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.

Little Gold Statues & Lots of Gun Deaths

Oprah reacts to being mistaken for Whoopi

It wasn't really my plan to "boycott" the Oscars last night.

The idea of black Hollywood heavyweights who are privileged enough to be able to attend the American film industry's premiere awards event staying away struck me as counterproductive to the goal of increasing diversity in the industry - and not supportive of host Chris Rock.

After Website Total Beauty posted a photo of Whoopi Goldberg on the red carpet and confused her with Oprah Winfrey, my guess is Oprah is glad she decided to stay home to watch the Oscars with best friend Gayle King.

Oprah's facial reaction posted online is priceless. Total Beauty? Total ****up.

For me personally, after a long day at work on Saturday, I just didn't feel a particular need to spend 4 hours on a Sunday evening watching an industry awards show.

Instead I opted for periodic updates on the New York Times mobile app as the winners were announced while I caught up on some reading - Russ Belville's Huffington Post blog about the rather sketchy math behind Hillary Clinton's sweeping up Democratic "Superdelegates" in the primaries was quite illuminating.

As for the Oscars, there's been so much discussion, so much written about the Academy's failure to nominate the work of a single non-white performer in the past month that I was kind of worn out from it by the time the actual ceremony came around.

The way I see it, it's 2016, either Hollywood is going to get it, or they won't - either they want to be culturally relevant to an increasingly diverse global film audience, or they don't.

Frankly I'm more interested in seeing how the film industry decides to begin to develop concrete ways to incorporate a wider diversity in terms of casting in front of the camera, hiring in positions behind the camera and in the executive suite - and the kinds of stories that make it through the arduous approval-production process to be made into the kinds of mainstream films that benefit from the extensive marketing campaigns, global theatrical distribution and organized awards campaigns that major studios can bankroll. 

As much as I love film, I guess I just wasn't in a celebratory mood on Sunday.

Chicago memorial for 5 people (including an infant) shot & killed

Even with the extra Leap Year day (thanks to Julius Caesar in 46 B.C.), February is a short month, but it's been a long one in terms of gun violence in this country.

The two recent mass shootings in Kalamazoo, Michigan by 45-year-old Uber driver Jason Dalton (who shot eight people and killed six), and last Thursday in the small Kansas town of Hesston where Cedric Ford killed three people and injured fourteen before taking his own life, were just two of an astounding 36 mass shootings that have taken place in the United States in 2016.

According to stats tracked by the non-profit GunViolenceArchive.org, there have been 2,011 gun deaths in the U.S. this year, including 82 children 11-years-old or younger and 438 teenagers between the ages of 12 to 17 killed - 520 kids in two months.

Out of an estimated 7,777 gun-related incidents through January and February, there were approximately 233 defensive uses of a gun.

There have also been an estimated 766 officer-involved shootings in 2016.

Have you seen the comprehensive LA Times report covering each of the victims killed by police in Los Angeles since 2000?

Those, including New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who've been quick to demonize and dismiss the Black Lives Matters protest movement against excessive use of force by police should take some time and go through the LA Times article; not all of those homicide victims of LA cops were angels, some were innocent.

Many, you have to wonder why they were shot at all - a question that needs to be asked equally of gang members, perpetrators of mass shootings as well as cops prone to use of excessive force.

Ex NYPD officer Peter Liang

I can't honestly recall ever having seen such widespread protests by members of the Chinese-American community as I have in the past few weeks as thousands of people in various cities across the U.S. have  expressed outrage over the recent conviction of former NYPD police officer Peter Liang for manslaughter in the shooting death of Akai Gurley in the stairwell of a Brooklyn housing project building in 2015.

On one hand I think members of the Chinese-American community have a right to be upset over the fact that a scared rookie cop born in Hong Kong gets manslaughter for mistakenly firing his weapon in a dark stairwell and killing Gurley; though he must face responsibility for his actions.

While NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo was caught on videotape intentionally using an illegal choke hold on Eric Garner as the man pleaded for his life - not only did Pantaleo face no charges  thanks to a Staten Island grand jury, he's still on paid duty as we speak.

Liang was fired from the NYPD.

And as I've blogged about before, Pantaleo has a history of excessive force and racial bias while on duty - interesting that a rookie Asian-America cop catches the manslaughter charge while the Italian-American cop walks. And two more unarmed Africa-American men are dead.

Granted, it didn't help Liang that he stepped around Gurley's body after shooting him, refused to offer medical aid, then used his phone to call his police union rep rather than call an ambulance.

As Chris Rock observed during the Oscar ceremony, there are some things that happen (or have happened) in this world that make the Academy best acting nomination snubs seem trivial.

But I think the Oscar protests that were taking place down the street from the ceremony last night, and the recent protests by Chinese-Americans over Peter Liang being found guilty of manslaughter for shooting an innocent man walking down the steps with his girlfriend are both linked with the larger Black Lives Matter protests.

Some are about professional snubs, some are about life and death, but they're all related to the wrinkles and tears in the cultural fabric in this nation.

And they're certainly more important than a little gold statue.

"Accidents" and Rookie Cops

2014 NYPD rookie graduates swearing their oaths at Madison 
Square Garden

It's not easy for civilians to imagine what's going inside the mind of a rookie police officer.

You're new on the job, fresh from the academy, trying to impress your more experienced peers and superiors while learning the ins and outs of a highly stressful occupation.

Surely you must be mindful of the immense power to enforce the law.


A power manifested in that gun on your hip.

When do you draw it from your holster? Who do you use it on and why?

I guess many civilians like myself who've grown up watching movies and television shows tend to imagine police bravely exchanging shots with sinister bad guys who've just robbed a bank, assaulted an innocent victim, or are fleeing from the scene of a grisly murder.

Do rookie cops imagine themselves doing that too? Do some of them secretly look forward to doing that?

There were two different instances of the use of deadly police force this week that make me wonder.

If you're reading this you've most likely heard about 28 year-old Akai Gurley, an innocent, unarmed African-American who was shot and killed late last Thursday night.

The father of a two year-old daughter was shot in the chest by 27 year-old rookie NYPD officer Peter Liang in the darkened stairwell of an eight story building located in the Louis Pink housing projects, comprised of 22 different eight-story buildings set on 31.1 acres in East Brooklyn, New York.

The Brooklyn housing project where Akai Gurley was 
shot and killed Thursday night

The East Brooklyn precinct is considered a high crime area with a mostly black population, but that doesn't mean everyone who lives there is a criminal.

What's disturbing about this incident is that officer Liang, who had his gun and a flashlight drawn in a dark stairwell, wasn't physically threatened. He wasn't in pursuit of a suspect.

He never warned Akai Gurely and never even announced that he was a police officer.

Gurley and his girlfriend Melissa Butler opened the door to the stairwell and Liang, 12 feet away, just fired a single shot from his gun. As an article by Wilson Dizard on Al-Jazeera.com reported:

“The cop didn’t present himself, he just shot him in the chest,” a distraught, tearful Butler told The New York Times. Butler stayed with her boyfriend until the two rookie cops, continuing down the stairs, reached them moments later. Neighbors and the officers called for an ambulance. Doctors at Brookedale hospital pronounced Gurley dead at about 11:55 p.m.

Thus a man's life was taken seven days before Thanksgiving.

Bill Bratton, the commissioner of the NYPD was quick to call it an accident even though no official investigation has taken place; was it an accident?

If Liang was frightened and inexperienced, what was he doing patrolling a high-crime area with partner Sean Landau, also allegedly an inexperienced rookie, instead of with a veteran officer?

Gurley and his girlfriend were taking the stairs down because the elevator was notoriously slow; why were the lights out in the stairwell of an apartment building owned by the city housing authority?

Especially one named after Louis Heaton Pink, an altruistic businessman and humanitarian born in 1882 who fought to forge a public-private partnership to eliminate city slums.

It was Pink who laid out the plan and introduced a bill that led to the founding of the New York City Housing Authority; and I wonder what he would think about the stairwells being unlit in a public housing apartment building that bears his name?

If we consider all these different factors, can Gurley's death really be dismissed as an accident?

On Saturday afternoon, the anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's assassination in Dallas in 1963, there was an "accident" in Cleveland, Ohio involving a 12 year-old African-American boy.

Cleveland park where police killed a 12 year-old boy on Saturday.

According to an article on Cleveland.com Someone called 911 to report a man with a gun in a park/recreation area on the West side of Cleveland (pictured left).

When a rookie police officer and a fifteen-year veteran officer pulled up to the park and saw a group of people under a pavillion, a 12 year-old boy took a gun off a table and tucked it into his pants.

The rookie officer got out of the car and ordered the boy to drop the gun, the boy reached for it, which he had to do in order to actually comply with the officer's order to drop it.

The officer didn't wait to see if the 12 year-old boy would comply, instead he fired two shots; one of which struck him in the stomach.

Turns out the gun was a BB gun with an orange sticker scraped off that ID's it as a fake weapon.

The boy was taken to the hospital and later died from his wounds. The Cleveland police officers involved have both been placed on administrative leave pending an investigation. 

There's no question it was impossible for the two officers to have known the gun wasn't real, or that the person wielding it was only 12 years-old; but they must have known that their department is already under investigation by the Department of Justice for habitual excessive use of force. 

Cleveland PD Chief Calvin Williams

In all fairness the officers were probably already on edge after a Saturday morning press conference just hours before by Cleveland police chief Calving Williams who announced the tragic news that a 41 year-old mother, her unborn child, a 60 year-old man, a 19 year-old man and a 17 year-old woman were all shot and killed in a home late Friday night by an unknown assailant or assailants.

A 9 year-old girl was wounded but survived and there's no question that the community (not just the Cleveland community) needs to be as outraged.

In the same way they should be about the unknown assailant killing five people and wounding one as they are about a 12 year-old boy being shot in a park by a cop.

The rookie officer had to have been thinking about that incident when he and his partner responded to the 911 call about someone wielding a gun in a park.

Was his shooting of the 12 year-old boy an "accident"? Or the tragic result of a series of incidents and factors that can't possibly be simply chalked up to any one identifiable "thing" we can point to?

As the nation and the world anxiously await the soon-to-be announced decision of a grand jury in Missouri on whether or not to charge officer Darren Wilson with the death of black teenager Michael Brown, the incidents in East Brooklyn and Cleveland take on a much larger meaning that goes beyond the deaths of Akai Gurley and the as yet unnamed 12 year-old boy in a Cleveland park.

There is an urgent need to address and acknowledge that many (not all) law enforcement professionals in this country disproportionately resort to the use of deadly force or excessive violence in encounters with people of color - a critical human rights issue America needs to understand before effective solutions can be found.

But we damn well better start figuring it out, because innocent unarmed people are paying for our not understanding with their lives.

Perhaps if more resources, expertise and training were devoted to understanding what's going on inside the mind of a police officer before they find themselves in some of these encounters, innocent lives could be spared - maybe that's what the meaning of "To Protect and Serve" is really all about.