NAACP asks for federal investigation into 2021 death of Jim Rogers
The national president of the NAACP this week called for a federal investigation into the 2021 death of Jim Rogers after a violent arrest by Pittsburgh police — a move that would not be undertaken lightly or swiftly by the Department of Justice, one expert said.
“Although Mr. Rogers was unarmed and did not appear to pose a threat, Officer [Keith] Edmonds tased Mr. Rogers 10 times,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson wrote in a letter to Kristen Clarke, the Department of Justice’s assistant attorney general for civil rights.
Rogers died Oct. 14, 2021, a day after he fell unconscious in the back of a police cruiser after he was arrested in Bloomfield.
The NAACP Pittsburgh branch called on the national office to seek a federal investigation on Friday — the same day an arbitrator ruled that Officer Edmonds should be reinstated to the bureau of police.
Local president Daylon Davis called the request “a critical step toward ensuring justice and accountability.”
Federal investigations into such incidents are not wholly uncommon, and they can be sparkedby singular incidents. Often, though, DOJ civil rights investigations focus on the overall operations of a police department.
Any moves made by the DOJ, said Bruce Antkowiak, a former federal prosecutor and defense attorney, will be deliberate and will “only happen after they have further discussions with local authorities.”
The day of the incident, Officer Edmonds was dispatched to Harriet Street after someone called 911 to report that a man might have been trying to steal a bicycle from a porch. Some neighbors, however, later would contend the bike was left outside and was free for the taking.
Video released earlier this year by an attorney for Rogers’ family showed the officer’s interactions with Rogers. The interactions at first are tense but nonviolent. Rogers appeared to become flustered, and Officer Edmonds eventually took the 54-year-old to the ground.
Over four minutes, Rogers is struck again and again with Officer Edmonds’ Taser, appearing to become more disoriented and incoherent each time. He tried twice to run away, but he was stunned each time. He otherwise remained sitting or on his hands and knees as the officer issued his demands.
More officers arrived and he was eventually taken into custody. Rogers appeared to be in medical distress as he waited in the back of a police cruiser to be taken to the hospital. It took another 17 minutes before officers began driving.
“While Mr. Rogers struggled to breathe and yelled for help several times, the police chatted to each other,” Mr. Johnson wrote. “The police told him to relax. The police told him that medics were coming to the scene. However, medics never arrived.”
Rogers wasn’t breathing by the time officers reached UPMC Mercy about 45 minutes after the initial police call.
Among the routes the Department of Justice could choose to take is a pattern-orpractice investigation. Those investigations seek to establish just that — whether there is a pattern or practice of civil rights violations within a police department. The DOJ itself notes that while one incident of excessive force doesn’t show a pattern or practice, it “can indicate there is a larger problem in a police department.”
Civil rights attorneys conduct the investigations and look for systemic issues that might be the deeper cause of a single incident or incidents. Part of that investigation involves speaking directly with both community members and police officers.
Pattern or practice investigations don’t assess individual cases, but they can run concurrently to civil rights investigations. For example, the department opened a pattern or practice investigation into the Baltimore Police Department in May 2015, weeks after Freddie Gray suffered a fatal neck fracture in police custody.
“While Mr. Rogers struggled to breathe and yelled for help several times, the police chatted to each other. The police told him to relax. The police told him that medics were coming to the scene. However, medics never arrived.” Derrick Johnson NAACP president
That investigation found the department engaged in a pattern and practice of conduct that violated civil rights and anti-discrimination laws. A few months later, after a separate investigation, the DOJ declined to prosecute officers involved in the events leading up to Gray’s death.
Similarly, in April 2021, the department opened a pattern or practice investigation into the Minneapolis Police Department about a year after the murder of George Floyd. Four officers involved in Floyd’s death were indicted weeks later for federal civil rights violations after a separate investigation.
“The broad context of this is that, yes, the federal government has its own statutes, the federal government has its own jurisdiction,” Mr. Antkowiak said, “but wherever possible, the federal government would like to defer to the states to handle their own issues in-house if that’s possible.”
He said the federal government is unlikely to jump into a matter unless there’s “an obvious indication that the system is either incapable or unwilling to give serious review of a matter” that could be a civil rights violation.
In Pittsburgh, Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. has not filed criminal charges against Officer Edmonds or any others involved in Rogers’ arrest. A grand jury that heard the matter did not recommend charges.
The bottom line, Mr. Antkowiak said, is that the DOJ will give a large degree of leverage to local jurisdictions.
“When they find out that the local jurisdiction has used their own grand jury … and they’re satisfied that people are looking at it seriously, they give them deference,” he said.
Indeed, the DOJ notes that, generally speaking, federal prosecutions can be declined for multiple reasons, including “situations in which a person is subject to prosecution in another jurisdiction or another adequate alternative to prosecution is available.”
The department often cites insufficient evidence or lack of criminal intent when it declines to prosecute civil rights cases, like it did in the case of Gray, Tamir Rice, Alton Sterling, and Jacob Blake.
That was also the case in 1999 when the department declined to file civil rights charges against the officers involved in the 1995 death of Jonny Gammage in the South Hills.
Gammage, a 31-year-old unarmed Black man and cousin of then-Steeler lineman Ray Seals, died after a fight with five suburban officers from Brentwood, Baldwin and Whitehall during a traffic stop. An autopsy determined he suffocated after pressure was applied to his neck and chest.
The Justice Department indicated it wouldn’t file charges against the officers because it couldn’t prove they’d used unreasonable force to subdue Gammage.
The department similarly declined to file charges in the 2010 case of Jordan Miles, a Black teenager who was stopped by plainclothes police officers as he walked to his grandmother’s house. Officers said they saw a bulge in the teen’s pocket, thought it was a gun and ordered him to stop.
Mr. Miles, though, said the men did not identify themselves and instead demanded money, drugs and guns and the proceeded to beat him when he tried to run. The officers said they used only enough force to subdue Mr. Miles. The city settled a civil lawsuit brought by Mr. Miles in 2016 for $125,000.
Pittsburgh has a relatively unique place in the history of DOJ civil rights investigations: It was the first city with which the U.S. government entered into a consent decree. Consent decrees are essentially performance improvement plans that can be enforced legally by the DOJ, and entering into one is not an admission of wrongdoing.
In 1997, the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police entered into a consent decree meant to provide “new and enhanced measures for operating and managing the city’s police force,” according to the Feb. 26, 1997, release from the DOJ.
The department began looking into Pittsburgh police practices a year prior “after receiving complaints from citizens and community groups.” The complaints related to use of force, arrests and alleged Fourth Amendment violations.