Bias and Brutality In Bakersfield

19-year-old Tatyana Hargrove: Misidentified, 
beaten & bitten by Bakersfield PD

The reluctance of the mayor of Minnesota, the Minnesota PD and the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) to release more details about the killing of 40-year-old Justine Damond by MPD officer Mohamed Noor on Saturday night has drawn even more global media scrutiny on the epidemic of American law enforcement killing innocent civilians.

The officer is now claiming he was "startled by a loud sound" before shooting and killing Damond.

While we wait for more concrete details to emerge from the city of Minnesota (including why both officer's body cameras were conveniently turned off at the time of the shooting), let's turn our focus west to the city of Bakersfield, California and the disturbing case of a 19-year-old girl named Tatyana Hargrove.

Another case of egregious and unnecessary police violence committed upon an unarmed woman that happened five weeks ago, but only began receiving national media attention after the Bakersfield chapter of the NAACP posted a video of Hargrove describing the incident (including being punched by at least one cop and bitten by a police K-9 dog), in detail on the group's Facebook page.

This is another case of social media driving a story that flew under the radar of mainstream media.

Granted it happened on a Sunday during a summer Father's Day weekend in which the horrific news about the Grenfell Apartment fire in London, a brutal heat wave in the Southwest U.S. and the latest news about Trump's ties to Russia were dominating the headlines here in America.

As CNN reported last Friday, the story really didn't start gaining serious media traction until early last week as the NAACP's Facebook video started racking up millions of views and people began to learn her horrifying account of the encounter that Bakersfield PD officials initially tried to dismiss.

Bakersfield PD officer Chris Moore and Hamer, the
K-9 police dog he unleashed to bite Hargrove

By the time you're reading this, you've likely heard about, read or seen something about Hargrove's story, and the specifics once again shine a spotlight on the reality of racially-biased policing in America.

Part of what's particularly disturbing in this case is that with 3 police cruisers and multiple officers on the scene, Officer Chris Moore instructed his police K-9 dog to attack and bite a lone, unarmed 19-year-old woman on her bike.

A citizen who was not breaking the law at the time she was stopped.

The use of the dog is reminiscent of police sicking dogs on peaceful African-American civil rights protesters in the 1950's and 60's - images which shocked the nation and the world.

Granted, the Bakersfield PD officers were responding to a report of a 5'10" bald black man with a goatee wearing a white shirt who was between 160 - 170 pounds who'd threatened a store employee with a machete.

According to an article published on Tuesday on Bakersfield.com by Harold Pierce, Moore was the officer who initially questioned and tried to detain Hargrove; who asked him why she was being stopped and justifiably asked if he had a warrant to search her backpack before the situation escalated and got physical - so presumably he was the one pointing a weapon at her.

He later claimed to have mistaken Hargrove for the bald man with the goatee because she was black and wearing a white shirt - but she is 5'2", weighs 120 pounds, has hair, no goatee and, obviously, is not a man.

A photo of the K-9 dog bites on Hargrove's leg 

So why didn't Moore, or Officer G. Vasquez, the man who got into some kind of physical tussle on the ground with Hargrove, bother to ask her name and request some ID?

What confuses me is how this escalated so quickly into this violent physical confrontation.

She'd taken a pause on a really hot day to take a drink from her water bottle when they saw her.

Wasn't it obvious she wasn't wielding a machete?

I mean, not to be flippant, but this was a 19-year-old girl who'd biked to a local store to get a Father's Day present for her dad, found the store was closed, and turned around to bike back home.

On Sunday June 18th the temperature in Bakersfield hit a sizzling 105 degrees, so it was probably at least 100 degrees outside when they stopped her - it's not like she was wearing a bulky overcoat that made it seem like she was hiding a machete.

And it doesn't take extensive police work to see that she could't have grown hair, grown 8 inches, shaved off a goatee, put on 40 to 50 pounds and changed sexes from the time they received the police description of the "transient type" who'd pulled the machete.

Hell, the local store owner who'd reported the apparently elusive, bald, machete-wielding transient ran out and told the cops they had the wrong person, but they told him to go back inside the store and kept right on pummeling Hargrove.

Were the Bakersfield cops just cranky and short-tempered because it was so hot outside?

It just seems like a few questions, a measure of common sense, some patience and a little bit of respect might have solved this in a peaceful manner.

Bakersfield PD Chief Lyle Martin

It was only two weeks before the incident that a Stanford University report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences offered clinical evidence showing that American police officers (regardless of race) tend to treat people of color with less respect than whites in identical situations.

Hargrove's treatment certainly bears that out.


But there are some positives to come from this still evolving incident.

In an interview with The Californian Bakersfield PD Chief Lyle Martin did acknowledge some wrongdoing on the part of the officers:

"From the policy and technique standpoint, in my opinion, I think we missed on this one in regards to the use of the K-9," 

And to his credit he did calm some community tensions by having the respect to call Hargrove's parents to personally apologize for the incident:

"I told them that I think we as an organization are better than this, and if we're not better than this, then it's my job to make it better."

Time will tell, as a troubling 2015 report from The Guardian reveals, the Bakersfield PD was considered one of the deadliest in the nation per capita in terms of police killings of civilians.

So in light of that history, it's a positive that Hargrove was not killed - and I know it sucks to say that but it's true given what's taken place in this country between some police and people of color.

The Bakersfield PD have also initiated an internal investigation of the incident, but given their violent history as a police department, it's unlikely anything of consequence is going to come of that.

But you never know.

Minneapolis PD officer Mohamed Noor

Pressure from civilians, legal rights groups and outside organizations including the NAACP for  the officers to be reprimanded and disciplined is growing and a GoFundMe page set up to help Hargrove and her family with legal and hospital costs has already raised over $12,000 in just 7 days from people from around the world.

There's also a Change.org petition demanding that the ludicrous charges that the 5'2" Hargrove assaulted the officers be dropped.

Anyway, be sure to keep an eye on this story, particularly in light of developments in the investigation into the shooting death of 40-year-old Justine Damond by Minneapolis PD officer Mohamed Noor on Saturday night.

Based on the many cases of use of deadly force by police that I've read and written about over the years, to me it's a troublesome sign when the very first comment from a police department about a flagrantly unjustified killing by a police officer is something about what the officer's justification was.

In Moore's case, the Minnesota Bureau of Crime Apprehension is now claiming that a loud noise startled him just before Damond, who'd dialed 911 to report a possible assault, approached the police cruiser in her pajamas and was shot and killed;

(The Daily Mail is reporting that Noor is also being sued by a woman named Teresa Graham for false imprisonment, battery and negligence.)

For the sake of justice, many are hoping that such an admission by BCA officials is not the cornerstone of the same kind of "Oops!" defense that allowed former NYPD officer Peter Liang, (who was found guilty of criminally negligent homicide for shooting and killing unarmed Akai Gurley in the stairwell of the Brooklyn housing complex where he lived) to walk away with five year's probation for taking the life of a man who was simply walking with his girlfriend Melissa Butler.

In light of the recent high-profile deadly shootings of innocent people by Minnesota police officers, if Noor is found responsible for wrongfully killing Justine Damond, let's hope the justice system issues more than a dismissed case, hung jury or probation.

The value of a human life merits more than that.

Minneapolis PD - Bullets Over Common Sense?

Justine Damond, 40, shot & killed by a
Minneapolis cop on Saturday - why?

Well it's been all of 25 days since my last post about the alarming rate of unjustified fatal shootings and use of unnecessary physical force by police officers in Minnesota, and once again members of the Minneapolis Police Department are making global headlines for what appears to be yet another killing of an unarmed civilian.

The latest victim is Justine Damond, a 40-year-old woman from Sydney, Australia who was engaged to be married in August to a Minneapolis man named Don Damond.

When I read Gerry Mullany and Isabella Kwai's article in the New York Times this morning it left me feeling sickened and frustrated.

Not at the thousands of members of Minnesota law enforcement who risk their lives to protect the public in accordance with standards of a code of conduct and a sense of professionalism.


What's upsetting is that despite all the media attention and public outrage generated from multiple officers from various police departments in Minnesota choosing to fire their weapons and use deadly force in instances where it was not justified or necessary, innocent people who are unarmed and not threatening the lives of police officers (or anyone else) are still being killed by those sworn to serve and protect.

Remember, in 2015 multiple witnesses claimed that Jamar Clark had both his hands handcuffed behind his back and was lying face down on the ground after a scuffle with paramedics when one of two Minneapolis PD officers, Mark Ringgenberg and Dustin Schwarze, shot him in the head at point blank range.

Just ten days ago it was announced that the city of St. Anthony, Minnesota had agreed to pay former St. Anthony PD officer Jeronimo Yanez a $48,500 severance package as part an agreement for his having been fired for his role in the highly-publicized fatal shooting of school cafeteria manager Philando Castile in 2016 - one of 13 fatal police shootings in Minnesota in 2016.

While Castile did have a handgun on him when he was stopped for a non-working brake light, it was inside the pocket of his shorts and he politely informed Yanez he had the gun on him before Yanez began firing shots directly into the car 74 seconds after pulling Castile over after misidentifying him as a robbery suspect - the permit for the handgun was also found in his pocket after Yanez had fired seven shots.

Despite the video evidence and audio recordings of the shooting, a mostly-white jury found Yanez not guilty and sadly, it looks like race and ethnicity are going to play a role in the death of Justine Damond as well.

Minneapolis PD officer Mohamed Noor

According to an article from local Twin Cities affiliate KSTP, the officer who pulled the trigger and fired the fatal shots has been tentatively identified as Mohamed Noor - a college graduate who joined the force back in 2015.

As many of you know, for years the Minneapolis area has been home to a large population of Somali-born people who've immigrated to the United States.

Noor is reportedly the first police officer of Somali descent to join the Minneapolis PD.


Frankly, having seen so many instances of race playing a factor in the legal outcome of cases of unjustified police shootings when the victim was African-American, it will be interesting to see how the fact that Noor, who is of African descent, and the civilian he shot and killed was a blond-haired white woman, will impact the investigation.

Don't get me wrong, I've made it clear on this blog that I'm of the belief that all police officers should be held legally responsible in cases where a fatal shooting or beating was not justified - particularly in cases where the victim was innocent.

By all accounts, Damond called 911 around 11:27pm Saturday to report a possible assault in an alley near the home she was in - when the squad car arrived, Noor was in the passenger seat when he pointed his weapon and fired across the driver, officer Matthew Harrity, striking and killing Damond.

Did he mistake the cell phone found near her body for a weapon?

Why fire shots at all if he was still sitting in the car?

Minneapolis PD Chief Janee Harteau & Mayor
Betsy Hodges at a press conference

The circumstances of the case are different but it reminds me of 24-year-old college student Jonathan Ferrell being tasered and shot ten times by Charlotte PD officer Randall Kerrick back in 2014 after Ferrell crashed his car.

He saw Kerrick's squad car arrive and walked towards it thinking he was there to help and ended up dead.

Did Damond see the Harrity and Noor's squad car arrive on Saturday night and walk towards it thinking they were there to help her?


Despite calls from outraged neighbors calling for a federal investigation into the shooting, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has made it abundantly clear that the resources of the Justice Department under Trump will not be used to investigate wrongdoing by local police officers.

So this investigation will be conducted by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and the Minneapolis PD itself.

One question on many people's minds is why officer Noor's police body cam was turned off at the time of the shooting - 600 of the cameras were issued in the wake of the high-profile police shootings that have taken place in Minneapolis since 2012.

What good are those cameras if police officers simply turn them off whenever they want to?

Frankly I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for the Minnesota BCA or the Minneapolis PD to answer that question, their conclusions in cases of unjustified police shootings usually boil down to finding no wrongdoing on the part of officers who choose to use deadly force over common sense.

Whether that trend changes, or a jury feels differently based on the race of both the officer and the victim in this case remains to be seen.

Either outcome could potentially be problematic.

Regardless, Don Damond's son Zach Damond summed up the feelings of millions people about unjustified used of deadly force by police officers both here and around the world when he told reporter's, "This has got to stop. This has got to stop."

Justine Damond, Philando Castile and others deserved better - and members of law enforcement in Minneapolis and around the U.S. need to start holding their professional training and conduct to a higher standard.

The excuse that an officer "feared" for his or her life as a blanket excuse for a bad decision didn't cut it in the case of Philando Castile, and won't cut it in the case of Justine Damond either - yet another death caused by poor decision making and a rush to fire bullets rather than using some common sense.