According to an email notice from the Vermont ACLU, the issue of whether police arrest records are public documents available to reporters will be argued in Vermont Supreme Court Thursday [corrected] at 2 pm. The case involves not just police secrecy, but potential racial profiling.
The arrest included striking the [African-American] man with a baton, pepper-spraying him, handcuffing him, and dragging him nude, wrapped in a blanket, down the stairs and out of his home.
The ACLU caught the case when VTDigger.org’s Anne Galloway sought release of the arrest records to investigate the potential involvement of racial profiling and was refused.
The Hartford police entry into Wayne Burwell’s home on Memorial Day weekend in 2010 led to harsh criticism of police actions and suggestions that police engaged in racial profiling.
Police had received a call from a cleaning service of a suspected burglary at the residence. When officers arrived, they found the African-American man sitting on a bathroom toilet, naked and dazed. The officers claimed that Burwell resisted arrest because he was unresponsive to their commands. They struck him with a baton, then pepper-sprayed and handcuffed him. He was wrapped in a blanket and dragged down the stairs out of the townhouse.
Neighbors and EMTs responding to the scene identified Burwell as the home’s owner. He suffers from a chronic blood sugar imbalance and had apparently slipped into a semi-conscious state. He was taken to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Hospital, treated, and released. He was never charged with any crime.
The state police investigated and absolved the arresting officers, as did Vermont Attorney General William Sorrell.
Galloway, who has written stories about possible racial profiling in Vermont, wanted to know more about the Burwell incident. She asked the police department for relevant records but was told she couldn’t have them. She appealed that decision to town officials, and was again denied access. She then sued in Vermont Superior Court, represented by the ACLU-VT.
In a decision released in May 2011, the Vermont Superior Court ruled that police investigative records created prior to a decision whether to charge someone with a criminal offense are exempt under the state’s Access to Public Records Act (APRA).
The ACLU has now taken the case to SCOV, where it will be heard at 2 p.m. Thursday [corrected] in the Supreme Court building on Main St. in Montpelier, second floor.
Everywhere else in America it is standard procedure to beat and torture people that are have health issues first and foremost.
Just last week, police in TN used a taser to kill a man blithely riding on his bicycle because he refused to respond to commands. That the police officer was behind the man, outside his field of vision and that he was deaf is no excuse. The investigation will conclude that if he didn’t want to be tased to death, then why was he deaf in the first place.
In Burwell’s specific case, the SP and AG all agreed on the same principle: If Burwell didn’t want to be tased and dragged out of his home naked, then why did he fall into a semi-concious state?
Even in Vermont, if it were not for those meddling reporters asking all their embarrassing questions, everything would be fine. That is why the state is fighting against freedom: to protect the police’s absolute right to shoot first and not have to answer questions later.