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| Video stills of Sterling Brown being tasered and handcuffed after parking in a handicap space |
But have you seen the Milwaukee Police Department's body cam footage of police officers getting into an unnecessarily physical confrontation with 23-year-old African-American Milwaukee Bucks player Sterling Brown over a simple parking violation back on January 26th?
If not, click the 'body cam footage' link directly above and listen to the tone and words of the officer's initial contact with the young man.
And remember, it's because his vehicle was illegally parked in a handicap parking space in front of a Walgreen's at 2am in the morning.
Now obviously I can't speak to what everyone might think about a black guy getting thrown to the ground, tasered, handcuffed and taken to jail for a parking violation.
But I'm guessing that most people would agree that parking in a handicapped parking space when you're not legally handicapped is inconsiderate and warrants a ticket - or maybe just a verbal warning if the driver's record is otherwise clean.
After listening to how Milwaukee PD officer Joseph Grams consistently and intentionally attempted to provoke a confrontation with a young man who appears and sounds calm, respectful and remarkably patient throughout the encounter, I was really taken aback by the unprofessionalism and over-inflated ego demonstrated by the individual with the badge and gun.
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| The Milwaukee Walgreens where Sterling Brown was tasered and handcuffed on January 26th |
According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Grams is a former Army Ranger with three years with the MPD, so one would assume he could handle writing a parking ticket on his own.
But no, he called for backup, prompting six (six!) other MPD vehicles to show up to confront one unarmed man in the parking lot of Walgreens in a downtown Milwaukee (pictured above).
Leaving Sterling Brown surrounded by eight MPD officers, two of whom curse at him even though he was never disrespectful to them or raised his voice.
The encounter really went south after one of the officers yelled at Brown to get his hands out of his pockets even though he'd been standing there fairly calmly on a January night.
As if someone keeping their hands inside their coat pockets on a January night in Milwaukee, Wisconsin is "suspicious", "threatening" and made the officers "fear for their personal safety" - (we all know the magic words by now right?)
Part of what's troubling about the encounter is that despite the fact that Sterling Brown remains calm, still and respectful throughout the encounter, there's a disturbing sense that the MPD officers wanted the encounter to end with a physical confrontation.
When Grams' efforts to verbally provoke Brown into doing something that would warrant the use of excessive physical force fail, the officers throw Brown to the ground, shock him with a taser, handcuff him and take him to Milwaukee County Jail.
It's almost as if Grams was somehow less frustrated over the parking violation than over the fact that he wasn't able to get a rise out of Brown.
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| Milwaukee Police Chief Alfonso Morales |
Grams complains about Brown "getting in my face", when the police body cam footage clearly shows that Brown did no such thing.
Now to be fair, there were at least some repercussions for the officers involved.
As the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported, on Thursday new MPD Police Chief Afonso Morales did suspend Grams for two days, and two MPD sergeants who later arrived at the scene, Jeffrey S. Kreuger, Sean A. Mahnke, were also suspended 10 and 15 days for their role in escalating the situation.
But while the suspensions do demonstrate that the MPD held the officers responsible for what Milwaukee Common Council President Ashanti Hamilton called "a very public and embarrassing incident", this incident happened back on January 26th - six days after Trump's inauguration.
Given that the MPD and other city officials have known what was on that officer's body cam footage for three months, why weren't the officers suspended back in January or February?
It's also fair to ask whether the suspensions were simply a response to the growing public outrage over the video showing how Joseph Grams and the other MPD officers handled this incident and treated Sterling Brown.
What if the video had never been made public at all?
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| Derek Williams died handcuffed in the back of a Milwaukee PD cruiser on July 6, 2011 |
Would any of the three officers faced disciplinary action for their conduct?
This incident sheds light on why the Milwaukee Police Department has had such a troubled relationship with the local African-American community since the 1950's.
It puts additional pressure on the MPD as well, as it's new Police Chief Alfonso Morales was sworn in just four months ago in part, to improve the condition of relations between the department and some members of the local community.
Former Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn resigned back in February, in part, over frustrations expressed by local politicians and members of the local community over his handling of a series of controversial killings of civilians by MPD officers.
Many recall Staten Island resident Eric Garner's desperate videotaped pleas of "I cant breathe!" as still-employed NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo held him in an illegal choke hold before Garner died, shocking the world in 2014.
But three years before that on July 6, 2011, a 22-year-old man named Derek Williams (pictured above) also complained to police that he couldn't breathe after being arrested by Milwaukee PD officers Richard Ticcioni and Patrick Coe on suspicion of robbery.
After a brief chase and a struggle, one of the two officers drove his knee into Williams back to subdue him, and he was handcuffed and placed in the back of an MPD cruiser - where he spent 10 minutes telling officers that he was having trouble breathing.
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| Former Milwaukee Police Chief Ed Flynn |
As the officers at the scene ignored him, he insisted, "Believe me!" and "I want an ambulance!"
The MPD officer's response to Williams?
"You're just playing games."
According to court records, officer Ticcioni kept his weight on Williams' back even after he'd been handcuffed.
Williams, who'd been found curled up in a ball hiding under a table in a backyard, had complained to officers Ticcioni and Coe that he was having difficulty breathing from the time he was handcuffed.
He also lost consciousness and his body went limp several times as the officers tried to drag him back to the squad car; sworn witnesses testified hearing Williams complaining about not being able to breathe and officers responding to him to "Shut up."
Williams eventually died inside the back of the squad car at 1:41am, and both the Milwaukee PD and District Attorney subsequently cleared the officers of any wrongdoing.
That was after an autopsy report listed the cause of Williams' death as a "sickle cell crisis" (really).
As Steven Yaccino reported for the New York Times in October, 2012:
"While Mr. Williams carried the sickle cell trait, he did not have the disease. Dr. Lanetta B. Jordan of the Sickle Cell Disease Association of America said people who were only carriers, like Mr. Williams, could not die from sickle cell crisis."
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| MPD officers Jason Bleichwel, Richard Ticcioni and Jeffrey Cline faced no discipline for Willams' death |
Which possibly resulted from one of the two MPD officers driving their knee into Williams' back during the arrest.
Regardless, the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner Dr. Brian L. Peterson insisted that sickle cell crisis was the cause of death.
Though he later changed the manner of death to homicide.
The decision to label Williams death a homicide prompted a second internal investigation of the incident by the MPD, as well as an FBI investigation to determine whether a "pattern and practice" of abuse existed within the department.
In August, 2017, a federal judge ruled that officers Ticcioni, Coe, Jason Bleichwel, Jeffrey Cline and several other MPD officers who'd been at the scene of the arrest in 2011 and all were named in a lawsuit filed against the MPD by Williams' family, would have to face trial.
Williams' death was far from the only controversial killing of a civilian by the Milwaukee PD.
On April 30, 2015, three years after the death of Derek Williams in the back of an MPD squad car, two Milwaukee PD officers responded to a call at Red Arrow Park of a man sleeping.
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| Dontre Hamilton (left) was fatally shot fourteen times by former MPD officer Christopher Manney in 2014 |
They found 31-year-old Dontre Hamilton (pictured left) sleeping in the park, because he was doing nothing wrong or illegal, they left him there after checking on him twice.
As a Wikipedia summary of the incident details, former MPD officer Christopher Manney (pictured left) later came upon Hamilton sleeping and without knowing that two of his fellow officers had already checked on him, began patting the man down.
Hamilton, who was a diagnosed schizophrenic but had no history of violence, awoke and became startled and a physical struggle ensued that ended with Manney firing fourteen shots at Hamilton, killing him.
The investigations that followed the incident had a ring that's now all-too-familiar in America.
As Wikipedia noted, a subsequent investigation of the incident conducted by the Wisconsin Division of Criminal Investigation - but it was lead by two former Milwaukee PD officers.
And a separate investigation conducted by the Milwaukee County DA's office determined that Christopher Manney had acted in self defense, so he was never prosecuted for firing the fourteen shots that killed Dontre Hamilton.
An FBI investigation closed in 2014 after concluding that there was insufficient evidence for the Department of Justice to pursue federal charges against Manney.
Manney was fired from the MPD but was never held legally responsible for Hamilton's death.
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| Michael Bell, 21, shot and killed by police in Kenosha, Wisconsin in 2004 |
The shooting came after Smith fled on foot after a traffic stop.
The officer, Dominique Heaggan-Brown, had 16 separate "use of force" incidents on his record and was himself arrested and charged with sexual assault just two days after fatally shooting Smith.
Despite that, as CNN reported, Heaggan-Brown was found not guilty of first-degree reckless homicide on June 21, 2017.
That was just six days after former Minnesota PD officer Jeronimo Yanez was found not guilty of second-degree manslaughter after he fatally shot elementary school cafeteria manger Philando Castile in 2016.
These kinds of blatant excessive use of force incidents against unarmed civilians aren't just limited to the Milwaukee PD either - in 2004, 21-year-old Michael Bell (pictured above) was unarmed when he was shot and killed in front of his own house in Kenosha, Wisconsin (about an hour outside Milwaukee) while his mother and sister watched in horror from inside.
As NPR reported back in 2014, Bell had been followed home by a Kenosha PD officer who confronted Bell on the lawn of his home after suspecting him of driving under the influence.
A confrontation ensued, and one of the officers mistakenly shouted out that Bell had grabbed his gun and one of the officers fired a fatal shot into Bell's head at point blank range - killing him.
It was later discovered that the officer had gotten his gun holster hooked on the mirror of his police vehicle, both Bell's mother and sister who witnessed the shooting claimed Bell had never attempted to grab the officer's weapon - and Bell's fingerprints were never found on the officer's gun or holster.
After Kenosha police cleared the officer after a 3-day internal investigation conducted without speaking with eyewitnesses, or before crime lab reports had even been completed, the state of Wisconsin changed the laws so that outside agencies must conduct investigations into fatal police shootings.
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| One of the billboards Michael Bell's family has put up in Wisconsin seeking justice for their son |
This was just a brief snapshot of a Milwaukee Police Department that has harbored a culture of racial bias, as well as a culture where the unjustified use of excessive or deadly force by MPD officers has been tolerated for years - as have racial disparities in traffic stops in Milwaukee.
So Sterling Brown's being thrown to the ground, tasered, handcuffed and taken to jail because he parked illegally in front of a Walgreens last January isn't some kind of anomaly or error in judgement.
It's part of a pattern that has allowed MPD officers to take the dignity and lives of unarmed people without justification or reason - aided by a state and local judicial system that consistently fails to hold officers legally accountable for their actions, even when they're in the wrong.
So as disturbing as it is to watch the MPD body cam footage of officer Joseph Grams flagrant unprofessionalism, I hold him less accountable than I do the system that authorizes him to act that way with citizens in the first place.
Whatever he's doing on that tape, it's not serving or protecting.
And now that MPD officers have been caught on tape behaving that way towards an NBA player with the financial resources, name recognition and celebrity to sue the department for their actions, maybe it will serve as an impetus for new MPD Chief Alfonso Morales to fulfill his pledge to change the culture inside the department.
Changes that will come too late for the hundreds, perhaps thousands of Derek Williams, Sylvie Smiths, Dontre Hamiltons, Michael Bells and Sterling Browns who've been unfairly and illegally manhandled by the Milwaukee PD over the decades.
People whose treatment was never caught on video.
American citizens without the name recognition, financial means, social status or education to have their stories come to light in a society with a two-tier justice system which only seems interested in their silence.
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