The quickest way to lose public sympathy in the case of an alleged unprovoked police beating is to utter phrases like one heard during the Chattanooga City Council meeting Tuesday.
If the community can’t get justice in the council or in the courts, said activist Marie Mott, “we’ll rise up and get justice in the streets.”
Such a “bomb-throwing” phrase got the attention she no doubt sought when she made it, but she also likely lost many other citizens who are wary of rogue cops but have never believed the answer to one kind of violence is another kind of violence.
This case involved a March 2018 incident in which Chattanooga Officer Benjamin Piazza is shown on dashcam and body-camera video punching and cursing motorist Fredrico Wolfe.
It’s difficult to watch the video without thinking whatever the suspect did – tossing a bag of drugs out his window after the stop is among the allegations – warranted the blows and the berating he received.
Wolfe never filed a complaint over the incident, and the video did not surface until just over a week ago. When the Times Free Press published the video, Chattanooga Police Chief David Roddy immediately suspended Piazza with pay and promised an investigation.
Further, as Councilwoman Carol Berz noted in Tuesday’s meeting, two other officers were present at the incident, but nothing came of it.
“That bothers me,” she said.
When the national rush to equip more patrol cars with dashcam video and officers with body-camera video came after the Michael Brown incident in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, we were all for it. It would, we felt, both exonerate officers falsely accused – as in the Brown case – but also single out the “bad eggs” who are excessively violent, blatantly racist or repeatedly inconsistent.
We acknowledged at the time the difficulty with reviewing hours of police video but hoped any questionable or controversial incidents would be promptly examined.
For whatever reason, the 2018 incident apparently was not (no one apparently thought it merited a review), and no internal investigation was requested before the video was aired.
Now, with statements like Mott’s and a lack of understanding by at least two council members about due process for the officer, Piazza stands to look like a victim.
Given the history of internal complaints about him, we don’t believe he is one. But he has civil service protection and is legally entitled to a hearing.
A statement by a councilwoman that by “not firing him, we’re condoning that behavior” and a question by a councilman about whether the council could fire him or charge him showed, instead of the outrage intended, only a lack of understanding about the process.
The matter the next day was forwarded by Hamilton County District Attorney Neal Pinkston to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation for consideration. On Wednesday, Pinkston dropped the charges against the motorist.
The U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, similarly, are looking into a Dec. 3 incident in East Ridge in which a Hamilton County Sheriff’s Department detective is seen on amateur video punching and kicking a man on the ground while handcuffed after being arrested on an outstanding warrant.
The man, Charles Toney Jr., some of whose charges were subsequently dismissed, said officers approached him with guns drawn, identified him by his rapper name, “Interstate Tax,” and Officer Blake Kilpatrick began punching him. He denied police charges that he discarded a marijuana cigar as officers came up and that he spit on them.
The video of the outside incident, which was shot from inside a house, is not a complete record of what happened. But, as with Wolfe, it’s difficult to watch and believe repeated punches were needed to subdue a man on the ground and in handcuffs.
And Kilpatrick, like Piazza, had previous incidents on his record alleging improper violent behavior.
Only three months before the December episode, a federal complaint was filed against Hamilton County officers, as well as those in Fort Oglethorpe and Catoosa County, over a March 2017 incident that crossed two counties and left a man who failed to stop for a traffic violation with a ruptured testicle.
After the man was stopped in Georgia and subsequently cuffed, he was given multiple elbow strikes and “slammed down onto the trunk” of the patrol unit in a search for contraband, officers said. An internal investigation concluded Hamilton County deputies were “acting out verbally” [cursing and threatening]” during the incident.
Neither of the last two incidents, to our knowledge, had police body-camera video footage, which is perhaps why NAACP representatives last week called for Hamilton County commissioners to fund Hamilton County sheriff’s deputies with $240,000 in body cameras.
It’s become a cliche to say that 99 percent of area police personnel are outstanding representatives for their departments and are only trying to do the right thing. But when the 1 percent act untoward, it gives the rest a bad name and an undeserved reputation.
Reasonable people understand, though, that the 1 percent need rooting out – quickly but properly. And they don’t need a threat of “justice in the streets” to make sure they understand.