Justin Jouvenal, The
Washington Post
Glen Sylvester avoids
elevators and the back seats of cars to fend off his claustrophobia, but as the
police officers walked him toward the small jail cell at Baltimore-Washington
International Airport in May 2016, he braced for the panic to grip his body.
Sylvester, 54, was
already bewildered. He had no idea why he had been placed under arrest. Minutes
earlier, the Maryland man had been squashed into an economy seat on a flight
idling on the tarmac when two officers boarded.
Suddenly, he was
handcuffed and being pushed through the airport in a wheelchair. The insurance
agent, Army veteran and youth basketball coach said he kept blurting out:
"You have the wrong person!"
Then he was facing the
cell. As the door closed, Sylvester said he felt like a drowning man. His chest
seized, and it seemed as though he was unable to get a breath no matter how
hard he tried. He pressed his face between the bars, trying to gulp fresh air.
A single thought went through his mind: What did I do?
The answer, according to
a lawsuit Sylvester recently filed in Fairfax County, was nothing. The District
Heights resident claims he was mistakenly arrested for a pair of thefts from a
Fairfax City, Virginia, grocery store the year before.
The charges were
eventually dropped, but Sylvester said the 12 days he endured in various jails
were a nightmare for someone with claustrophobia. He said he lost 18 pounds
while behind bars, and his wife said he still sleepwalks, checking the bedroom
door for air as if he is still in a cell.
"It's baffling to
this day. Why me?" Sylvester asks. "How did you pick me out of
billions of people? I really don't understand that. It makes me emotional, to
be honest."
Sylvester and his lawyer
say they still don't know how police homed in on him as a suspect. The Fairfax
County officer named as defendant in the lawsuit, Brian Geschke, did not
respond to requests for comment, and a police spokeswoman declined to comment
on the case, citing the pending litigation.
A spokesman for Fairfax
County said Geschke believes the investigation was conducted properly.
"Officer Geschke
denies the allegations in the complaint and will vigorously defend the case,"
the statement read.
False arrest is a rare
but real problem that can have searing consequences, from job loss to the
destruction of a reputation. Unlike the more high-profile issue of wrongful
convictions, no one tracks exactly how many cases of false arrest occur across
the country.
But each year, dozens
file lawsuits claiming that eyewitness error, paperwork mix-ups, sloppy police
work or even identity theft have led police to haul them to jail for crimes
they didn't commit or for offenses that never happened. Most are eventually
released after the error is discovered.
Sylvester's trouble
began May 13, 2016, when he was traveling home from attending the funeral of an
uncle in Grenada, a country in the Caribbean. After landing at BWI, the plane
was held on the tarmac, and the officers removed Sylvester from the flight.
"It was incredibly
embarrassing in the world that we are living in," Sylvester said.
"It's like I'm a terrorist."
Sylvester said he spent
three hours in the cell at BWI before he was removed to go before a magistrate.
His panic attack finally lifted as he went outside. He recalls sucking in air
as the tightness in his chest eased.
The respite was
short-lived.
"You have four
felony charges in the state of Virginia, and you are considered a fugitive for
leaving the country," Sylvester recalled the magistrate telling him as she
explained why he wouldn't get bail.
Sylvester said he was
stunned - he hardly ever went to Virginia and had never been to the store he
was accused of robbing.
As Sylvester would later
learn, two men walked through the Fairfax City-area Wegmans about 6 p.m. Nov. 5
and Nov. 12, 2015, piling into their carts items including Veuve Clicquot
champagne, moscato wine and roses. Then they simply walked out the door and
made off with the goods.
Surveillance cameras
captured the thefts, showing that they appeared to be carried out by
middle-aged black men.
The losses totaled more
than $1,250, meaning Sylvester was charged with felony grand larceny. Each of
the four counts carried a prison sentence of up to 20 years if Sylvester were
eventually convicted.
Sylvester claims he was
coaching basketball at Kelly Miller Middle School in the District of Columbia
at the times of the crimes. His story was bolstered by three witnesses interviewed
by The Washington Post. His wife, an assistant coach and a parent of a player
said they recalled seeing him at the school about 6 p.m. or a short time before
and after on the days in question.
After the hearing before
the magistrate, Sylvester was taken to a detention center in the Annapolis,
Maryland, area to await extradition to Virginia.
His first stop was a
large holding cell where he was placed with others under arrest. Sylvester said
he was scared as the people discussed drug use and assaults they had carried
out. He shrank into a corner, doing breathing exercises to try to keep his
claustrophobia at bay.
Sylvester's life
revolves around basketball. He has spent 13 years as the head basketball coach
at Kelly Miller Middle and at the Seed School, also in D.C. He is also the
president of the Bulls, a basketball and mentoring program for at-risk boys
that has helped more than 20 participants get into college and earn degrees.
Sylvester said four have landed in the NBA.
His own record is not
without a blemish. While in college in North Carolina in the 1980s, Sylvester
said, he did community service for stealing two Cabbage Patch dolls from a
store. A check by The Post turned up no other similar offenses in the
intervening years.
At the detention center,
Sylvester was eventually allowed to call his best friend, who was supposed to
meet him at the airport. Derrick Wilson alerted Sylvester's wife.
"It was
unbelievable," Wilson said. "He couldn't believe he was in jail over
something he didn't know about."
He was then issued a
jail jumpsuit and transferred to his own cell at the detention center. He said
he kept expecting authorities to realize their error and release him, but now
it was sinking in he would be in the jail for a while.
Sylvester said he
remembers the exact dimensions of his cell - 7 by 11 feet - because he paced it
obsessively.
He pulled his mattress
onto the floor next to a dirty toilet so he could sleep with his head on the
cell door. He said doing so allowed him to feel the air coming through the food
slot, which helped his claustrophobia.
"You talk about
broken," Sylvester said. "You're broken at this point."
Eleven more days would
drag by in the detention center. Sylvester missed his wedding anniversary on
May 17. Finally, on May 25, Virginia authorities arrived to transfer Sylvester
to Fairfax County, where he was granted bail.
Sylvester walked outside
and plopped down on a curb.
"I remember just
crying like crazy," he said.
In September 2016, a
Fairfax County prosecutor decided to drop the charges against Sylvester after
receiving the results of an analysis that showed Sylvester's cellphone
accessing cell towers in the District of Columbia and Maryland at the time of
the crimes, according to emails obtained by The Post.
The Wegmans loss-prevention
officer, who originally reported the thefts to police, also cast doubt on
whether police had arrested the right person after seeing him in court for a
preliminary hearing.
"My impression was
that he may not be the same person I saw in the videos of these
incidents," she wrote in a sworn affidavit provided to Sylvester's lawyer.
Sylvester is claiming in
the lawsuit that Geschke was grossly negligent for not obtaining the cellphone
records and interviewing him before seeking arrest warrants against him. The
county has argued in its response that Geschke's actions do not rise to the
level of gross negligence and that the case should be dismissed. The response
does not address the facts asserted by Sylvester.
The arrest has left
Sylvester and his family shaken.
"It's so easy to
get arrested and lost in the system," said his wife, Stacey Sylvester.
"I don't want anyone else to have this terrifying feeling again. It hurts
my heart. It does make me mistrust the justice system."
