Reaction to police overreaction

by Ed Felien

Some cops overreact some of the timae. Not all cops. And even the cops that overreact don’t overreact all the time. But sometimes, whether it’s too much adrenaline, or too much testosterone added to a tense situation, or an unhappy childhood, something ignites them, and some cops just go off!

Being a cop is a tough job. A city hires you to deal with people most citizens wouldn’t want to meet. Cops call it taking out the garbage. They have to clean up the pimps, prostitutes, drug dealers and domestics. They have to get that garbage off the streets so good citizens won’t have to deal with it.

Cops overreact when they’re threatened. They like to be in complete control of the situation, and they believe they have to be ready to bring overwhelming force into the equation to maintain that control.

Two things can make a cop feel like a situation is getting out of control: in a crowd situation like a political demonstration, where police forces are outnumbered, and one-on-one in dealing with people of color.

One of the more famous local incidents of police overreaction to a demonstration was many years ago, when an officer jabbed his nightstick into a demonstrator’s chest. The demonstrator was wearing a Nixon mask, which must have inflamed the officer. The demonstrator was a woman, a longtime peace activist. She was seriously injured. She sued for damages and won, and the Minneapolis police were kept on a shorter leash.

Congressman Don Fraser saw his daughter Mary lifted off the ground by an officer’s nightstick in a photo of an anti-war demonstration that appeared in the paper in 1972. That was enough for him to insure the hiring of Tony Bouza as a demonstrator-friendly Chief of Police when he became mayor.

Tony Bouza was a very different Chief of Police. He served coffee and pastries to demonstrators at the annual Honeywell anti-personnel bomb protests as he gaily and gently arrested his wife Erica and others who committed civil disobedience. This was quite a change from the usual thumping we had come to expect.
Since Tony’s tenure, relations between the peace movement and the police have been civil and correct, if not cordial.

But relations between the police and communities of color seem to have grown more antagonistic. Some police are quick to use deadly force when dealing with a person of color, and the thin blue line of police solidarity protects an offending officer even when the victim is a fellow officer.

Two of the more sensational recent charges of police overreaction and brutality suggest the same outlines and the same result.

When Philander Jenkins was arrested by Officer Jeffrey Jindra on suspicion of robbery, Jindra shattered Jenkins’ jaw during the arrest. When Jenkins was finally given medical attention it took surgeons five pieces of metal to put the jaw back together. He was released for lack of evidence; then, after bringing a civil lawsuit against the police, he was re-arrested, thrown in the County Jail and, allegedly, sodomized by Hennepin County Deputies using a toilet plunger.

Washington County Attorney, Doug Johnson, investigating the possibility of criminal sexual assault charges being filed against the Hennepin County deputies, said the evidence was inconclusive. A rectal swab indicated “no semen” present. But Jenkins never said the assault involved penile penetration. He said he was assaulted with a solid object like a stick. Jenkins claims he used tissues to stop the bleeding and gave those tissues to the medical staff at the Hennepin County Medical Center. They cannot be found. Did they ever exist? Were they “lost”? Two inmates say they saw deputies enter Philander’s cell and described hearing the beating and assault. They say they heard Philander say, “Stop pulling down my pants.” and, “Get your hands away from there.”

A civil suit is being filed against Hennepin County by Jenkins.

Stephen Porter was arrested in a drug raid in North Minneapolis. He claims that during the raid Officers Jeffrey Jindra and Todd Babekuhl sodomized him with a toilet plunger. The case was turned over to the United States Department of Justice and the DOJ declined to prosecute. Does that mean there wasn’t sufficient evidence, or does it mean the case didn’t have national significance?

On June 6, Chief William McManus held a news conference to announce the DOJ’s decision not to prosecute, and the Star Tribune reported the event as though it meant Jindra and Babekuhl were declared innocent. It meant no such thing. It merely meant that the DOJ didn’t want to prosecute the police.

It should be remembered that last October, the DOJ declined to prosecute Officer Jindra for beating the 14-year-old grandson of civil rights icon Matt Little. Though there was no criminal prosecution of Officer Jindra, a civil suit against him and the City is moving toward a settlement. Friends say their lawyer, David Shulman, claims it is “getting settled nicely.” O. J. Simpson escaped judgment in the criminal court but had to pay heavily under the more lenient burden of proof in civil court.

Officer Jeffrey Jindra seems to cause a lot of grief for the City of Minneapolis. “To protect and serve” seems to mean to him “search and destroy.”

The case of Stephen Porter is puzzling and pathetic. Even his strongest supporters admit he is dysfunctional and drug-addicted. His mother was killed in front of him when he was a child. Neighbors complain he runs a drug house that makes the neighborhood violent and unsafe for children. After being released from custody he was seen walking perfectly normally, but at his press conference he entered walking with a severe limp on one leg and left with the limp on the other leg. Supporters still believe his story. Chris Nisan, longtime activist and organizer of Community to Prosecute the Police, says rape of black men by the police is much more common than is generally believed. Most black men won’t report it because of notions of “black manhood.” He said he has friends who were victimized in that manner and the matter was never reported. He is upset that most media have ignored the other instances of police violence during the raid and focused solely on Porter. He was called to take Joseph White, 26, to the hospital to be treated for cracked vertebrae as a result of police violence at the same incident.

Other cases of police violence are even more troubling.

On August 6, 2003, at almost midnight, Walter C. Burks walked into the SuperAmerica convenience store on West Grant Street in downtown Minneapolis, without a shirt, and told the clerk, “Help me. Help me. I need help.” His mother had just died, and he believed he was about to die. He was probably high on crack cocaine. He came behind the counter. The clerks subdued him. One of them had her knees on him with one of his arms behind his back. Police were called. Officers Michael Morales (a trained crisis intervention specialist) and John Hokanson responded. Even though Burks was sweating profusely, incoherent and unable to move, the officers treated him as a dangerous suspect resisting arrest. They sprayed him with a chemical irritant (probably Freeze Plus P), handcuffed him behind his back, pulled him to his feet, dragged him out the door. He fell. They picked him up. Shot him twice with a M26 Taser gun, folded him faace down into the squad car with his feet up, similar to a hog-tied position. He was in that position for 17 or 18 minutes while the officers went back into the store to talk to the clerks. They took Burks to Hennepin County Medical Center’s Crisis Intervention Center. By the time a nurse was able to check his vital signs, Walter Burks was dead. A complete analysis of the death of Walter C. Burks is available on the Communities United Against Police Brutality’s website: www.cuapb.org (click on Reports and Documents). Michelle Gross of CUAPB says the police are guilty of negligent manslaughter in the death of Burks. It would be interesting to compare the death of Burks to the deaths of Iraqis held in custody by the U. S. Army, CIA professionals and civilian contractors/mercenaries. It is possible that an objective source might think they were all tortured to death.

MPD spokesman Ron Reier told the media that Burks had been assaultive, but this is not borne out by the facts in the case. Reier also said neither of the officers had ever had any citizen complaints filed against them. This was not true. Five complaints have been filed against Hokanson and two against Morales.

Since then at least three other men have died under similar circumstances while in MPD custody. Michelle Gross says, “In most of these cases, the individuals were ‘acting erratically’ or showing signs of mental illness prior to their encounter with police. None of these individuals was armed or engaged in violent behavior.”
Most recently, according to Gross, “James A. Cobb, 42, was reportedly walking bare-chested down the middle of Mounds Blvd. in St. Paul, yelling and acting erratically. Five St. Paul police officers arrived and responded by spraying him with a chemical irritant, Tasering him, and beating him with their nightsticks. Once he was handcuffed, he collapsed and died.”

CUAPB has raised the issues of Freeze Plus P and positional restraints with Chief McManus, but the Chief has not responded to those concerns. They are also concerned that MPD is now going to follow the example of St. Paul and conduct their own investigations of police brutality in their Internal Affairs Unit, rather than even pretend to objectivity with an outside investigation.