Blacks bear the brunt when police use force

By Erik Rodriguez and Andy Alford, Austin American Statesman

Sunday, January 25, 2004

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Related stories:
Blacks bear the brunt when police use force
Full series: Unequal force
Audio: Interview with police Chief Stan Knee
Texas Lottery Commission surveillance video stills: Confrontation between Officer Michael Olsen and Jeffrey Thornton

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Austin police used force against African Americans and Hispanics at significantly higher rates than they did against whites during the past six years, according to an Austin American-Statesman analysis of police statistics.

For Hispanics, the likelihood was 25 percent greater. For African Americans, it was 100 percent.

The difference in police treatment defies easy explanation. Records of police calls indicate that minorities were 40 percent more likely to be involved in reports of violent crimes than whites. But police used force against African Americans at even higher rates.

The unequal treatment occurred throughout Austin, although it was more pronounced in the neighborhoods east of Interstate 35. And it has a grim parallel: Eleven people died after violent encounters with police during the period. All but one were minorities. Two were wielding guns.

The yawning divide between the way Austin police and east side residents view these deaths has prompted lawsuits and calls for independent investigations. Some community activists and residents say it has dampened faith in the police. In recent years, suspicion erupted into rage after police fatally shot two black people Ñ Sophia King and Jesse Lee Owens Ñ both in East Austin.

"There are good cops out there," said Jeffrey Thornton, 23, an East Austin resident injured during an encounter with police in 2002. "Most of them do their job, to serve and protect. But some of them injure and hurt."

Experts say the newspaper's analysis is rare in its approach, detail and comprehensiveness but that the racial disparity it reveals is evident in police departments across the country. The analysis offers Austin residents, city and law enforcement leaders insight into the way their police department works and an opportunity to engage in an informed discussion about what should happen next.

In an interview Thursday, Austin police Chief Stan Knee said he would have analyzed use of force rates differently than the newspaper did, but that he would not contest the findings.

"It's disappointing. I wish it weren't so," he said. "We look at things using a different base, but it doesn't matter. The end result, these numbers and the numbers that we look at, is that we need to do a better job giving our people better training and better equipment in order to decrease the likelihood that use of force will be employed."

Police officials consulted Samuel Walker, a professor of criminal justice at the University of Nebraska-Omaha in July, after the Owens shooting, to help the department improve its system for identifying problem officers. Walker is being paid through a Department of Justice grant. The American-Statesman contacted him independently earlier this month.

"The fact is that in Austin, as in Omaha and in other cities in this country, there are racial tensions," he said. "There is a problem. In any enterprise, whether a police department, a hospital or an airline, you should pay attention to those problems and try and solve them."

The newspaper also contacted Alejandro del Carmen, an associate professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University of Texas-Arlington, who specializes in racial profiling. He reviewed the methodology and findings of the American-Statesman's analysis and said the disparity in use of force shows that Austin has a problem.

"This is basically a reflection of poor training and a culture in a particular police department that does not take seriously the issue of racial sensitivity," he said.

The findings:

In the past six years, more than 99 percent of police incidents here ended without a violent physical confrontation. In 4,280 incidents, however, officers reported using force, ranging from punches and kicks to gunshots, as they attempted to arrest suspects.

Each Austin police officer who uses violence against a suspect must file a document called a use of force report detailing what occurred during the incident. The American-Statesman analyzed the 6,447 reports filed from October 1998, when the department began requiring the documents, to May 2003.

The paper also analyzed more than 1.3 million records in crime databases, court testimony, surveillance video, 911 tapes and police reports. Findings are also based on interviews with police officials, people who have clashed with police and the families of those killed.

Among the findings:

- Whites were met with police force 3.7 of every 1,000 times they came into contact with police. The rate for Hispanics was 4.6 of 1,000 contacts and for blacks, 7.4 of every 1,000 contacts.

- Blacks were more likely than whites to meet force in the area west of I-35, even though rates of force west of the highway are lower overall.

- Whites in Austin were involved in 22 violent crimes for every 1,000 reported crimes, compared with 31 for Hispanics and 31 for blacks, according to records of police calls.

- Downtown - the most likely place for anyone, regardless of race, to become involved in a violent encounter with police Ñ officers used force against one of about every 14 blacks involved in an incident. That is based on a rate of 72.6 violent encounters for every 1,000 blacks involved in an incident. For whites, the rate was 34.6 per 1,000, about one in 29; for Hispanics, 43.7, or about one in 23.

- Police who use force face few questions from supervisors. In only one out of 6,447 use of force reports did a supervisor suggest that an officer failed to follow procedure. Eight officers received additional training after filing reports. Police officials said supervisors counseled 14 additional officers about their use of force, but they don't know if the officers received additional training. In 1999, the latest year for which the national statistics are available, Justice Department statistics showed that the national use of force rate was 11.5 for every 1,000 police contacts. Austin's rate that year was 2.1 per thousand. Overall in the past six years, the Austin rate was 4.9 per thousand.

David Klinger, a former police officer who is a criminologist and associate professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, said that's proof Austin police are behaving well.

"I think it would behoove the citizens of Austin to try to reframe their understanding of the Police Department and say, wait a minute, we have a low rate of force," he said. "Officer-involved shootings are rare. Are there some officers that are doing the wrong thing? Probably, but that's a different thing. That's an anomaly."

In response to community concerns, law enforcement and city officials are discussing ways to ease relations with minority groups. Police also want more officers and better technology, higher pay to attract more experienced candidates and a revamp of the police union contract that helped create the independent police monitor's office. The contract expires in March.

Knee said officers are getting cultural diversity training, including training videos to help them better understand Hispanic culture. He said the next step is to reach out to African Americans.

"There remains, I think, a gap between us and the African American community," Knee said. "Prior to the recent shootings, I was very comfortable about the progress we were making. . . . The (Owens) shooting was a setback."

Community outrage

Residents in East Austin say they're angry, frustrated and tired of explanations. Their voices grew louder last year after two officer-involved shootings. Both cases involved white officers who shot black men.

Officer Scott Glasgow shot and killed Owens in June as Owens tried to drive away from him in East Austin. The following month, Sgt. Gregory Truitt, a Travis County sheriff's deputy, shot and killed Lennon Johnson after Johnson pulled him into his car in Southeast Austin and threatened to drive into a concrete embankment.

Charges of criminally negligent homicide against Glasgow were dismissed earlier this month, and last month a grand jury declined to indict Truitt. Officials have defended both officers, saying their lives were in immediate danger.

The deaths reignited smoldering anger over the way city officials handled the fatal June 2002 shooting of King, a woman with a history of mental illness. Officer John Coffey shot and killed King at an Austin Housing Authority apartment complex after police say she threatened her apartment manager with a knife. A grand jury cleared Coffey of any wrongdoing two weeks later.

City officials hired a Dallas law firm to conduct an investigation but withheld the report it produced because of the union contract. That contract gives the police monitor authority to review confidential internal investigations, but it prevents the city from releasing summaries to the public unless the officer is disciplined.

Since January 1998, nine other people have died following incidents of Austin police force, including five from gunshot wounds inflicted by police and four from apparent overdoses.

The deaths have led many East Austin residents to believe they are a target for police, said Thornton, who is black.

"That's the tunnel vision they have about African Americans," he said. "That if you see more than one of them, they're in a gang or somewhat. That we're all troublemakers. And that's not true."

On June 20, 2002, Thornton said, he stood in a crowd outside the Rehab Lounge on Sixth Street, watching a fight break out just after 2 a.m. He told a friend that he thought one officer was being too rough. Then, Officer Michael Olsen came toward him and told him he would get a ticket for standing in the road.

Instead of issuing the ticket, Thornton said, Olsen slammed him onto the hood of a nearby patrol car twice. He remembered the heat of the car's engine burning his face. He said he tried to get up to call for help, but Olsen threw him onto the pavement head first, knocking him unconscious.

When Thornton awoke, he was lying on the street with a raised welt on his head and blood streaming into his eyes. He remembered being placed in an ambulance only to have police remove him. He said Olsen told him he was faking his injuries. Instead of going to the hospital, he was taken to jail, where he was booked and released the next day.

Olsen's account, documented in a police report shortly after the incident, tells a different story.

Olsen said Thornton followed him on the street, harassing him and making references to "racist cops." Olsen said that he wanted to give Thornton a ticket but that Thornton repeatedly tried to resist a search.

"I started to check his front waist band, but before I could start he brought his left arm back," Olsen wrote. "He then reached for his front left pants pocket, where I had observed a lump already. . . . I swung him around to take him to the ground for handcuffing.

"As we went toward the ground I could tell that his head might hit the ground. I twisted my body around to try to take most of the fall myself. We hit the ground together."

In the minutes that followed, Olsen reported, paramedics placed Thornton into an ambulance. In the report, officers said they removed Thornton from the ambulance unhurt.

"As there was nothing medically wrong with the male, he was taken out of the EMS unit and walked to . . . Olsen's patrol unit," Officer Michael Morgovnik wrote.

Olsen described it this way: "EMS checked him and he refused transport."

Police later charged Thornton with resisting a search and interfering with police duties.

While the two accounts are in conflict, a video recorder documented the incident and would later shed further light.

Police face challenges

When police use force it is usually at night, peaking after 2 a.m. and near Sixth Street. The single-highest number of force incidents recorded occurred at Sixth and Trinity streets, where police have a weekend command post, according to the analysis.

The 1,830 reports filed in downtown incidents account for nearly 30 percent of all use of force reports filed. In about 41.1 of every 1,000 times citizens had contact with police downtown, police used force. That rate is nearly nine times higher than the citywide average.

Thornton's case notwithstanding, targets of police force are rarely bystanders. Police reports suggest that people involved in use of force incidents committed myriad crimes, from burglary to aggravated assault Ñ an average of 2.6 crimes for every person, based on dispatcher calls.

Some cases underline the potentially life-threatening situations officers face. In March, three officers went to a home near U.S. 290 and U.S. 183 to question a man whose brother they were searching for. One of the occupants, Daniel Dush, who is black, tried to escape, swinging his fists and running into a yard as police tried to arrest him.

During the chase, Dush pushed officers John Buell and Kelly Davenport into a tree, knocking them to the ground. He assaulted another officer, Kurt Thomas, and punched Davenport in the face, fracturing her jaw. At that point, officers said, they began kicking him to make him stop. He continued to throw elbow punches after he had been handcuffed, they said. Police charged Dush with resisting arrest, two counts of aggravated assault on a public servant and one count of assault on a public servant. In interviews with police, Dush acknowledged he resisted arrest but said he did not assault the officers.

"I felt Daniel was a danger to us, and really wanted to hurt us and not just get away from being arrested," Buell later wrote in a police report.

Davenport went to St. David's Medical Center for her jaw injury and returned a day later for treatment of a herniated disk.

Each of the officers filed a use of force report shortly after the incident, writing that they used kicks and "knee strikes to the chest and arms" to subdue Dush. Each said Dush was an aggressor. Thomas noted that Dush had received minor injuries and had back pain. Davenport reported that Dush complained of an injury but did not appear to be hurt.

Sometimes, a single incident can threaten dozens of officers at once. In February 2001, several officers were injured during a riot on Sixth Street following a Mardi Gras celebration. Police tried to break up a fight only to have a growing and increasingly belligerent crowd hurl bottles and rocks at them.

Police arrested 35 people and filed 43 use of force reports.

"Some of the patrolmen felt at times as if they were losing," Knee told the American-Statesman shortly after the incident. "The officers I talked to, many of them were scared. It was a very, very tumultuous time."

Fear lingers

In both the Thornton and Dush cases, police supervisors did not question their officers' actions, according to reports.

Three days after his incident, Thornton filed a police internal affairs complaint against Olsen. He learned a surveillance camera at the Texas Lottery Commission headquarters nearby had caught the incident on tape. A camera was installed inside the cruiser but it had been turned off, police records show.

A copy of the lottery commission video, obtained under the Texas Public Information Act, shows Thornton lying on the ground as an ambulance arrives. It does not show the struggle with police, but it shows Olsen walking past Thornton into a crowd. Moments later, Olsen emerges from the crowd and walks directly toward Thornton. Those acts are inconsistent with what Olsen wrote in his report Ñ that Thornton followed him.

In December 2002, Olsen was suspended for 60 days for using profanity and excessive force and making false statements on his police report and in interviews with investigators. Knee said Thursday that the lottery commission tape was used in the internal investigation, but would not elaborate.

"Officer Olsen used inappropriate force against Mr. Thornton which caused Mr. Thornton to hit the ground and injure his head," Knee wrote in a memo outlining the suspension. "Officer Olsen's actions enraged the crowd which became hostile toward the police and EMS personnel."

Knee also mandated additional training for Olsen and other conditions expunged from the memo. Officials dropped the charges against Thornton.

In July, a grand jury indicted Olsen on three felony counts of tampering with a governmental record. Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle dropped the charges shortly before Christmas because there wasn't enough evidence to determine whether Olsen was trying to be deceptive, he said.

Meanwhile, life has changed for Thornton.

A city sanitation worker, he was reprimanded for missing work the Friday morning he was in jail. He said that if he has another unexcused absence from work he might lose his job. He worries about going out at night.

Thornton says that people in his East Austin neighborhood routinely drive away from passing police cars to avoid confrontation. And he thinks officers are only too quick to single out African Americans.

Thornton has filed a $100,000 lawsuit against the city and Olsen, alleging his constitutional rights were violated. It could be at least a year before the case is resolved.

Others have filed lawsuits, too, including the relatives of Sophia King, the family of Joel Hernandez, who died in August 2001 after police restrained him, and relatives of Steven Bernard Scott, who died in a 1999 after a violent encounter with police. In October, Laura Tansey Rey-Sanchez, a North Austin homeowner, sued after she said a police officer used excessive force against her when she called to report a mentally ill man at her front door.

Thornton figures that the surveillance video helped him once, and that it might again.

"Everything was in my favor when that camera was on," he said. "If it wasn't there, I don't know what would have happened."

erodriguez@statesman.com; 445-3673. aalford@statesman.com; 445-1774