Alabama Judge Blocks Release Of Video Showing Police K‑9 Mauling A 51-Year-Old To Death After A False Burglary Call

This F*****g Judge said releas­ing the footage of POLICE using a canine to kill an inno­cent man could cause chaos and jeop­ar­dize police safety.
This goes to the heart of what this writer has been say­ing all along, that pros­e­cu­tors and judges are crim­i­nal­ly com­plic­it in the bur­geon­ing and exis­ten­tial cri­sis of police vio­lence against peo­ple of col­or in America.

The lash and shack­les remain two pri­ma­ry sym­bols of mate­r­i­al degra­da­tion fixed in the his­tor­i­cal mem­o­ry of slav­ery in the Americas. Yet as recount­ed by states, abo­li­tion­ists, trav­ellers, and most impor­tant­ly slaves them­selves, per­haps the most ter­ri­fy­ing and effec­tive tool for dis­ci­plin­ing black bod­ies and dom­i­nat­ing their space was the dog. This data is drawn from archival research and the pub­lished mate­ri­als of for­mer slaves, nov­el­ists, slave own­ers, abo­li­tion­ists, Atlantic trav­el­ers, and police reports to link the sys­tems of slave hunt­ing in Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, and the US South through­out the eigh­teenth and nine­teenth centuries.
Slave hounds were skill­ful­ly honed biopow­er pred­i­cat­ed upon scent­ing, hear­ing, sight­ing, out­run­ning, out­last­ing, sig­nal­ing, attack­ing, and some­times ter­mi­nat­ing, black run­aways.
These ani­mals per­me­at­ed slave soci­eties through­out the Americas and bol­stered European ambi­tions for colo­nial expan­sion, indige­nous extir­pa­tion, eco­nom­ic extrac­tion, and social dom­i­na­tion in slave soci­eties. as dogs were bred to track and hunt enslaved run­aways, slave com­mu­ni­ties uti­lized resources from the nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment to obfus­cate the ani­mal’s height­ened sens­es, which pro­duced suc­cess­ful escapes on mul­ti­ple occasions.
This insis­tence of slaves’ human­i­ty, and the inten­si­ty of dog attacks against black resis­tance in the Caribbean and US South, both served as proof of slav­ery’s inhu­man­i­ty to abo­li­tion­ists. Examining racial­ized canine attacks also con­tex­tu­al­izes rep­re­sen­ta­tions of anti-black­ness and inter­species ideas of race. An Atlantic net­work of breed­ing, train­ing and sales facil­i­tat­ed the use of slave hounds in each major American slave soci­ety to sub­due human prop­er­ty, actu­al­ize legal cat­e­gories of sub­ju­ga­tion, and build effi­cient eco­nom­ic and state regimes.
This inte­gral process is often over­looked in his­to­ries of slav­ery, the African Diaspora, and colonialism.
By vio­lent­ly enforc­ing slavery’s regimes of racism and prof­it, expos­ing the human­i­ty of the enslaved and deprav­i­ty of enslavers, and enrag­ing transna­tion­al abo­li­tion­ists, hounds were cen­tral to the rise and fall of slav­ery in the Americas.(aca​d​e​m​ic​.oup​.com)

Though rather beau­ti­ful­ly writ­ten this pré­cis miss­es the mark in its final con­clu­sion when it opined,“hounds were cen­tral to the rise and fall of slav­ery in the Americas”.
Police slavers across America con­tin­ue to use Canine hounds on the bod­ies of Black Americans with cal­lous and degen­er­a­tive dis­re­gard backed up by pros­e­cu­tors, and judges all the way up the Federal judiciary.
The fol­low­ing exam­ple is just one iter­a­tion of the macabre and demon­ic prac­tice that is cou­pled with the pre­pos­ter­ous asser­tion that releas­ing video footage of these atroc­i­ties will jeop­ar­dize police safe­ty. When police act in that way they endan­ger their lives, no one does it to them.
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A fed­er­al judge in Alabama denied a family’s motion to have footage released show­ing a police dog maul­ing their loved one until he died from those injuries. The offi­cer believes mak­ing the footage pub­lic could “jeop­ar­dize police safe­ty” and prompt “civ­il unrest.”
On Wednesday, May 18, Chief U.S. District Judge Emily C. Marks denied Joseph Pettaway’s fam­i­ly a motion ask­ing her to remove the con­fi­den­tial­i­ty des­ig­na­tion from police body­cam videos of the deceased being bit­ten to death by a Montgomery Police Department canine. While the fam­i­ly and their attor­ney believe releas­ing the footage will pro­mote trans­paren­cy sur­round­ing the four-year-old case, the judge is stand­ing with the city’s lawyers, who claim, that releas­ing the video will cause chaos.
The fam­i­ly of mis­ter Pettaway filed a civ­il law­suit in 2019 against the city and the police depart­ment for vio­lat­ing Pettaway’s Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights.

The claim alleges on Sunday, July 8, 2018, police engaged in exces­sive force when they allowed Niko, a dog on the force, to sink his teeth so deeply into the thigh of the man (even before ver­i­fy­ing if he was a crim­i­nal) caus­ing his wrong­ful death. 

At the time, police believed Pettaway might have been a bur­glar break­ing into a most­ly emp­ty house at 3809 Cresta Circle. They were alert­ed by “an anony­mous report that there appeared to be an unknown per­son inside the house,” the law­suit alleges.

This is when they released Niko on Pettaway and cap­tured the fatal attack on the body­cams in ques­tion. The suit also claims the police failed to pro­vide med­ical aid to the man dur­ing crit­i­cal moments after the dog bite, allow­ing him to bleed to death.

The fam­i­ly attor­ney, told Atlanta Black Star Pettaway “was in a house that was being remod­eled,” but unlike pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed, “he was not in his mother’s house.”

While he was in the house, there was anoth­er per­son in there with him. Both men (at some point) believed they were alone in the house.

The Attorney states, “There was a per­son in the house when Mr. Pettaway entered who did call 911 because he could not [rec­og­nize] JLP’s face. This per­son had been work­ing with Joseph Lee remod­el­ing the house. He has lat­er acknowl­edged that he knows JLP but did not know it was JLP at the time. The time of entry was about 2:40am.

The Montgomery police say the home­own­er also approved them to come into their home with the dogs in an effort to pro­tect their prop­er­ty, the Montgomery Advertiser states.

Still, the law­suit says there was “at no time” a rea­son­able threat to the MPD, and no rea­son for the ani­mal to be released, and once released, they had a respon­si­bil­i­ty to save Pettaway’s life.

The law­suit read, “From the screams and/​or pleas of Mr. Pettaway heard by MPD police dur­ing the attack … They knew that the police dog was attack­ing Joseph Lee Pettaway and knew that he was being vio­lent­ly injured by the dog, i.e., he was being mauled and his flesh was being torn and ripped by the police dog .”

“After the police dog began attack­ing Mr. Pettaway inside the house, [MPD police] allowed the police dog to con­tin­ue this vio­lent attack on Mr. Pettaway, dur­ing which time no MPD police­man entered the house and inter­vened or took any actions that effec­tive­ly restrained or ceased the police dog’s attack on Mr. Pettaway.”

Nix told ABS that the city doesn’t believe the offi­cers were in error dur­ing any part of the inci­dent, say­ing, “The City and its offi­cers are claim­ing that exces­sive force was not used and that the release of the dog was prop­er. They also claim that the depart­ment pol­i­cy was to not ren­der aid to a sus­pect injured by them and that , there­fore, they are not liable to Mr. Pettaway’s estate for the fact that he bled to death.”

“The police on the scene, about 6 or 7 of them, did not even try to stop his bleed­ing with direct pres­sure,” the lawyer continued.

The fam­i­ly filed a motion to have the footage show­ing the gris­ly killing released but has been blocked at every turn. 

“Our claim is that med­ical aid is a require­ment of the con­sti­tu­tion in this cir­cum­stance and that it was the pol­i­cy enact­ed and enforced by the city that caused the vio­la­tion of the con­sti­tu­tion and JLP’s death, there­fore, cre­at­ing a cause of action called a Monell claim. We argue that med­ical aid should have been ren­dered to stop the bleed­ing,” Nix maintains. 

The city’s attor­neys were first to object to their dis­tri­b­u­tion. They argued the release of the video could put offi­cers in dan­ger. They fur­ther argued the footage is so dis­turb­ing it pos­si­bly could wind up “facil­i­tat­ing civ­il unrest” and would impact law enforce­ment pri­va­cy, caus­ing “annoy­ance, embar­rass­ment” for those on duty believ­ing they were doing their jobs in good faith.

A judge has filed the videos under a pro­tec­tive order, stop­ping it from being released to the public.

The lawyer reveals the fam­i­ly has heard the 911 call and seen the police body­cam video. The lawyers also ren­dered to the court a time­line of events based on the video. It was sub­se­quent­ly sup­pressed from the pub­lic record. On Wednesday, May 18, Griffin Sikes, anoth­er attor­ney on the case, said these claims are not valid and the peo­ple have a right to see the footage, which is cru­cial evi­dence in the civ­il suit. “The United States courts are the people’s courts,” he remind­ed the city.