From [HERE] and [HERE] The white Rancho Cordova police officer who was fired in 2020 for a use-of-force incident that went viral online has been reinstated, the officer’s attorney said. Deputy Brian Fowell was terminated by the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office — which has a contract to provide law enforcement for the city of Rancho Cordova — when a professional standards unit investigation concluded Fowell used excessive force against a 14-year-old boy. The incident was captured in a cellphone video less than a minute long, posted in April 2020, and spread across social media, garnering millions of views, and was even retweeted by then-Sen. and vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris, who called it “a horrific abuse of power.”

Fowell appealed his termination in October 2020. And in a decision released Monday, he won his job back. An arbitrator, an independent judge for internal police matters, ruled in Fowell’s favor.

William Creger, Fowell’s attorney, said the arbitrator said in his ruling that while the Sheriff’s Office was entitled to discipline Fowell, termination in this case wasn’t warranted. “The sheriff’s office was entitled to take Deputy Fowell out of the public spotlight for awhile,” Creger said. “The arbitrator said (Fowell) didn’t do everything perfectly, he could’ve handled it in a different way ... but it didn’t need to rise to the level of termination.” Creger said Fowell’s exemplary record as an officer also factored into the arbitrator’s decision. In 2019, Fowell was awarded employee of the quarter in 2019. That same year, he also earned a life-saving medal when he performed CPR on a young girl who was dying in front her family. Because peace officer personnel records are still broadly protected by California law, Creger said he was unable to provide more detail. A Sacramento Bee request for the Sheriff’s Office investigation into the incident was denied, saying the case did not fall within existing public records law. [only positive or “good” public records about cops are readily available to the public]

The incident involving Fowell dominated local and national headlines in the weeks before protests swept across the U.S. in the wake of the May 2020 death of George Floyd. The video clip was shared millions of times on social media. In the video, Fowell can be seen pushing Tufono’s head into the ground as he tries to turn the teen onto his stomach. In the widely circulated video the white cop is seen punching the 14-year-old boy while pinning him to the ground on Monday as he tried to detain him.

The cop, who is large, appears to be perhaps 3 times the size of the small Black boy.

Fowell strikes Tufono in the abdomen twice. He then grabs Tufono’s right wrist and jerks his face down on the ground, pinning his arm behind his back.

The officer tried to detain the youth, whom he suspected of “criminal activity.” From a distance, the white cop claimed that somehow he witnessed a hand-to-hand sale of tobacco.

How the cop could see tobacco or money in a small child’s hands from a distance is another white supremacy mystery. One that the mostly white media rarely attempt to solve in the countless interactions between Black people and the police reported on and recorded. The Supreme Court has explained that in order for the police to stop you police must have reasonable articulable suspicion that there is criminal activity afoot and that you are involved in the activity. Police may not act on on the basis of an inchoate or unclear and unparticularized suspicion or a hunch - there must be some specific articulable facts along with reasonable inferences from those facts to justify the intrusion. The systems of authority and white supremacy/racism are predicated upon black people's belief in many, many lies. The 4th Amendment right to be free from unreasonable seizures and searches and right “to be secure" or to move freely without apprehension of oppression as you come and go is one of those lies. An illusion, but we still believe.

According to the police when Fowell approached Tufono, the teen refused to identify himself, the Sheriff’s Office said at the time. “Having reasonable suspicion that criminal activity was occurring, the deputy attempted to detain the juvenile so he could conduct further investigation,” the Sheriff’s Office said at the time. “The juvenile became physically resistive at that time, causing the deputy to lose control of his handcuffs, which landed several feet away.” Reasonable