Serial S03 - Ep. 3: Misdemeanor, Meet Mr. Lawsuit
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Bank tok. Com to get started today. Equal housing lender member F I C. Previously on cereal, we're trying to get rid of cases if somebody is offered to plead to what .

mister miner you take .

up and you that now .

wonderful and doesn't matter, you're fine, but I have to take the jail because you hear a place.

And yes, there's a lots of people on the floor. There is another woman kicking car, why can you like I kept trying to tail.

and there's more to this story and how not looking for me to tell you, but that's the honest the.

From this american life and W B E Y, chicago, it's cereal one course told week by week. I'm sarana.

A while back, a manual I went to a meeting about community policing in cleveland. The police department had invited people to a banquet hall for a workshop. Big round tables filled the space.

Representatives from the police department were sprinkled throughout. In each table had a moderator to keep things moving. The group is supposed to answer a bunch of questions about what kinds of problems they want in police to deal with. My table was populated with rule followers. They dutifully work their way down the list of questions.

If kids are hanging out and abandon house in your neighborhood, what should the police do about that? I guess I would hope that they would start by talking to the kids and reminding them that some people have to go to sleep and get up in north the next day. And to be a little consider IT about the world a boy, thank god for a manual.

He was sitting a few tables to the east of me, and he summoned me over there because his table brast tax. A lot of Young american, american males in particular, we are afraid of the police officers. I'm just going to be honest. This guy was an attorney, the civil rights cases. A police commander sitting at the table lamely responded to him.

That's a broad brush. That's a road brush, you think, but not like you're not afraid of me. You not afraid of me? We just met. We just met.

Take your hand again. So exactly. You see me. You see me here today. You must.

This was the struggle of the table, the citizens wanting to talk historically, culturally, structurally, the cops wanting to talk specifically, personally procedurally. The tables moderator was stalwart SHE tried her level best to keep everyone on tasks. There is just no way we can have meetings.

But as many of you said earlier, we don't do a good job of getting people to come on how you can feel that way. But how else do we send out to get feed back? How can we engage more people in this process? I wanna know what responsibility or work like disciplines with the police give for her ascent, the community into that question.

But I I will make sure that is that just before the city and clever police department has been corrupt for over seventy years. Where will this? Can you go back an exam? right? City, over seventy years there has been corrupt.

Venus. Is that more White police here? They need being here.

Here is my 的。 This woman saying that this rice is samaria rice. Her son was timea rice. You've probably heard his name before.

He was shot, killed by giving police a few years back, when he was twelve years old, he been playing around with a fake gun in a city park. Someone called nine one one. The police drove up on him, shot him in the stomach within a couple of seconds.

Whenever you talk about police or two police in cleveland, timi ze is right there, not below the surface. On the surface, his killing caused a civic spasm between police in the public that still painful and still unresolved. So when samarra rse shows up at a meeting about the community s expectations from police, SHE speaks with dreadful moral authority.

At first, I didn't understand what miss rice wanted from this meeting. SHE didn't seem interested in the stated mission of the workshop bliss of questions, should this right for the community we gone be but they really need in this way the really what this does this no aggravated because that's what this mean that should be about. But you have to understand that 主要是 都是 topics they have to be addressed。 And so. I so be anything so and that the only thing i'm in all of the fall, one of the two police officers at the table, jun, he says, which I completely get.

get, how can you help us do that?

What is solution? She's laughing. That's when I got IT that there's something absurdly wrong headed to her and to a lot of people in clean and mostly black people with this earnest sounding question, how can you help us do that smart rises saying, why are you turning this back on me? Why I H S T my job to help you do your job the way you're supposed to. We are the ones with the cruisers and the handcuff s and the tasers and the guns. SHE is saying, for god sakes, physician, heal itself.

A persistent slogan in cleveland, even four years after his killing, is justice for timea. The case was investigated by three different agencies, city, state and federal. The mayor appointed his own panel for a fourth investigation. None found that the officers broke the law.

The then county prosecutor handled the case with the delicacy of a lumber jack, calling in a good, perfect storm of human error, mistakes and this communications, and should have come as a surprise to no one when a grAnderson declined to. Technically, you can argue, and many police officers and prosecutors do, but justice was applied in timere races case, but IT doesn't feel that way. Instead, IT feels like an open question haunting the courthouse.

If you're harmed by police, what does IT take to find justice in court? That feels like justice. One way to try is by filing a loss, suing the police.

We are going to a UK, little hio, a little burg on the e side of cleaning to meet with my client armies. Spencer, we're going to his apartment. We're going to talk more about what he happened to couple weeks ago.

I'm in a car with paul kristle, civil rights attorney. Ten days earlier, he'd sent me a text. IT was photos of a guy in a hospital bed, his face hugely pumped up on one side, his skin so taught from swelling that you could see.

The hospital later reflected in his cheek. His left eye was submerged by the distortion. The guy's mother said he'd been beaten up by two police officers.

She'd found paul number called him up, asking, is there anything we can do? Paul, talk to her, talk to aramis, who said sounded cogent and sincere. He had no criminal record to speak of a few misdeed or convictions, but nothing violent.

Bell decided, this is a good case, and we're going for me, right? You actually don't have business with them today. This is for me.

This is for you, cry.

Thank you.

you're.

Do you know a lot of people .

on the building?

Yes, arms is. Face hadn't fully healed when I was still blood red. He had a scale above his eyebrow.

How long you love her? Three years. Three, where do you live before I was .

living on one hundred fifth teeth?

Is that included?

Yes.

you could. Is safer, cleaner, comer and a lot of neighborhood. Cleveland especially.

You're from a dangerous neighbor. Od, save, got a teenager. You're trying to keep back to the streets.

You might send him to. His aunt is grama uclaf put him in school there. Arm's building is called richmond hills.

An apartment complex built in the one thousand nine hundred and sixties look tired out by now. Armas lives on the fifth floor. He asks me through his version of what happened that day.

The police have a different version, which i'll get too later, but arma says he'd come down stairs to bump a cigarette from a friend on the fourth floor. In a couple cops were coming down the stairwell at one end, the hallway, and they saw him standing there, knocking at his friend's door. So sorry, they came through the outdoor. yes. Oh, so they saw you to the window.

Yeah, they saw me through the window. I stand at the door, not the door. And they came to stop me right here where we stand in.

So they did. They talk you from there.

Yes, they were best to telling me to stop, you know, just a stay deal. And they went to ask me the question as whatever. And there was too of them, like best ally, how you all stand IT. And the action for my idea asking decided me for weapons.

Armas had seen cops around the hallways before, so that was in a surprise. They work security here, moonlighting. Technically, they're off duty, but they're in uniform and they have full police powers. That's Normal, by the way, lots of cops to do this. In my hook account, an armas had had runnings with the police before, and mostly they're gone.

Okay, not counting the time he says he was jail, walking in his clean and a cup stop to many ended up getting in the need repeatedly with a Billy club in, didn't put in jail for the night, but mostly he felt like he knew had a successfully navigate these interactions with the ukulele cops that day. He figured his best strategy was to CoOperate and get this over with. He wasn't doing anything wrong.

He didn't want to give the cops any reason to suspect otherwise. So he says he showed them his I D, told them he lived upstairs. He said they asked if they could search him for weapons, which means a pat down. They're feeling around for a gun and armas allowed IT. He didn't have a weapon on him. He wasn't worried what he did have on him was a blood, a marijuana cigarette in the pockets of his genes, which the cops found, and which i'll get back to, because this measly blunt will become an outsize player in this story. Anyway, next thing arm's knew, the officers went to arrest them.

Other officer on this site asked me to put my hands back on my bag. I told them what am on the rest. I'm axim like what am on the rest for. And he never told me what I was on the rest for.

At that point, arma says he stiffened his ARM the that one of the officers was trying to put behind his back. So he's resisting technically. And he's also asking, why are you arresting me? What did I do? No answer, no discussion.

And then the one on your side, he was like, set to fuck up and need me in my boss. And I went down. Our reason my boss immediately like this, the other officers try to tell me on the ground, I guess, as if he was going to, you know, to proceed.

Your, how know if you resist the rest? They have a right to dull you to the ground and put your hands on your back, but they didn't put my hands around about one hand on my back and then in other one to the kick in my face. Wow, I was on the ground.

The kicking arma says, is what caused the damage to his face, broke orbit bone, that's a bone around your eye, a public defender and clive and told everyone's always winning about a broken orbiting bone. But in army's case, IT was bad enough that the ugly D E. R.

Folks transferred him to a bigger hospital in cleveland to make sure I would be okay anyway. Armas was down on the ground. One cop is kicking him in the face.

Another cop is holding back his red ARM arm's left. ARM is pint underneath them. He can get IT free.

Armas got down on the gross hallway carpet to show me I didn't need them to do that, but IT seems as if he wanted to replay each step, which I could understand. IT had only been ten days since IT happened. He hadn't got .

to his mind around IT. I M on my head. My head is right here. The blender is leaking from my face, going down, dropping onto the ground like this. So what happened was he takes me right here, sound like this that takes me right here, taste me in my night, taste me in the back of that, and takes me on my chest for here. And then I finally, I told him, him like, i'm gonna let you put my hands by my back with me and they put my hands behind back, pick me up.

Oh, my god.

is like your blood right there.

And there is a smear of .

blood with a big drip going down the wall at exactly the height of armis eye, which isn't very high. By the way. Armis is about five, six, five, seven, I say, and slight. The police takes him about seven times, not the full deployment each time where the virus came out, everything, the lesser taser setting where IT shocks and burns arma said he could feel electricity shoot down his legs.

There there's the burn Marks from the.

we mean air mas pointed to some spots at our feet where the carpet fibers were melt IT and climbed together.

The tails are rare Marks.

Oh my god.

burn to my skin, just like a burn to the country. So yeah.

arma said, while all this was going on, the police were cursing at him. He was kersee back. He said, I just kept asking them, why? Why are you doing this? What did I do to deserve this? He says they would not answer.

When I asked army, as if he'd been scared, were enraged, the word he used was uncomfortable. He said the whole thing made him feel uncomfortable, which seemed like an oddly way to express being kicked in the head by a cab. He also said he was trying not to let what happened distract him mentally, not let IT take him out of his everyday life.

He said he just turned thirty. A few days earlier, his family and his girlfriend had gathered around him to cheer up. He tried to celebrate. He said, I got the sense he wasn't ready to stare too hard at what had happened. For now, he'd leave IT at uncomfortable.

There is a security camera in the hallway right near the door he was knocking on but IT was pointed straight down when we saw so IT seemed quite possible that even if IT we're working at the time and apparently IT wasn't IT would have produced footage of the floor as the cops walked armas out of the building, he says they were talking shit to him. IT doesn't remember exactly what they said, but something like one more false move. I'm going to make you've been worse for the next time. Then they put him in an .

ambuLance back up in the arm's apartment.

We talked about that marijuana cigarette he'd had in his pocket. The arma is thinking the police had no right to arrest him in the first place. That's why he's stiff in his ARM because he says he genuinely did not understand what .

was going on because of the amount of we did. I had IT was not a arrested charge. So I can never be resistant arrest for one blind. That's not as possible. If I have one problem on me, I and I believe me, I have situations like this before where officers will take the we do IT in the grass or thought away or flight IT down the toilet because there is no probable cause to risk, and sometimes officers, rita ticket and I still couldn't be .

arrested no, that no matter, are you sure .

that you anywhere, dusty is the mister media offence and is not arrestable well.

Is that .

right or so? As the only lawyer in the room well explained .

gently as he could, that arms is incorrect and you could ohio, any amount of we can be charged as an m one first degree mister minor possibility of a thousand dollar fine, six months in jail, just over the city line back. And clever and armas would be correct. One blend probably would be a ticket at most, but not here in uglily.

Ohio takes home rule very seriously. Coho k account has fifty nine different municipalities. Each one has its own set of ordinances.

Most of them are in their city codes with ohio state law, which treats less than one hundred grams of marijuana p as a minor misdemeanors, but two of them treat any amount of marijuana as an m one road view heights, little town down south. And you could u clade. Made its ordinary, harsher in one thousand ninety eight.

I'm not sure why, but it's worth noting that the city's black population was growing. Then for a few decades, White people have been moving out, and black people have been moving in. Now the cities, about sixty percent african american. You could city government, though, city council six out of nine members are White mayor is White police chief is White city prosecutors, White city law director is White city judges weight, and it's got the hardest dev law in the county, say.

The best poll can do for armas, really the only thing he can do is to try to make everyone involved in sending armas to the hospital pay on the dry back to cleveland. Paul talked about what he would do next. He also anticipated what the city's lawyer would likely do next, which he can do with confidence.

Because paul used to be that lawyer. He used to work the other side of these cases, defending the government in the cops. He worked for the city of cleveland.

Then he was a partner at a law firm that contracted with insurance companies to defend against vil rights claims. Paul was good at his job, and he made good money. He had two B, M, W, use a convertible and heart top.

But after a while, he couldn't stomach IT. He says he felt like he was working for the wrong side and started to affect his health. So he he switched over.

He'll frequently mention that he drives a hn ay now and then he'll say, and i'm fine with that, but he's not totally fine with that army. This case won't be huge money arms wasn't permanently injured, not physically. But paul inks, you can at least get him something.

Maybe in the tens of thousands, there is a complication they have to take care of first, though, before paul can get a loss. You going. That's the not small matter of army's criminal charges. The ugly police set ted armis for four crimes, drug abuse, resisting arrest, theft and criminal damaging, paul said. That list pretty typical.

So I hit you with four charges. And so now let's negotiate down from there. So i'm going to load you up. So this way i'm going to over over charges. So now I give you the prosecutor little something else, a little bit more love to to still get you to lead to something .

you I was confused, as were armas in paul, about what the theft in criminal damaging were about until I read the police report. There's a page long narrative in IT, the cops described an event with roughly the same controls as what armas told me, but very different details. The officers didn't talk to me for this story.

And just to say, neither of them has been disciplined for what happened that night. But anyway, in the report, they say that after they confiscated the marijuana, armas tried to take IT out of one officer's hand. They say armas was fighting with them, pushing them that everyone was getting stand by the tailor in the process.

They say arms tried to take the taste away from them. That's the theft, apparently. And that the tasters cartage got pulled off and the blast door broken off.

That arms knocked one officer's glasses of his face, breaking them. They never mention kicking armas. They do describe needing him in the cruach and quote, closed fisted strikes to his face and head. Armas has got ta get out from under these charges strategic icons and quietly right now almost doesn't think he should have to plead to anything. But paul thinks that might actually be Better for the civil case if he does plead to something mine.

And that's how armis is looking at. He's like, look, I should walk at this literally with nothing. The problem with that is if you just take this hard line, like i'm not going to plead the even a minor, mister minor, some one of among going to plead to. I think that's going to raise the flag that that he's up to something that that he's staying on principle when he's looking to sue you for the injuries.

Last thing paul wants at this stage is for ugly d to know IT is being sued because if they know, they will dig in on the criminal charges. So first step, delay. Armas was supposed to have his initial court appearance today, actually, but they got IT postponed by a couple weeks to give his face time to go back to Normal.

I don't want him walking into court looking like he just got his aspect by the police. Why again? Because people I ask, you know so what happened and if you gone from of the say.

people you mean maybe .

sure oh yeah ah Young man, what happened you and the prosecutor might notice.

you could police officers who happen to be in court that day, they might notice, starts asking around. Paul wants armies to be unremarkable, just there to take care. These charges go on home.

No big deal. Second step high a beard. Paul himself has to lie low while the criminal case moves through the municipal court, he will not be shepard armas through.

Instead, he's hired a dependable local attorney who won't raise any eyebrows in ukraine. Pauls farming IT out, in part because this speciality is not criminal defense. But more to the point, if the folks in nuclear de see paul's name on the docket, the gig is immediately up.

They will know they're facing a civil lawsuit, possibly a big fat civil lawsuit, because they will have heard of paul already or else still google hamon. You'll see, oh right, break case, also known as one hundred thirty seven shots case, back in twenty twelve, two people in a car, a men and a woman, both african american, both homeless, were driving past the justice center downtown. Police said the couple fired a gun out the window towards a subsequent ent investigation, suggested the noise the officers heard might have been the car backfiring.

They never located a. In any case, the police began to chase them, which isn't that strange, except for the tobacco that ensued. The chase wove through residential neighborhoods, then onto the highway and back off the highway twenty miles and sixty two police cars.

Later, the chase ended in an east cave and parking lot where police fired a total of hundred and thirty seven shots at the car, killing both people inside one officer alone, sergeant Michael blow shot at them forty nine times. He scrambled onto the hot of the car, shut down at them through the windshield at close range. Sergeant brillo was indeed for a voluntary manslaughter.

A judge found him not guilty. There was no proof brillo had actually killed them. The judge explained, in his opinion, as possible.

They were already dead by the time he gone onto the hood. The families of the two people who were killed sued. Paul represented one of them in the city of cleveland, settled for three million dollars.

IT was paul's biggest media case, also his biggest payout. Lately he's been strugling a little. He's not into the hustle, isn't show up memorial gathering looking salem.

He doesn't slip a weeping relative his card. He doesn't have a website or do social media his White, which isn't always helpful in this business. Army's case is in order of magnetites smaller than one hundred thirty seven shots case or the timere rice case. No one's gona shut his named during a protest, paul told me, the smaller cases they matter because they, rick h, he's watched a lot of people go through incidents like this. He says this speeding will knock around inside army's head, and then it'll rebound off of them out .

into the city. Know, much as you want to talk about how, you know, we need to come together as a society, and, you know, black lives matters and all life matters. And you, the police, have a hard job and you to listen to what the police tell you to do, and you ve got to obey the law.

Don't be crime. I mean, the reality is, is now you've just created somebody who I am. He he's this walking perpetuation of, don't trust the police.

He now knows that that happened in all he had on him was a blunt in his own apartment complex, in his own apartment complex, not late at night, no drugs, no alcohol, no gun, no criminal activity, but the blind. And that's what happened to him, that this will mess with them. And you like, if you stick with the story and we follow them, you'll see, I mean, no, it'll fuck with them.

He has family, he has friends. They're all gonna what happened? They're all going to see the pictures.

And so it's for him. Now this becomes part of his lies. scrap. This has become something that you know is gonna retold and retold and photos are going to be shared, and we shared no guy.

A study published in twenty sixteen found that reports of police brutality not only contribute to a quote, spirit of legal cynicism, they also cause people to not call the cops when they need them. They make entire cities less safe. The researchers looked at nine one one calls before and after an informal case in malawi, the two thousand four beating of a guy in Frank jude.

They found that for a year afterwards, there were twenty two thousand fewer nine one one calls in maloka, and that residents in black neighborhoods especially were far less likely to report crime, and at the same time that people were reporting fewer crimes. Murders in a oki rose by thirty two percent. The goal of paul laugh suit, aside from getting armours some justice and some, is the forced police to account for their behavior, to answer for IT.

And I asked him, setting his own livelihood IDE isn't IT possible that his involvement could actually be hampering ing progress? Say armas went to the police department and complain to the supervisors or the use of force in the officers report triggered an internal investigation and say that process were allowed to play out without the spector of a lawsuit. Isn't IT possible the department would fix itself?

That is no that I mean, I know you probably hate hearing people say it's .

a great question.

I love sir, that is a great question. And IT is because I mean, you know if I can even look right your question a little bit, kind of what you're asking is, well but the way you're handle ling, this is kind of how you your yelling orchestrating, if you will, you're denying the city of u clad in the police department the opportunity to do this right on their own and you're absolutely right you're right.

I am doing that but that's because um of distrust. If I were to kind of do what you're saying or we were to march down there and though at a citizen complaint and talk to them about constitutional rights and excessive force and leaving IT up to them now to kind say, well, you know what yeah, this was awful. We Better do in in turn investigation.

We Better do what's right. And and that just hasn't been my experience. That just hasn't been my experience.

I think when you do that, they don't own IT. They lawyer up. It's never a situation where like the city of the police, like wow, we really mess that.

We need to do the right thing here. It's it's always you know what you're talking about. This was justified. Your client is a liar. And um we've got an insurance people working on IT like I just I just have zero faith based on my experience that that would happen. Is that going happen?

This is what bother paul the most. When he worked the defense, he said the cities is disdain for the plaintiff. A person would found an excessive force claim.

And right away, paul says everyone would attack the character of the complainer, not just publicly, even among themselves, privately, the lawyers, the adjusters, the insurance companies, the police officers, that police chief, the mayor. Their attitude was, what kind of loser, what kind of scum bag would sue the police? That's after the break.

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It's made from the world's finance materials so I can feel good about what i'm feeding my family. I'm chef mark Williamson, and I use made in cocoa for full details. Visit made in coquart dot com that's M A D E I N coquart dot com. Right now, these past few years is an era of law enforcement soul searching, or it's supposed to be all over the country.

Police departments are meant to be considering deeply and anise sly, whether they are using force properly, whether they are Operating without bias, whether they're listening to and hearing the citizens, a police in alboher key, in norland important oregon in ferguson, missouri in bolt Moore, and in cleveland after one hundred thirty seven shots case when where the couple was killed by police after the chase, first the ohio attorney general investigated, then the feds came in civil rights division of the department of justice. Less than two weeks after timor rice was killed, they issued their report. The cleveland department was engaging in a pattern or practice of using unlawful excessive force, among many other problems.

The articles about the breath and depth of the overall find exhausted, all the usual words, skating, embarrassing, stagger ing, jaw dropping. The report was not all that different from the previous D O, J. Investigation of the cleaning police.

A decade or earlier this time, the city promised things would be different. In twenty and fifteen, they entered into a consent decree with the federal government. A federal judge would oversee massive reforms in the C. D. P. If citizen complaints don't bring change, if internal investigations don't bring change, if criminal charges against cops don't bring change, if poker stelis lawsuits don't bring change, perhaps a federally Mandated ed consent decree, a decree just one click from a fiat, would persuade police the change is nine, perhaps not .

political nonsense.

This is detective Steve Lewis. Until recently, he was the president of the clever police pretty man's association, the police union. Here, three volunteers have a certain political persuading, including some cops, i'm sure, just slapped their foreheads and grown, please know not Steve, because they know baldheaded meti fisted Steve lomas, the guy who dressed convincingly ly in a santa t at the department's Christmas party. And as the dirty biker hillBilly dude, when he worked on her cover, will say.

whatever the hell he wants, Steve then kiss my eyes with his bullshit.

Steve dell, back was U. S. Attorney for the northern district of ohio. His signature is at the bottom of the doj report, a report which devoted several pages to the substandard way in which the client and police department dealt with .

citizen complaints. We really don't care about civilian complaints. Not that we don't. Not that we don't care that we get that we don't.

My laughter here is born of shock. Not worth, i'm not going to say I like Steve lomas. I can't get there. Some of the positions he inhabits are too awful.

President obama has blood on his hands for the police officers killed in dallas or racist and anti muslim tweet by A C, D, P, surgeon are the first amendment right of every american. a. But I appreciate Steve luma. I appreciate that is got a sense of humor about himself. I appreciate that appears to be a true believer that he is sincere when he says, even the lowest rooky patrolman does more to help this community than any other person in government.

I appreciate that Steve lem's give us six hours of his time in one day, six hours SAT there in his union office packed with trump paraphrase a also one or two cartoons that i'd call racist, he'd call political, explaining his world to us, arguing with us continue. And aside to cleveland ders, he'll complain that the media only quote Steve because he's colorful and available. We'll say Steve doesn't represent us.

Worlds true. No other clean officers were permitted to talk to us on the record. And I know from off the record conversations that not all of them think like Steve, but that aside, Steve is the man whom the ranking file elected as their leader and spokesman.

He does or did officially represent the police. So here we are. I know where activists stand on the question of reform and where a lot of non activists stand on the question of police reform. But I wanted to know, is reform even possible, or the police willing, as union president Steve luma SAT on the clearing community police commission, the cpc, a group Mandated into existence as part of the consent to create, it's supposed to make recommendations on new policies for community policing, BIOS policing, use of force and you are participating sure.

With a full heart .

absolute with a full heart.

Um the the problem that we have. And I thought there .

was a time when you just like literally had not shown up to a meeting for a good year.

No, yeah, you want to believe that the reti c out.

I know he was in the newspaper, is that retorted, yeah in fact, there's been a steady drip of articles in the local press about Steve spady attendance at meetings and the many calls for his resignation. In one article, he explained that he appointed himself as a commissioner because he didn't want to subject any of his patrolman to quote that far of a commission. Still, he insisted he is not anti reform. We can always improve on what we do. He told me and am happy to take that chAllenge on, but when I asked him about possible reforms in cleveland, reforms that are being discussed and implemented all over the country, he vigorously walked each one aside, slowing down police interactions with suspects in hopes of avoiding the need for force.

Everybody wants to talk about the escalator, and it's just a really sexy word for talking.

You know, that seems like good. That seems good.

Talking good. But guess what? That's what we've done. Sis.

the beginning of time bias. Steve would like to see one study linking implicit bias to police actions and reactions.

racial profiling. I'm not going to sit here and say that that doesn't happened somewhere else in the world. I am going to sit here and say in a city, a clive, when there's no way that IT happens.

It's not supported in fact, right? Um our use of force policy is coming out and that thing is gonna atrocious. More restrictions .

on how and when police can use a gun is going to endanger his officers, he said. Because they'll think twice, they'll be afraid of getting in trouble for doing IT wrong and then it'll be too late to come and complain .

among police teasing people. You know well you can taste a juvenile okay you know um premiere race nobody wants to talk about IT, but premiere race was five, six, seven, one hundred and ninety one pounds right? He swallow years old. To Steve.

the timere rise case is the perfect example of how people misunderstand and wilfully distort what the police do, how their fixes make no sense. To me, the way Steve talked about the timi ose case was the perfect example of why so many people in cleveland believe the police have zero capacity for self reflection, much less self correction. The officer who shot to mere was new Young still on.

I pointed out that Steve himself, as an experienced officer, had avoided shootings by lowering his weapon. He's just given me a couple of examples. So why is he saying in the to me or right situation, any officer would have done the same thing?

You wouldn't have done the same thing.

You're telling .

me right now.

absolutely.

You you wanted get into my right. We get into into rice.

So IT began, Steve reiterated as he has many times that number one, tim ire was a big kid as if that made him .

blame worthy a child in a man's body bottom line, there's no denying that um nobody can dispute that number two to me raise me exactly why those policeman we're driving that marked police car towards him, right? He is a product of the street. He is not a product of a, uh, uh, loving home.

His, oh.

and hang on.

I did hang on and he got worse, his savaging of somali rice, which i'm not going to dignify by repeating here. Steve has said unkind things about the rice family in the past. He also helpfully suggested they should use the money they ve got from a lawsuit to educate kids about the dangers of guns.

He wasn't worried about his tongue or in implications. Then he is not worried. Now he believes the facts are with him. We disagreed about whether the police drove up too close to timere, whether they drove up too fast, whether timere pulled the gun from his waste band, whether the shooting of tim ize was a mistake at all. Okay, we can disagree till the cows come home about what should have happened or why IT happened.

And my guess is we probably would not.

That's fine, but I think we can all agree. IT was a horrible, horrible outcome.

right?

I know you, I know you have. So what I wondering is do you see any fixes? Is everything where you're like here isn't change that I think could have avoided this? That isn't only on .

timere haven't it's absolutely on timere. It's any suspect they had shot by the police.

Actions by suspects cause reactions by police officers, justified reactions. Did police take away any lessons then from the timor rice case? I asked him, sure.

He said, we always learn a lesson. So what is IT? I don't know. He said. IT was in fact the only time I stumped him in our six hours together. I asked him several times and he could not come up with one thing that wasn't fault. IT sounds like you're saying there's nothing that needs to change.

No.

that's what needs to change.

not what i'm saying. What i'm saying is that those changes need to be based in reality.

What should the .

changes be not while I in why do we fix IT in focus? And to me in race, that's the bigger question to me is we want to change our entire profession based on a couple of different you, you.

you when you're saying, why are we fixing on these debt? Because people are like enough is enough is enough is enough. They're saying it's one. One is too many. One accident like this is too many.

Let's fix IT. To me, rice was not an accident to many. Race was pulling a gun out of his waste, an right.

But but we're saying he just shouldn't have died for big. He shouldn't have think, think this is what i'm saying. I think this is what we are all asking. But what's frustrating .

tell you how we fix that. We don't go when somebody calls us and tells us that some boy's at a recent with a gun, we don't go. That's the only way to fix that.

right? I guess I just don't buy that.

Well.

I like the house, okay? I think Steve might actually believe what he's saying here that police are never to blame for harming someone in the line of duty. If you end up dead or hurt, it's always because of something you did or didn't do that follows them that the only ones you need to reform are the citizens.

In the name of cleveland's fifteen hundred patrolman, Steve emas is folding his arms inside his petroleum is also a threat. You know, like how we do business. Fine, we'll stop arresting people. See how you like your city. Then it's the same stance some police officers have taken in chicago, in mini abli, in new york and about more a cop out.

Steve lomas says cleveland's problem isn't rotten police or poorly trained police or faulty policies. The problem, he says, is understaffed and he's not wrong. Even people who can't abide to hum us agree that clearances police department is overburdened and under supplied and poorly paid.

This, of course, is the moment of law enforcement everywhere. Civilians, we need your tax dollars, but we don't need is your oversight. A koa here. A few weeks after we spoke, Steve Lewis was replaced as union president. He had been voted out of office. And i'm not saying these things are necessarily connected, but eight months later, the team in charge of overseeing police reforms in cleveland release some stats showing that during the first five months of twenty eighteen, police use of force in cleland had decreased by nearly forty percent compared to the year before. IT was too soon to claim Victory, the report said, but IT was encouraging .

a sponsor. Okay.

we are here on this most to press. Five months after he'd been arrested, armis went to court for hearing. By now, the city of you could knew a civil lawsuit was probably coming, which is why, after all this time, the four criminal charges were still hunkered in his case file.

As pol predicted, the city was unrelenting. The prosecutor was not onna drop them, definitely not the resisting arrest. That's the linchpin charge, the resisting, the one that could really mess up arms' civil case.

Because if armis gets convicted of resisting, that could justify the officer's use of force, not necessarily the excessiveness of the beating. IT doesn't give them cart plunge, but IT does allow the officers to do what they have to do to subdue a suspect. So if armas has to eat that resisting charge, IT could travel his civil claim.

That's why the city won't budged on the resisting and why armas won't budged either. Instead, today, armas is here on emotion to suppress, trying to get all the charges dropped by claiming that the police had no reasonable suspicion to stop him in that hallway. And then after they made the faulty step, they had no probable cause to search him, which would make the actual blunt they found on him the fruit of a poisonous tree.

That's the legal metaphor. So no legal stop. No legal arrest. No case.

When I walked into the courtroom, mary case of the city prosecutor said to me, you do know this is just a hearing, right? I do. I said then SHE in.

The other lawyers left the room for a while. I SAT waiting in the empty jury box arms. The two cops, arms' mother, all set on the benches.

No one said anything. I rode in my notes. It's like a tub in here. Then I heard to rock us through the wall behind me, where the prosecutors offices people were shouting after, while the lawyers filed back into the courtroom, looking peeved.

Mary case, in a couple of other lawyers, SAT on one side, on the other armies. In his defense attorney, the local guy paul had enlisted sparrows gano cus judge debora barren announced me, and as I believed, all the parties I have sericane from the cereal podcast, who is asking to record these proceedings in this cause. Thank you.

This time the city would request a continuance of this hearing. We have some concerns with respect to this hearing being recorded for a public podcast. IT seemed I had been the cause of the rocket. We have an interest in protecting the city of ukraine.

De any flicker .

of a notion I had that the city's intentions were forced right, withered now before i'd figured. But sure, they're triangulating, just like paul. But i'd also assumed that they were at least prosecuting armas in good faith because they believed the cops believed he committed these crimes and deserve punishment.

But you don't try to kick the reporter out of a public proceeding unless there's something unsafe about what's about to happen. Judge libera deny the prosecutor request for continue. They began the hearing, would not touch on anything that came after the search.

So nothing about the resisting or the beating. This was only about the validity of the stop in the search. Mary kate and spirits can augus took both cops through IT moment by moment.

That's where the law tends to snap into place in an instant first step with officer shaine Rivera, he explained that he and his partner, officer Michael amiet, had been working in off duty detail that day at the richmond hills apartment complex where emas lived. He said they're been working this particular detail for two years. They've been problems in the building, drug trafficking brains.

They began their usual suit of the building, starting at the fifth floor, the top floor. Working their way down, they saw arms, he said, as they came down the stairs to the fourth floor, he was knocking on the door. And when he was lacking on the door due call.

if anyone answer at the door, no one answer the .

door at any pointed the individual, take keys out, open the door to the apartment. He's saying, armas look specious, right then reasonably so why would you keep knocking on the door if no one's is answering? This is what burglars do in the building, the knock.

And then when no one answers, they kick in the door as I approach. And and if you loved me complex, he said he did and he asked if he knew who lived at that particular apartment, and he said he did not. And armas was screaming at the defense table, shaking his had stile.

He told me he was knocking at his friend's apartment door because he wanted a cigarette. His friend wasn't at home, but his friend's wife was there asleep. Army says he eventually woke up and did open the door.

He says he saw him being beat up and that the police told her to go back inside and he did. But armas can't say anything about that. Now he's not taking the stand. His lr didn't want the prosecutor to get a car across examining arms parodic trial. So he's got to suck IT up.

Thank every defendant I spoke to while I was in clever and eventually asked, when do I get to say my thing? When do I get to explain to the judge what happened? The answer often is never anise and nervous and kept putting his hands in his packets soon as he size, and he was advised a couple of times to take his hands out of his packets.

Did he take his inside of his packets? Yes, could keep putting back again and say run three, four times. And how would you react to him putting his .

hand back in this packets? And nervous ly, I mean IT makes police .

is um because typically when people keep reaching into their pockets is the indicator that they have cat abandon a possibility weapon on their person. So IT was spirit.

his turn many spirits represent and i'm going to ask a few questions across examination are right because and I tend to put my hands in my pockets when I ask questions. I don't want to make you nervous, right? I don't have any counter down object.

World spirals is a spirit attorney, an energetic performer. Spirit s tried to show that armas wasn't a menacing figure in that hallway. He was just a guy knocking on the door.

Knocking is opposed to, right? He wasn't doing that. Was IT knocking on the door.

Okay, knocking on the door. Ah, he wasn't spring. No, right. Was a go on, let me in what you don't what's going on now, right? okay.

Next up, officer Michael amma, he seemed more comfortable on the stand than officer Rivera. He didn't sound nervous. He wasn't defensive approach.

mister sponsor. He was still at the door. I walk past them.

And as I approach, I could smell older marijuana. I got stronger. IT was clearly coming from him, and I stopped. And this is key .

to making the stop closure, the smell of raw marijuana eminence from army's person. It's what allows them to detain areas. The prosecutor cemented in the record, in your experience of police officer, can you smell from marijuana in a bag inside someone's pocket, and just marijuana smell the same regardless of what amount i'm if marijuana there is.

sometimes it's stronger than other times .

nobody I smell right now. Reasonable suspicion that officer amiet did not smell in unit blunt wrapped in a baggie in arms' genes pocket. It's not impossible.

He smelled IT, but the level of confidence he's exhibiting here that he can smell any amount of marijuana in a person's pocket, in the hallway of a building where I am certain marijuana is not scarce. No one in the courtroom seems to registered any skepticism about that. Apart from spiro s guys.

we're basically blood house now with your ability to smell marijuana, right?

Officer amy a says after he smell the marijuana, he asked armas if he had any drugs on him.

He didn't say anything. He put his hands up like this. I said, you have any drugs? And he put his hand up like this.

okay? and.

A I search .

and you researched.

yeah, I went into his pocket. One of the pokey was reaching into, there was a small baggie in wanna. I was probably that sized.

IT was a very big draft, a baggy, each efficient beat of this hearing. The cops are chipping away. Army's is chances for success.

Criminal and civil arms is a scary doorknocker. He smells like marijuana. He seems nervous.

He keeps putting his hands in his pockets. He lets me searching him for drugs. It's all very neat and all very different from what army says actually happened.

Then comes one more a dozy, right at the end. Mary cases freezes IT in during her closing. The testimony was that he padded the outside of the poet first, that he did a pair down.

He felt a bulge. He reached into the packet. Spirit is like wowow a bulge where this bulge come from.

A bulge could suggest a weapon which could give officer amy at reason to go into arms' pocket, which can make the search legal, which can make the charges dick, which could hurt the civil lawsuit. Spirit says, wait up. Amy out himself never said anything .

about a volk did not happen today. He said there .

was a in .

my notes that there was a bolt.

The judge says, I heard that I wrote IT down right here, just that in my notes. So no further argument. IT was over. Mary case military, pleased at the end, chatting, animated with the other lawyers at her table.

SHE knows everyone in the court room knows in the who you're going to believe contest, the judge tends to presume the cops are telling the truth, so her side virtually always wins. Spiritus knows IT too. He expected the police to say most of what they said today, but the bulge thing that was a new one out in the hallway spirits is still arguing. You can just invent testimony.

Hear where he did not say that he felt on .

spirit is right. I have the tape. Despite what the judge thought he heard officer ema did not mention above bulger. No bulger spirits tries to boost air mass spirits.

Yes.

this this bulge is going to an issue.

So so how does that work? Well, for me.

he just, even if he can stop you for the marijuana, doesn't mean he can go inside of your packets and pull out countries in reasonable suspicion means he can keep you there and figure out what what's go on on, right? He can pack you down for officer safety, right? But that would have been had a much thrill conversation and direct examination as to, I padded him down over the top. I felt they called. We thought IT was a weapon.

We win IT to .

battle the link. Let me know. I'm .

lado.

Armas is mom. Kelly is the only one who left at my joke. Arms himself is brimmed with frustration. It's been five months. He's having a fight.

Criminal charges he concerns illegitimate because of what happened in the hallway, the building management stick K A three day notice on his apartment door telling him he had to move out or else face of, he said they told him the incident was a violation of the buildings rules. He got extension, but still he says his girlfriend was harassed in front of the building. He thinks that was the same officers who stopped her.

He says he told him as he stayed with arm's upstairs, they rested on a warm. And today he's just listened to police officer is television of the original incident, which bears little resembLance to his own. He said they asked him to stop from down the hall before they even got near um they said, stop, don't move. He says he never told him he didn't know whose door he was knocking on anyway. Why would he be knocking on the door of a person he doesn't know?

They never asked me that question. Who the door this is? They never ask me that they, they stop me and they ask me search me for weapons. They never ask me think about anything .

that they are. There was .

completely force. They live on off under oath. I'm seen there water and life under off 没完。

Judges liberry denied arm's motion to suppress, which means that resisting charge is sticking not good.

Yes, it's always something like this. The police always have this script with the prosecutor.

Paulk style hadn't gone to the suppression hearing. He was still trying to remain invisible and you could but spirit had filled him in and he'd read the judge's opinion, which amounted to to stop the search, all legal SHE get to the bulge. SHE wrote that based on the suspicious door knocking and the smell of marijuana were good.

Know if it's not the smell of ivana by the smell of alcohol is um you know he made a third of movement with his hands or know he he kept moving his hands and I wasn't sure you know that's that's a sign that maybe he's got a weapon. He was acting nervous and I think in fact, the even an air mist case testify that that he was acting nervous. I mean, that's just, yes, I wasn't there, but but that's just scripted. I mean, everybody says ford of loops. Everybody smells mariana.

Another phrase, you hear a lot in these cases reaching toward his waistband. That's where guns live. Waste bans. In the written report, the u. klaw.

Officers wrote that that aras was, quote, fighting with officers and pulling both arms together toward his waste, an area in a little lower down. More strikes were delivered until Spencer stop fighting and stopped reaching toward his whistle band. Armas had no weapons, had no nothing tucked in his waistband.

Why then, in the midst of a fight, would he be reaching toward his waistband? Because waste and is a magic word like third, like older of raise. Ana IT plans a strong seed of reasonable suspicion that blossoms into a tree of probable cause, which can produce untainted fruit, justified use of force in response to resisting a legitimate arrest. I ask paul, fact, when he was working for insurance companies defending cops, whether he'd done the same thing you, claude, was doing now, when they could see a civil lawsuit, the distance, would he meet with city officials or cops about doubling down on the criminal charges to try to stop the civil case from getting traction?

嗯。 Yes, you know, yeah, yeah. Made in city hall, you made over the Price to his office. Put that plan together.

Well, you're talking about this kind of reluctantly. Is is this why no serious ly, I if I like press some button that's that's like I shouldn't be like what why are you?

because. I mean. I mean, you i'm doing my jb know when I was doing that I was doing my jb. And so. I don't I don't regret doing my job. And you know, part of I think this part of part of defending the police in this dynamic is to a to sit down with them, to put that as much of an air take defense of the best offense that you can put together. And I see IT hesitant anty are reluctantly because, you know, I I don't know, you know, you know, proud of you, you know, I may not not proud of that.

Yes, I see. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I didn't mean I didn't. I didn't asking as a way to be like, aren't saying I didn't mean to do that. I just I was more, I was more asking practically like, are you talking from once, you know or you just like, I suspect this is what going on or you like? No, I know this is what's going on.

Yeah, I did do. Yeah, I did this for many years. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So now this is none is a surprising.

Obviously, IT isn't surprising. What's probably surprising is how IT remains a constant source of aggravation and and upset at this is, no, it's the hard to watch. And this is dolling to see this happening in the court room.

People and making statements on the stand that aren't necessarily accurate. They know IT. But do you happen?

Of course, it's upsetting this. If a police officer lies, what's more upsetting is when a system of laws and procedures kicks in to support sanoh ze those lies, so that IT looks and sounds as if justice is happening. I'd even wager that the officers in the prosecutor and the judge, they'd all swear with consciousness, clear that army's hearing was fair by the book. If armas wants these police officers to be held accountable for beating him, he's now got in the message. The criminal court is probably the last place he should look for help.

A few months later, I got a call from paul on my cell phone. Oh.

my god, no.

I was driving in a car heading to the airport in south CarOlina. The connection was terrible.

This is so huge, listeners with minor from heaven, this literally is like, this is that miracle, because they work going to come off the resisting.

A video had appeared on the internet. A White police officer pumalin a black guy in the street after a traffic stop. A woman watching from inside the building across the street had recorded in on her phone her child was next to her what he doing.

The officer beating the motorist, Michael eya, that you could weed smell, the video bounced all over the internet, made its way international news. What happens to a case then when everyone's paying attention? That's next time i'm cereal.

Serials produced by Julie snider, a manual joe ben coho n in me, with additional reporting by editing on the episode from ira glass and ancilla date wednesay danger field as our digital editor research, in fact checking by then fAiling sound design and mixed by still Nelson music clearance by anthy roman settle our director evo the zero staff includes Emily content, Julie whitaker, Cassie holy, Frances went and maternity.

Our music is by adam dorn how wilner with additional music from mamatee I and dan rights our theme sung is by nick thorpe orn and reMarks by adam dorn, special thanks to AManda king support Chris lisa dollar malisa Georgeous JoNathan murray, kill swan bg and Steve David dani heart captain Scott roller 0 oo of the U。 K. Police department and lyn hampton, president of the black shield clellan's afro american police union.

Thanks also to pan dora for hearing the show. The art on our website was made by dario steward of cleveland artist. He created the mirror for this episode. And by math studio, they did the animation. Please check IT out honour website serial podcast that work work, that serial podcast dot work were also, of course, on facebook, twitter, serials are production of this american life and W B E Z chicago.