Revisiting the story of a man
arrested at his job for "trespassing"—and the cops who paid no price
for wrongly detaining him dozens of times.
CONOR FRIEDERSDORF
The radio show This American
Life recently broadcast a number of stories on policing. They're collected in
the episodes "Cops See It Differently," Part One and Part Two.
The episodes illuminate why
police and their critics often see the same events very differently. For
example, one anecdote concerns a man in the back of a police car who told his
arresting officers that he was having trouble breathing. They ignored him. He
died. Many who watched the video saw callous cops who placed no value on a
human being's life. But police officers who watched the same tape saw two cops
who thought that their seemingly healthy arrestee was faking, as so many people
fabricate medical conditions to avoid being taken to jail.
These differences in
perspective are useful to understand, even if one believes that a given
incident is clearly the fault of the police or the person they're arresting.
In that spirit, I'd like to
focus on "Inconvenience Store," the This American Life segment where
the behavior of the police officers struck me as most difficult to comprehend.
I'll relay what happened to a man named Earl Sampson in Miami Gardens, Florida,
and invite any willing police officers to write in with their thoughts.
Most of the action takes place
at a Quickstop convenience store. Back in 2008, police approached its owner,
Alex Saleh. Did he want to make the Quickstop part of "The Zero-Tolerance
Zone Trespassing Program"? Saleh said that he was "pro-police,
pro-cop," and agreed. A sign to that effect was posted in the parking lot.
But soon, he says, cops started
harassing his customers, especially the black ones, when they were doing
nothing more than standing in line waiting to make a purchase. Set that aside.
Our interest is in Earl Sampson, a black employee at the store.
Here's what happened to him,
according to This American Life producer Miki Meek's reporting:
Meek: Before long, it wasn't
just the customers being questioned. The police started including a guy named
Earl. Alex paid him to do odd jobs around the store. One night, right before
closing, Alex sent Earl out to the parking lot with a broom and a dustpan. When
he didn't come back, Alex want out to check on him.
Saleh: I see only the dustpan
and the broom. And I don't see Earl.
Meek: It wasn't like Earl to
walk off the job. The next day when he arrived at the store, Alex asked him
about it.
Saleh: Earl said, I was in jail
last night. I said, why? He said, for trespassing.
Meek: Trespassing at the
store—Earl says he was charged with trespassing where he works.
Saleh: I was upset. I was
burning myself inside. I was, like, this is impossible.
Meek: Alex is more than just a
boss to Earl, more like a father figure to him. Earl has some mental health
issues, and in general, he has a kid-like quality. He first started coming to
the Quickstop years before, when he was 14. He had just moved around the
corner, but his family life was rough. And his mom couldn't really take care of
him. So Alex started keeping an eye on him. Here's Earl.
Earl: That's why I started
hanging around the store, you know, it's because Alex treat me like a son,
though. Sometimes he let me credit stuff, like milk or something, bread or
something. I'd go to the store and get it. I'd holler at him. And then he gave
me a job, and I started working. I love my job. I love working at it. We're
like a family, though.
Meek: That incident with the
police, where Alex walked outside to check on Earl at the end of the night and
found only a dustpan and broom, that happened two more times that month.
Earl: They'll like, come and
grab me from, like, outside. Like, they won't go in the store and ask Alex or
nothing, though. They would just grab me, put me in a police car, take me down
to jail, you know? I'm like, well, I work here, though. You feel me?
Meek: So you would say, I work
here. And what would they say?
Earl: Come on. You ain't
supposed to be here. You trespassing here. I'd be like, ask my boss. I would be
telling, ask my boss. They're still, oh, we don't care. They'll take me down.
Meek: Each time the police
picked up Earl, they'd book him into the county jail. He'd spend the night
there, go to court the next day, and there he'd be given a choice. Plead guilty
to trespassing and get out of jail right away, or he could fight the
trespassing charge, but it would be a hassle. And it would be expensive. He'd
have to hire a lawyer and post bond and wait for a trial date.
So Earl always pleaded guilty.
To jail someone once for
trespassing at their job is a miscarriage of justice. To do so repeatedly, over
the objections of their employer, who owns the relevant store, is an absurdity.
And this isn't something that happened just a few different times. It happened
so often that the store owner finally complained to the police department.
But the complaints didn't help.
Quite the contrary:
Earl was now getting picked up
everywhere, all over town.
Three years into the program,
he had been arrested 63 times and stopped another 99 times. On the police
reports, the reason was almost always the same. Earl seemed, quote,
"suspicious." Suspicious while waiting at the bus stop or playing
basketball or buying food or walking to a public restroom-- only once did Earl
run. In the arrest report, the officer wrote, quote, "Earl stated that he
was running because he was tired of the police arresting him for no
reason."
After that, Earl says it was
just easier to give himself up.
Incredibly, the police
department's behavior then grew even more egregious:
Meek: ... after four years of
Earl getting stopped constantly, everywhere he went, Earl and Alex had tried
all the normal things you do when you're having problems with the police. So
Alex came up with a plan—a pretty extreme one.
Saleh: I explained to Earl. I
said, Earl, I think the better place for you to live is inside the store. You
know, we bring mattress, stuff like that, and I told him, you live here. You
sleep here. Anything you need to eat and drink at night when you're here, you
can, you know, you can get it.
Meek: Way in the back corner of
the store, at the end of an aisle, there's an 11-by-11 foot room built out of
plywood and sheet rock. And inside that room is a mattress and a sink for Earl
to wash up in. If you were picking up laundry detergent or toilet paper, you'd
be standing right next to where he sleeps.
But even that didn't prevent
the police from coming in and getting Earl. Not long after his room was built,
he got arrested again for trespassing at the store. Earl didn't immediately
take a plea this time. Alex doesn't know why, but Earl spent 20 days in jail.
And the judge issued a stay away warning from the store. Alex's next move—he
bought a surveillance camera. In fact, he bought four. He decided that that was
the only way anyone would believe that he wasn't making this stuff up.
In time, Saleh had 16
surveillance cameras running. So in addition to arrest reports proving that a
man was repeatedly jailed for "trespassing" at his place of
employment, there is ample video of police officers harassing both customers at
the Quickstop and Earl Sampson, even after he was literally living in the store
at the owner's request. There is no excuse for this behavior and no doubt that
it happened. A man's most basic rights were repeatedly and willfully violated by
multiple police officers, with a paper trail and videotaped evidence to
identify them.
This has long since become
public knowledge—the Miami Herald wrote about it in 2013. "Miami Gardens
police have arrested Sampson 62 times for one offense: trespassing," the
newspaper reported. "Almost every citation was issued at the same place:
the 207 Quickstop, a convenience store on 207th Street in Miami Gardens."
So what happened to the police
officers who targeted an innocent man, repeatedly jailing him for nothing more
than being at his own place of employment?
Nothing, according to This
American Life:
Meek: Anthony Chapman, the
police commander whose officers repeatedly harassed Alex's customers and Earl,
he's still at the police department. He denies all allegations against him and
declined to be interviewed. Martin Santiago, the sergeant who Alex says
threatened him at a traffic stop, he also still works there, as does William
Dunaske, the officer who pulled Earl out of the store in that very first
surveillance video. The city declined to make Santiago and Dunaske available
for comment. Michael Malone, the officer who threw and kicked customers'
personal things, he did leave the force, but it was voluntary. An internal
affairs report concedes misconduct, but Malone was never disciplined for his
actions. He could not be reached for comment.
It's been more than a year and
a half since Earl was last stopped, but he doesn't feel safe. His world is
still a paranoid one. He still lives at the store and rarely goes out.
And when he does, he gets
scared.
Listening to that story, I
heard evidence of multiple cops engaged in serious, willful misconduct over
several years. But that isn't what troubled me most. I know that most cops
would never behave so egregiously toward an innocent. What I found alarming was
the fact that those other cops didn't stop or report the bad apples.
In fact, even after
higher-ranking officers were alerted to Sampson's experience, that did not put
an end to his repeated jailing. Neither a public defender nor a judge was able
to spot or stop this miscarriage of justice either. No one inside the system
successfully exposed or remedied the abusive situation. Things only changed for
Sampson when the store owner got video evidence and took it to the media. And
even then, the egregious misbehavior of the police officers went unpunished.
Most of the perpetrators are
still on the job.
What do police officers make of
this story? How do they explain the fact that such abusive behavior continued
for so long? What do they regard as an appropriate punishment? What would they
suggest to guard against similar abuses elsewhere? What would they do if they
encountered fellow officers treating a man this way? I don't mean to suggest
that police are of one mind about this or any other controversy, or that Miami
Gardens reflects how police behave everywhere. But when the public reads or
listens to stories that document egregious police abuses, it is rare to
encounter any members of the police community who express alarm, or champion
reforms, or denounce the bad apples, or articulate why they have a different
view than the conventional wisdom.
If you're a police officer,
maybe no one asked for your opinion on a case like this before. I invite any of
your thoughts. Those willing to share should email conor@theatlantic.com—I'll
publish responses without names unless otherwise requested.
