FROM THE GAINSVILLE, FLORIDA, SUN:
GPD police dog released on, bites 10-year-old; inquiry under way
By Cindy Swirko
Staff writer
Gainesville police are reviewing an incident in which an officer responding to a burglary call Wednesday released a police dog on a 10-year-old boy, who was bitten.
Capt. Ed Book said it is routine that K-9 bites be reviewed. He said police later learned the woman who had reported the burglary allegedly has mental health issues.
Bitten was Bryce Bates of the 3300 block of Northwest 21st Drive. Bates said his mother had asked him to get the mail and that he had ridden his bicycle a short distance from his condominium when he saw a police car speeding toward him.
The 10-year-old, who is 5 feet tall and weighs 85 pounds, said he became scared, jumped off his bike and began running for home.
"I saw the police car, and he was speeding real fast. I thought he was going to hit me, so I jumped off my bike and ran," Bryce said. "I heard the dog barking and looked behind and saw it running after me."
The dog caught Bryce just as he reached his front door, biting the back of his left thigh. Bryce had one puncture wound that tore the flesh and several smaller bite wounds and scratches.
Brice's parents, Ferris Bates and Cheron Hampton-Bates, said they insisted that their son be taken by ambulance to the hospital, where he was treated and released.
The incident began about 3:20 p.m. with a burglary-in-progress call in the 3400 block of Northwest 21st Drive. Cpl. Tim Durst, with his dog Grady, responded and saw a youth on a bicycle in the area.
Police say Durst yelled for the boy to stop. The officer then released Grady, which bit the boy on the leg and caused minor injuries, Book said.
Book said details, including whether Bryce matched any descriptions that might have been given by the woman, will be part of the review.
"We believe that there were some warnings given. He didn't stop," Book said of the incident involving the boy. "We think he probably got off his bicycle and ran, but we don't know if he was running from police or running because he was scared. There is a difference.
"Unfortunately ... it was only well after we had this K-9 incident that we learned that the woman has a mental health condition that causes her to see things or imagine things," Book said.
GPD's manual regarding the use of dogs for apprehension states a K-9 can be released: to prevent the escape of a person whom the officer believes has committed a felony offense; if the subject has outstanding warrants; or if the person is believed to be armed and a serious threat to officers.
The officer must warn the subject to stop, according to the manual, and state that the dog will be released if the subject does not stop.
Bryce will be a fifth-grader at Glen Springs Elementary School. His mother said she saw Bryce running to the door with the dog behind him and initially thought it was a neighborhood dog chasing him.
"It attacked him right in the doorway. I saw the dog just bear down on him and moving and tugging and constantly biting and biting," Hampton-Bates said. "(Bryce) didn't know the officer was telling him to stop. He was screaming my name the whole way here."
Hampton-Bates said the incident "made me question whether (Bryce) is the victim of profiling" because he is a black youth. She added that she spoke with Police Chief Tony Jones and that he assured her the incident will be fully reviewed.
Gainesville lawyer Robert Rush, who has won settlements against GPD in other dog bite cases, questioned whether police had any probable cause against the boy to release the dog.
"If he gets off the bicycle and runs, what probable cause do they have to believe that this child is an imminent threat and danger?" Rush said. "That's a misuse of the dog. It's a complete misuse of the dog."
Bryce Bates will remember this for the rest of his life, and he will come to learn that the police set their dogs on him for no other reason than the fact that he is an African-American child. As I said at the top, I can't imagine the police sicing vicious dogs on a blond, blue-eyed child riding his bike in his neighborhood.
If I remember correctly, it was in the state of Florida where a book store had a display of monkey books in its window with a picture of President Obama in the center of the display.
10 comments:
"We THINK he PROBABLY got off his bicycle . . ."? Sure.
"Bryce Bates will remember this for the rest of his life, and he will come to learn that the police set their dogs on him for no other reason than the fact that he is an African-American child"
I looked up and down in the story for anything at all to do with race, and it is in this conclusion/summary that race actually first appears. Other than the mention of profiling, and that involves an investigation which might determine if race was involved. Without any evidence, the conclusion is making a leap of imagination.
Unless of course a paragraph describing racial reasons was left out, or the investigation into "profiling" determined that it did happen and that was left out also.
"Imagine the police doing this to a blond, blue-eyed kid riding his bike in the neighborhood:"
Believe it or not, there is police brutality and overboard incidents of white police against white youth and. It's rather common, actually. But it's a lot harder to play the race card on that.
dmarks,
You may not like to face reality, but reality will show that more A.A. males get stopped for minor vehicle violations or pretext violations than do white males, even though they are a smaller percentage of the driving population:
"While police catch some criminals through the use of pretext stops, far more innocent people are likely to be affected by these practices than criminals. Indeed, the black community as a whole undoubtedly needs the protection of the police more than other segments of society because African- Americans are more likely than others to be victims of crime. Ironically, it is members of that same community who are likely to feel the consequences of pretextual stops and be treated like criminals. It is the reverse of the usual Fourth Amendment case, in that there is nothing ghostlike or indefinite about those whose rights would be vindicated by addressing these police practices. On the contrary, the victims are easy to identify because they are the great majority of black people who are subjected to these humiliating and difficult experiences but who have done absolutely nothing to deserve this treatment--except to resemble, in a literally skin-deep way, a small group of criminals. While whites who have done nothing wrong generally have little need to fear constitutional violations by the police, this is decidedly untrue for blacks. Blacks attract undesirable police attention whether they do anything to bring it on themselves or not. This makes "driving while black" a most unusual issue of constitutional criminal procedure: a search and seizure question that directly affects a large, identifiable group of almost entirely innocent people.
B. The Criminalization of Blackness
The fact that the cost of "driving while black" is imposed almost exclusively on the innocent raises another point. Recall that by allowing the police to stop, question, and sometimes even search drivers without regard to the real motives for the search, the Supreme Court has, in effect, turned a blind eye to the use of pretextual stops on a racial basis. That is, as long as the officer or the police department does not come straight out and say that race was the reason for a stop, the stop can always be accomplished based on some other reason--a pretext. Police are therefore free to use blackness as a surrogate indicator or proxy for criminal propensity. While it seems unfair to view all members of one racial or ethnic group as criminal suspects just because some members of that group engage in criminal activity, this is what the law permits.
SOURCE
By any standard, the results of Lamberth's analysis are startling. First, the turnpike violator census, in which observers in moving cars recorded the races and speeds of the cars around them, showed that blacks and whites violated the traffic laws at almost exactly the same rate; there was no statistically significant difference in the way they drove. Thus, driving behavior alone could not explain differences in how police might treat black and white drivers. With regard to arrests, 73.2% of those stopped and arrested were black, while only 13.5% of the cars on the road had a black driver or passenger. Lambert notes that the disparity between these two numbers "is statistically vast." The number of standard deviations present--54.27--means that the probability that the racial disparity is a random result "is infinitesimally small." Radio and patrol logs yielded similar results. Blacks are approximately 35% of those stopped, though they are only 13.5% of those on the road--19.45 standard deviations. Considering all stops in all three types of records surveyed, the chance that 34.9% of the cars combined would have black drivers or occupants "is substantially less than one in one billion."
SOURCE
Please read this report and then come back and state that you believe this was not racial profiling of a black child.
An uncle of my wife was one of the first black sheriffs in Los Angeles County.
He was stopped one day in a very racially diverse area for essentially DWB.
As he tried to explain to the young, white, about to be arresting officer that this was not what he really wanted to do, he was told to shut up and mind his place.
Imagine the officer's surprise when he finally called in for information on his "suspect" to learn that not only indeed was his "perpetrator" a sheriff too, but, as an officer, outranked him.
While that was awhile back, this type of behavior does still happen.
Call it profiling, call it strategic, but I can't believe any of us would want to be judged guilty or suspicious because some in our communities choose to break the law.
White people are generally accorded the grace of presumed innocence, people of color, less so.
Shaw: I am facing reality, and the reality is that people of all colors get stopped for traffic violations, and people of all colors (including Dave's "colored" people) experience police abuse and brutality.
Claiming that race is involved in a situation when you don't have evidence of it yet is a leap of imagination. I will readily accept any evidence if it is offered.
It's crying wolf, and a chorus of such cries drowns out actual instances of racism.
Which this yet may prove to be.. .once evidence comes forth.
Oh, and as for "Please read this report and then come back and state that you believe this was not racial profiling of a black child."
The report made no mention of this particular incident.
dmarks,
I'm aware that the report I asked you to read is not about the incident in Gainsville. I wanted you to read it as background to what is practiced in this country: Racial profiling--even on children.
It's always possible that any one particular incident of this kind had nothing to do with race, but since blacks do, in fact, get stopped or otherwise receive unwelcome attention of police more often than whites do, it's a reasonable starting assumption that this was yet another example of the same phenomenon.
At my previous job, one of the executive managers was a black man whom I got to know well enough to talk frankly with about these kinds of issues. He made a six-figure salary and lived in a good neighborhood, but he mentioned that he had been stopped several times by police for no good reason, driving within a few blocks of where he lived. I'm actually older than he was and I've never been stopped by the police for anything, no matter what part of town I was in.
(He had previously been a police officer himself, so he wasn't biased against the police.)
Racially-discriminatory treatment by the police is still a reality, unfortunately. As I say, it's always possible any one given incident had nothing to do with race at all. But it's not very likely.
Here's my favorite part of the story:
"We believe that there were some warnings given. He didn't stop," Book said of the incident involving the boy. "We think he probably got off his bicycle and ran, but we don't know if he was running from police or running because he was scared. There is a difference."
Glad to have that cleared up.
The kid is 5 feet tall and weighs 85 pounds. And the episode took place in broad day light.
He's lucky the officer didn't just shoot him.
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