yourself: Efforts to free people in prison and jail to save them from COVID-19 were weak and inadequate and have largely stopped while new outbreaks appear. [Prison Policy Initiative]
COVID-19 resources: State policy changes. News. Bureau of Prisons updates. State court changes. Prison holistic self care and protection.
We want to hear from you about how COVID-19 is impacting you and the people connected to you. What is not being talked about? What story do you have that needs to be heard? Who do you want answers or explanations from? Please reach out to lj@dawsons.us.
The Des drops into your inbox weekly with a collection of small and digestible snippets concerning the criminal justice system. It promises to be humanizing, spunky, and educational. Our name: The Des is short for Desmoterion or “place of chains”, used to describe prisons in ancient Athens. We like the idea of the chains because incarceration expands far beyond bars, connecting all of parts of this country. We are here to cover it all.