‘Rough rides’ in police vans slow to end

Unsavory practice meant as payback

BALTIMORE — The charges against six police officers in the death of Freddie Gray echo what some say is an old and unsavory police practice in this city, and others: the rough ride.

It’s a brand of street payback that some say is handed out by officers angry at a suspect who ran or fought arrest or otherwise crossed their line: Someone is handcuffed, put in the back of the police van and taken on a wild, careening ride on the way to jail, so he or she bounces around in the back.

Mr. Gray, 24, who was arrested after he caught the eye of an officer and ran, suffered a severe spinal injury while on the floor of the van, where he was handcuffed and in leg restraints, according to the charges.

Baltimore police have already said Mr. Gray should have been placed in restraints, and that officers failed to respond to his repeated pleas for medical assistance.

So far, no evidence has emerged that the van’s driver, Officer Caesar Goodson Jr., was driving aggressively in order to deliberately hurt Mr. Gray. But the most severe charge, of second-degree murder, was brought against Officer Goodson, who allegedly stopped the van to check on Mr. Gray’s condition — but got back in the driver’s seat after failing to get Mr. Gray any help or to belt him in.

Police experts and Baltimore residents say the practice of a “rough ride” is not all that common now — but it apparently still exists, according to recent court cases, and not just in Baltimore. One Baltimore woman said city police took her on a wild ride after a 2012 noise complaint at her home turned into an arrest on suspicion of disorderly conduct.

“Very fast, wide turns, braking short — they were doing everything they could to make the ride as bumpy and chaotic as possible,” said Christine Abbott, 27, a Johns Hopkins University librarian, who has filed a federal lawsuit against the city. “It was really scary,” she said, adding that she was handcuffed behind her back and not belted in. “I couldn’t do anything. I was just sliding around in there.”

Lawyers for the officers give a different account, saying Ms. Abbott was not abused in any way. Ms. Abbott said she was left shaken and bruised, but others have been hurt much more seriously.

Dondi Johnson Sr., arrested in 2005 on suspicion of urinating in public, wound up with quadriplegia after he was “violently thrown around” in the back of a police wagon in a deliberately aggressive ride, court papers say. A jury awarded him $7.4 million in a verdict against the city, later reduced because of a state law capping settlements.

In Philadelphia, where the practice is called “the nickel ride,” harkening to 5cent carnival rides, a man named James McKenna, who tangled with an off-duty officer in a bar, was awarded $490,000 after he suffered a broken neck. Before he got into the van, Mr. McKenna said he heard the cop tell the driver to “[mess] him up.”

The trip took 20 minutes to go 1.12 miles. “At 2 in the morning,” said Mr. McKenna’s lawyer, Tom Gibbons. “Very sudden stops, very wide turns — he’s being thrown all over the van.”

Geoffrey Alpert, a University of South Carolina professor and an expert in police practices, said he used to hear it called the “screen test,” for the sudden braking that sent a backseat suspect’s face into a metal barrier. He said it’s been one tradition that has proven hard to stamp out.

“It was a way to punish them without really putting your hands on them,” he said. “It’s a bad practice.”