20 Philly Cops Beat Him, Say He Injured Himself

Photo Illustration by Alex Williams/The Daily Beast
Photo Illustration by Alex Williams/​The Daily Beast

PHILADELPHIA — The Philadelphia Police Department says up to 20 offi­cers were jus­ti­fied in beat­ing and pos­si­bly taser­ing a black man, while call­ing him a “piece of shit.” Furthermore, offi­cers had prob­a­ble cause to charge him with assault and said he delib­er­ate­ly injured him­self after get­ting beat­en. Video of 22-year-old Tyree Carroll’s beat­ing was post­ed online Wednesday by Los Angeles-based jour­nal­ist Jasmyne Cannick. The video’s release has trig­gered an inves­ti­ga­tion by the Philly PD’s Internal Affairs Division. Police spokesman Lieutenant John Stanford said it was a drug bust in which the sus­pect vio­lent­ly resist­ed and even bit sev­er­al officers.

Beating some­one while you call them a piece of shit, there’s no expla­na­tion for that, unless you want to admit you’re a racist,” Cannick told The Daily Beast. On April 3 Carroll was rid­ing his bike to his grandmother’s home in the north­west Philly neigh­bor­hood of East Germantown, where he lives, before offi­cers said they stopped him for drugs. The offi­cial, pre­lim­i­nary police ver­sion of events released Thursday after­noon is as fol­lows: Undercover nar­cotics offi­cers say at 11:44 p.m. they attempt­ed to stop Carroll for an unspec­i­fied “nar­cotics violation.”

As the offi­cers stopped the defen­dant, he began to fight with the offi­cers, bit­ing one of the offi­cers a total of three times.” The video doesn’t show Carroll start­ing the vir­tu­al­ly one-sided fight. Police say Carroll bit anoth­er offi­cer dur­ing the mêlée, and that even­tu­al­ly “oth­er respond­ing offi­cers arrived on loca­tion and were final­ly able to get the male into cus­tody.” According to police, Carroll was car­ry­ing more than 5 grams of crack cocaine. Police claim that Carroll was trans­port­ed to the hos­pi­tal to be treat­ed for self-inflict­ed wounds “after inten­tion­al­ly strik­ing his own head against the pro­tec­tive shield locat­ed in the police vehi­cle” —just like the spu­ri­ous claim made against Freddie Gray. Carroll is in jail await­ing his next court appear­ance on charges of aggra­vat­ed assault, sim­ple assault, reck­less endan­ger­ment, resist­ing arrest, and pos­ses­sion of crack cocaine. (Carroll is inel­i­gi­ble for bail because he was on pro­ba­tion at the time of his arrest.) A fam­i­ly spokesper­son told CBS News that Carroll admits to bit­ing offi­cers because they had him in a choke­hold, which as an asth­mat­ic caused him to fear for his life.

Regarding the use of Tasers, the police said: “The infor­ma­tion that we have at this time indi­cates that use of force reports were com­plet­ed at the time of the inci­dent, indi­cat­ing the strikes and con­trol holds attempt­ed dur­ing the inci­dent. At this time there is no indi­ca­tion that an elec­tron­ic con­trol weapon was used despite hear­ing the offi­cer state ‘here comes the taser.’” There are seri­ous ques­tions about the police state­ment, not least of all that it is flat­ly con­tra­dict­ed by the nar­ra­tor of the video, who says offi­cers used their Tasers sev­er­al times on the already-sub­dued Carroll. “For hun­dreds of years, noth­ing has changed about how police treat black peo­ple,” Cannick said. “The only thing that is dif­fer­ent is that now there is a mech­a­nism, now every­one and their grand­ma is tak­ing video, so now the pub­lic at-large has to see it.” That’s exact­ly what hap­pened in the case of Najee Rivera. Last February, Officers Kevin Robinson and Sean McKnight were charged with bru­tal­ly beat­ing Rivera after they knocked him off of his scoot­er with their patrol car in 2013. Then the offi­cers filed charges against Rivera — who was still in the hos­pi­tal for an orbital frac­ture – for assault­ing offi­cers dur­ing a law­ful stop.

It was not until Rivera’s girl­friend brought video of the beat­ing to author­i­ties that the charges against Rivera were dropped and the dis­trict attor­ney and a grand jury began inves­ti­gat­ing the offi­cers. When The Daily Beast asked the D.A.’s office if it had reviewed the Carroll video, and if it had any plans for its own inves­ti­ga­tion, spokesman Cameron Kline respond­ed suc­cinct­ly: “The easy answer is, no.” Kline explained that the D.A.’s pro­ce­dure was to wait until Internal Affairs had com­plet­ed its own inves­ti­ga­tion or until Internal Affairs or the depart­ment asked the dis­trict attor­ney to assist. Simply put: The police depart­ment is being left to inves­ti­gate itself by the dis­trict attor­ney despite clear video evi­dence of exces­sive force. The video of Carroll’s arrest proves at the very least that Philadelphia can­not sim­ply take the word of its police or even trust the D.A. to watch the watch­men. An exter­nal review, per­haps by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, may be Carroll’s only chance of being cleared of trumped up charges and get­ting jus­tice against the men who are sworn to pro­tect and serve. Read more here: http://​www​.thedai​ly​beast​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​s​/​2​0​1​5​/​0​7​/​1​0​/​2​0​-​p​h​i​l​l​y​-​c​o​p​s​-​b​e​a​t​-​h​i​m​-​b​l​a​m​e​-​h​i​m​-​f​o​r​-​i​n​j​u​r​i​e​s​-​a​n​d​-​c​h​a​r​g​e​-​h​i​m​-​w​i​t​h​-​a​s​s​a​u​l​t​.​h​tml