Few officers face firing for attacking Americans
The video footage from Sunday is clear: a black protester kneels on the ground, her hands in the air, as a white police officer shoves her face-first into the ground.
Police records show the officer has used force at least a dozen times and brandished his weapon at least 50 times during his four years with the Fort Lauderdale, Florida, police department. He once forced an elementary school student to the floor to handcuff her. Another time, he elbowed a restrained suspect in the stomach.
Despite that history and several videos showing his violent response to the protester on Sunday, Officer Steven Pohorence has not been fired. He has been suspended with pay while the state investigates his actions during the protest.
“We’re getting all kinds of threats to burn down the city until he’s fired,” Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis told USA TODAY Wednesday.
In the protests that erupted across the U.S. following the death of George Floyd, police officers have been caught on video shoving, hitting and ramming their vehicles into protesters. Police fired paint canisters at people standing on their front porch in Minneapolis, knocked over an elderly man with a cane in Salt Lake City and knocked over another elderly man in Buffalo.
Police officers also have been subjected to attacks. They’ve had bottles, bricks, fireworks and Molotov cocktails hurled in their direction. They’ve been shot, stabbed and rammed by cars.
But while those officers have the power to immediately respond and arrest their attackers, protesters who have filmed their violent encounters with police are learning that holding officers accountable when they cross the line is a different story.
City leaders defended officers in Philadelphia who unloaded tear gas on protesters who were pinned up against a highway embankment. There’s been no punishment for the New York Police Department officers who rammed their SUV into a crowd of protesters, or the officer who tore the mask off a protester to pepper spray him.
The result, according to protesters and city leaders, is a troubling moment where police officers are acting with impunity on the streets of America.
“The kind of officers that we’re talking about need to be immediately fired and removed from the department, boldly, quickly and effectively,” said Laurie Cumbo, majority leader of the New York City Council. “Instead, those officers are going to undergo some sort of bizarre and obscure investigation that’s going to take so long that people are not going to be able to follow it.”
In some cases, officers were immediately punished for their actions.
Penalties came swiftly for six police officers in Atlanta who were arrested Tuesday on charges ranging from aggravated battery to criminal damage after they pulled a pair of college students from a car Saturday and shot them with stun guns while the two were caught in protest-related traffic after a city imposed curfew.
Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and police Chief Erika Shields fired two of the officers the next day. The four other officers were placed on administrative leave.
But in Philadelphia, no officers have faced immediate repercussions after video surfaced online of a group of officers firing tear gas at protesters pinned against a high berm along an expressway.
In New York City, multiple officers were accused of abusing protesters, and Mayor Bill de Blasio said those officers will be investigated and punished if they acted improperly. But the mayor held a press conference Tuesday where he sat side-by-side with the city’s police commissioner and repeatedly praised the work of the department.
“An attack on a police officer is an attack on all of us, plain and simple,” de Blasio said.
But when it comes to taking action against the police officer who pushed an elderly man with a cane to the ground during Saturday’s protests, Mendenhall, unlike Bottoms, said it isn’t her place to intervene — at least not now.
After video surfaced of the incident, Salt Lake Police Chief Mike Brown denounced the officer’s actions and said his agency was investigating the incident. The officer, who hasn’t been named, has been reassigned to office duty. The elderly man sustained minor injuries. Officers later stopped to help him up.
Mendenhall called the incident “wholly heartbreaking and inappropriate” and said she called on Brown to investigate right away, but stopped short of urging the chief to immediately fire or seek charges against the officer involved.
In many jurisdictions, police officers – sometimes from other agencies – are responsible for investigating the actions of other police officers.