THE INNER-CITY NEWS - July 25, 2018 - July 31, 2018
COOL JUSTICE Energetic Indifference:
How Hartford Shafts Brutality Victims, Cops and Citizens at Large By Andy Thibault
The former college football star will never walk like a normal person and he will never run or jump again. Since just before Christmas 14 years ago, severe pain and all its related maladies have been his everpresent companions. Hartford Police pulverized his knee and bashed him in the head repeatedly with a baton. At age 43 now, he’s still too young for a necessary knee replacement. In a series of preliminary operations to try to help him walk, a plate and screws have been inserted and removed as his cartilage disappeared, leaving what is left of his knee bone on bone. His surgeon evaluated the pain as “a 10” on “a scale of one to 10.” His crime? Traveling from Wethersfield to patronize a Hartford restaurant. Tylon Outlaw played college football at Missouri Valley College where he was the top tackler in his conference and an honorable mention All American National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics [NAIA] cornerback. Following that, he also played several years professionally in the Arena Football League. He works as a tutor at Bloomfield High School in addition to coaching the football team to a state championship in 2015. Now, the city of Hartford is shafting both this beat down victim and the cop stuck with a $454,197 jury verdict for civil rights violations. This is not an isolated case. A federal magistrate judge has called the city’s practice of trying to cut loose cops found liable for civil rights violations “bewildering,” questioning “what capable officer, in his or her right mind, would want to work for such a city?” The police union’s Twitter account has even cited the judge’s remarks. U.S. Magistrate Judge William Garfinkel wrote the following opinion in a Nov. 13, 2017 ruling in a related case in which the city stiffed both the brutality victims and the cops. Garfinkel’s entire opinion should be circulated widely. Of note, Garfinkel previously served as an Assistant District Attorney in New York County and, as a long-time practitioner of martial arts, earned a black belt in Tang Soo Do. “The City’s position, in addition to being unsupported by precedent, is bewildering. How can Hartford maintain a qualified police force when it is willing to expose its officers to personal liability for compensatory damages for civil rights judgments? What capable officer, in his or her right mind, would want to work for such a city? And what message does this send to the community, the residents of Hartford, when their governing officials promote a position that, in all likelihood, will leave them without full compensation for injuries in the event that they are the victims of a civil rights violation?” The coach still has a lien on his house for hospital bills cited in his federal jury award, which was affirmed in March of
this year by the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Not only that, the city has filed an action to bill him about $10,000 for court costs. His case sheds light not only on the city of Hartford’s unscrupulous legal contortions, but also on its sordid history of willful failure to investigate brutality thoroughly and properly and to hold those responsible accountable. The legal term for this failure is deliberate indifference. In Hartford’s practice and policy, we should call it what it is: energetic indifference to the rule of law. Occasionally a federal judge will have the integrity and sense of duty to call out these practices, as U.S. District Judge Janet Arterton did in 2003, only a year before the unprovoked attack on the coach: “ ... Hartford had a policy or pervasive pattern of deliberate indifference to the possibility that its officers were prone to use excessive force, as demonstrated principally by Hartford’s failure to reasonably investigate complaints and the absence of punitive consequences for any accused officer, that such policy or pattern may have emboldened or implanted a sense of impunity in its officers, resulting in the challenged first offense by this defendant, and that the offense would not have occurred had proper investigation and police discipline procedures been in place.” A decade earlier, I was part of a team that documented patterns of unchecked police brutality for a two-part series published by The Hartford Courant. The series, entitled “Violent officers take toll on public trust, pocketbook” and “Flawed system shields violent officers from detection; Procedures, politics hamper Review board’s effectivenesss,” revealed that no one responsible for keeping police brutality in check in Hartford -- not even the chief of police -- knew how many officers were accused of brutality or who they are. It’s likely they still don’t know. It seems abundantly clear to any reasonable person that they don’t want to know. A month before the Bloomfield coach was so severely beaten, the same officer, Michael Allen, actually broke his police baton over the head of another civilian. In subsequent depositions, Patrick Hartnett, Hartford police chief from 2004-06, and a former Los Angeles county sheriff, testified they had never heard of an officer striking anyone hard enough to break his baton. Significantly, Hartnett and the Hartford Police Department concluded the shattering blow to the head of the other civilian was “inadvertent” and “necessary / reasonable” force. Put simply, there is no valid or competent oversight of the Hartford Police Department. Instead, there is negligence and malfeasance on a grand scale. The U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals found that an annual report from the so-called Civilian Police review Board -- mandated by Hartford city ordinance since 1992 -- apparently has been issued
only once, in 1994. “The record suggests that annual reports were not prepared for the other years,” the U.S. Second Circuit found. The federal appeals court noted: According to the 1994 Report, the Review Board’s early meetings were met with “mass protest by the police union”; officers “jeered and insulted both the Board and complainants” and threatened some with “bodily harm.” (1994 Report 2, 1213.) The Board also reported difficulties in carrying out its duties, since “[r]epeated requests to the Chief of Police regarding ordinance mandated data ha[d] been met with marked, delayed responses ... or no response at all”; and the data that were received were “woefully incomplete.” (Id. at 4.) The 1994 Report stated that the IAD seemed unable “to complete investigations in a timely manner,” as a result of which a “public perception that officers w[ould] not be appropriately disciplined [wa]s reinforced.” (Id. at 7-8.) And the IAD in-
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vestigation files often gave the impression “that the complainant rather than the officer ... [wa]s being investigated by IAD.” (Id. at 7.) In its first 17 months, the Board reviewed 26 cases, 18 of which involved complaints of excessive force. Of the 18 excessive-force complaints, the Board sustained 14; IAD had sustained only two. The Hartford Courant series also showed that brutality happens in the afternoon in the shadows of the governor’s office or in the middle of the night in a housing project. It happens when an officer has a victim alone, and it happens in front of crowds of witnesses. The victims are men and women, black and white, poor and prosperous, criminals and law-abiding citizens. People have been beaten for making smart remarks, for asking why they are being arrested, for asking an officer why he is beating someone else -- for doing anything that seems to question an officer’s authority. “I think we have a problem,” said the chief
at that time, Ronald Loranger, a 27-year veteran of the force. “I think we’ve had a problem for a long time. I think there are bad apples on this job that when given the chance will use excessive force. ... I think you’re talking less than 5 percent of the force.” More than 40 current and retired officers interviewed agreed that the department has a brutality problem. Some force is necessary to maintain control of potentially dangerous situations, they said, but between 10 percent and 25 percent of the officers go beyond that. This was the maelstrom that coach Tylon Outlaw walked into on Dec. 17, 2004. The coach had gone to a Hartford restaurant to meet with friends regarding a proposed business venture. Upon leaving, he spoke with several other friends he recognized in a taxi cab. An undercover Hartford detective driving an unmarked car yelled at the coach, “Hey motherfucker.” Perceiving this to be an informal urban pleasantry, he responded in kind. The plain clothes detective, Troy Gordon, did not identify himself as a police officer. He did, however, park and ultimately charge at the coach, kicking him in the stomach. As the coach was able to block a second kick with his hands, he was struck in the head from behind with a police baton by another officer. He fell to the ground, yelling for help. On his back he curled into a fetal position as he was repeatedly struck in the head, arms and legs with a baton and kicked in the back and stomach. As he tried to cover his face, officer Michael Allen hit him in the right knee with the baton, breaking his kneecap. Among the eyewitnesses, a ballroom dance instructor described the scene this way: “A crowd of people 10 converged on what looked to be one person ... seemed to be multiple people, five or six, again, beating somebody up pretty badly, kicking, throwing punches … it was pretty brutal.” Upon entering a nearby restaurant, the witness exclaimed: “You should see what’s going on outside, the police are really wailing into somebody ... “Holy shit guys you should have seen them. I mean, there’s Hartford, the Hartford cops are beating the shit out of some guy outside… yeah, man, it’s freaking crazy.” Clearly, there were more than two officers involved in the beating of the coach, either as participants or witnesses. It is not unusual for the city of Hartford to hide the identities of cops in these matters. Indeed, in an unrelated case filed in 2011, the late U.S. District Judge Mark Kravitz wrote: “Discovery is not supposed to be a shell game, where the hidden ball is moved round and round and only revealed after so many false guesses are made and so much money is squandered ... Defense counsel is not entitled to transform discovCon’t on page 12