San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Videos putting spotlight on violent police tactics
Police in riot gear were marching across a mostly empty plaza in Buffalo when two officers shoved a lone 75-year-old man who stood in their way.
He fell to the ground and hit his head on the concrete. Officers marched past him as he lay motionless and bleeding from an ear.
The city suspended the two officers after video of the incident spread around the world.
Then, on Friday, the Buffalo Police Department’s entire riot control team — 57 officers — quit the unit.
Not to protest their colleagues’ use of force. To protest the city for suspending them.
“These guys did nothing but do what they were ordered to do,” police union president John Evans said in a statement, referring to their directive to clear the plaza. “This is disgusting.”
The two officers were charged Saturday with felony assault.
Aaron Torgalski, 39, and Robert McCabe, 32, pleaded not guilty and were released on personal recognizance.
The incident involving police responding to demonstrations in Buffalo is one of many caught on video in recent days displaying police riot tactics — the use of batons, rubber bullets, tear gas and shields to move people out of the way.
Such violent interactions have been viewed by police as necessary to do their job, age-old approaches to dealing with unruly gatherings. But they also have fueled what began as a local outcry over a police killing in Minneapolis into a swelling national protest against police brutality.
Now, both police and protesters believe a steady stream of new videos revealing the confrontations has brought about a turning point and a question: Are these the tactics U.S. police should be using?
Even among police leaders, there’s a sense that these incidents — and, in some cases, misleading official accounts given before the videos emerged — could do lasting damage to the image of U.S. police, most of whom never have been involved in violent encounters with anyone.
“We certainly, as a profession, have been diminished by events that have been witnessed on video over the course of the last couple of weeks,” said Jim Pasco, executive director of the national Fraternal Order of Police, a labor union. “And the burden is on us to re-establish and build a relationship with the community. We can’t do our job without the community. So the burden is on us going forward.”
The attention to policing is hauntingly familiar.
After Michael Brown was shot to death by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014, the nation focused on whether police departments had become overmilitarized. Across the country, policymakers debated and often enacted new training protocols aimed at de-escalating interactions between police and the public.
For long-time advocates against police brutality, the recent videos have provided a sense that — finally — the country could see what it already knew: Brutal tactics still are in use.
“I don’t know if ‘vindicated’ is the right word. I do feel like my words are resonating with people more than they did before, with a more diverse group of people than before,” said Lezley McSpadden, Brown’s mother. “Even friends of mine who are different races are saying: ‘Oh, I see it now. I’m sorry. I wish I would have aligned myself with you then.’”
Change in public opinion
A new ABC News/Ipsos poll shows a striking change in public opinion from the time of Brown’s death.
In 2014, 43 percent of Americans saw his killing as a sign of broader problems in how police treat African-Americans. After the death of George Floyd — the Minneapolis man who stopped breathing after a police officer knelt on his neck for more than eight minutes — the figure is 74 percent.
Since the protests began in Minneapolis last month, there have been demonstrations in hundreds of cities and towns. The vast majority have been peaceful, but in some cases there have been looting, vandalism and attacks on police.
In several cases, officers have been shot or hit with cars. In others, officers and police vehicles have been pelted with water bottles, rocks or Molotov cocktails.
“I’ve been in law enforcement 43 years, and I’ve never seen it this bad. And I certainly understand the anger and frustration out there. But I’ve never seen this much violence,” said Steven Casstevens, the head of the International Association of Chiefs of Police.
But, Casstevens said, some officers’ actions now risk tainting public views of all police. “No matter how bad the situation is, we have to be the professionals out there.”
The scale of the use of force is illustrated vividly on Twitter, in postings by lawyer Greg Doucette of Durham, N.C. He began collecting videos of police use of force from Minneapolis, numbering them and connecting them so readers could see it wasn’t just one police officer or one time.
He started with 10. Then the list grew, with videos from cities all over the country.
“It’s the brazenness of it,” Doucette said, explaining what strikes him about the videos. “It’s weird to see it so often, in so many places, all just within the past week. And it’s all on camera. It’s not like they don’t know they’re being recorded. … They’re doing it anyway.”
“I’ve always been cynical. Apparently, not cynical enough,” he said Friday after he posted video No. 310.
Multiple videos
In Philadelphia on Friday, a high-ranking police officer was taken off street duty after videos emerged of him beating protesters earlier in the week.
A video widely circulated on social media shows the officer striking a protester in the head with his baton Monday and another officer holding the man’s head to the ground with his knee.
The victim, 21-year-old
college student Evan Gorski, was charged with assaulting a police officer. He was released Wednesday after prosecutors reviewed the video.
Gorski was hospitalized and required staples to the back of his head, said his lawyer, Jonathan Fineberg.
Fineberg is collecting evidence to file a lawsuit against the Philadelphia Police Department.
“I’m deeply concerned about what appears to be brazen misconduct. … This raises in my mind concern about this officer’s history. If you act this way in front of so many people, it tells me that you’re used to getting away with it,” he said.
That same officer appears to have been filmed again beating a protester Tuesday.
Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said there are “several concurrent internal affairs investigations underway.”
On Friday, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, a Democrat, said he was charging the officer who hit Gorski, Staff Inspector Joseph Bologna, with aggravated assault.
Videos showed police in New York hitting demonstrators with batons in several locations over the past few days. One of those struck was Huascar Benoit, 21, who said he was peacefully protesting in Brooklyn when a police officer hit him with a baton, fracturing bones in his face, injuries that might require surgery.
The lead-up to the blow was captured on video: Benoit’s video shows officers in riot gear charging toward him. Another video captured the aftermath: Benoit slumped on the sidewalk, bloodied and disoriented. At one point, he spits out blood.
He felt “like half of my face was missing,” he said. “All I felt was blood dripping down.”
New York’s police review board has received 633 grievances in the past week, officials said. By comparison, 533 complaints were filed for the entire month of April, according to the most recent data publicly available.
Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, and Police Commissioner Dermot Shea have vowed to investigate all allegations of improper police action reported during the protests. Some could result in disciplinary actions against the officers, officials have said.
In Benoit’s case, a police spokeswoman said officials were aware of the video and that the incident was under internal review. She declined to comment further.
Last week, some cities and states already had changed their policies for tracking and limiting police use of force.
Minneapolis banned police from putting arrestees in chokeholds and required officers to try to stop any colleague who is using improper force. In Philadelphia, officers were ordered to report any use of force via radio immediately after an incident, rather than filing a paper report after the fact, according to a memo obtained by news outlets WHYY and Billy Penn.
A group of about 50 protesters gathered Friday in Buffalo at the place where the 75-year-old man fell after being shoved by police.
It was a symbol of the multiplying nature of these protests: A spot that had been utterly unremarkable a day earlier now was a center of a new outrage.
“This is not going to stop,” said Marina Akaic, one of the marchers. “You want us to go home, but you’re not hearing us.”