Black Judge Finds White PG County Cop Guilty and Not Credible after He Claimed He Slammed a Handcuffed Black Man Headfirst into the Concrete By Mistake (causing paralysis) During an Expired Tags Stop
/From [HERE] and [HERE] Two and a half years after Demonte Ward-Blake was paralyzed during a traffic stop in Prince George’s County, a judge ruled Wednesday that the police officer who arrested him was guilty of second-degree assault, misconduct in office and reckless endangerment in connection with the man’s injuries.
Cpl. Bryant Strong, flanked by 20 officers in the courtroom behind him, showed no reaction as Circuit Court Judge Daneeka V. Cotton read her guilty verdict in the bench trial that started Monday of this high-profile encounter. Cotton deliberated for three hours after hearing testimony from other officers at the scene, use-of-force experts, Ward-Blake’s former fiancee and Strong himself.
As Cotton read each guilty verdict, those there to support the late Ward-Blake in the packed courtroom exhaled in relief.
“Thank Jesus,” said one woman, whose son was killed by Prince George’s police in the 1990s.
“Amen. Amen. Amen,” the family’s civil attorney said.
Ward-Blake’s mother, Rena Ward, slowly smiled as she was hugged by a line of friends, family and State’s Attorney Aisha Braveboy.
Ward-Blake died late last year at the age of 26 from injuries he suffered in an unrelated shooting. Before his death, he had used a wheelchair because of his paralysis, which left him mostly immobile from the neck down.
Strong, who is now 32, waived his right to a jury trial and instead elected to have his case heard before the judge alone. He will be sentenced in July and faces up to 10 years in prison.
A grand jury indicted Strong in the fall of 2020, nearly a year after his encounter with Ward-Blake on Oct. 17, 2019, in Oxon Hill, Md., on the three misdemeanor charges.
During her ruling, Cotton said her job in reviewing the testimony and evidence was to decide which of the two conflicting versions of the traffic stop was the truth. Though Ward-Blake’s encounter with Prince George’s County police was recorded on cruiser dash-cam footage and cellphone video, the assault itself was not.
Ward-Blake had been pulled over for expired tags; that he became verbally outraged when a different officer pulled a gun because his girlfriend’s 6-year-old daughter was in the back seat; and that throughout parts of the encounter captured on film he had been compliant with all officer commands, including when he was detained, placed in handcuffs and sat on the curb.
Strong then decided to arrest Ward-Blake for disorderly conduct and walk him to the side of his cruiser, where he conducted a body search.
The judge found that Strong had become fed up with Ward-Blake’s cursing and yelling and snapped, lifting the man’s feet from the ground and slamming him headfirst into the concrete in a maneuver called a “takedown.”
A witness officer who had also responded to the traffic stop testified that soon after her arrival on the scene, she heard a “commotion” near Strong’s police cruiser and turned her head to see Ward-Blake’s feet in the air at a diagonal and Strong’s feet on the ground.
Prosecutors said her testimony, coupled with similar testimony from Ward-Blake’s girlfriend, Chinayne Pollard, and medical records showing the severity of the man’s injuries, proved Strong had used excessive force to slam the 24-year-old into the ground.
That use of force was reckless, they said, because Ward-Blake was compliant, handcuffed and had no way of breaking his own fall.
Strong’s attorneys, however, unsuccessfully argued that Ward-Blake’s paralysis was not the result of a criminal act but an “accident.”
Strong testified that once he took Ward-Blake to the side of his police cruiser, he started searching the man’s upper body and had crouched down by his ankles. At that point, Strong said, Ward-Blake elbowed him in the head — knocking him off balance. The officer testified that, at the same time, Ward-Blake had turned away in an alleged attempt to flee. Strong said he reached for the man’s arm to catch his balance, and the two fell together to the ground.
The judge did not find the officer to be credible. When she delivered her verdict, though, Cotton discounted that theory. The use of force was intentional and not accidental, she said, adding that she was “unpersuaded” that Strong’s testimony was “credible.” The judge called his actions “excessive” and “unjustified.”
Strong, she said, “did not act as a reasonable officer would.”
Strong remains on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of the department’s internal affairs investigation, which will proceed now that the criminal trial has concluded. [thats how the process goes when cops harm blacks 1) first prove it beyond a reasonable doubt 2) then we’ll think about maybe terminating the cop and relieving him of his glorious duty of providing compulsory public service in a free range prison. contrast with how the process works when ‘white lives’ are harmed]