Huntsville Won't Reform The Police. The Department Of Justice Can.

     It has been encouraging to see the Department of Justice take steps to address police misconduct. Just days ago, the DOJ gave local police departments who assist in federal police investigations permission to release footage of police-involved violence to the public in a major victory for police transparency. This comes as Congress tries to reach a compromise on police reform legislation under the framework of the George Floyd Justice In Policing Act and activists call on President Biden to keep his promise to create a national policing commission. The most impactful moves made this year have been the pattern-or-practice investigations launched in Minneapolis and Louisville in April and Phoenix in August. In cities where settlements are reached, the rate of police violence is cut by more than 60 percent on average.

     Huntsville, Alabama, is one of the largest cities in Alabama, a red state with traditional views of policing. This has allowed some gruesome, gross violations of civil rights to be perpetrated by the Huntsville Police Department against its own citizens.

     These problems were highlighted best during the 2020 George Floyd protests, when the country protested the agonizing, nine-minute death of an unarmed black man at the hands of now-convicted murderer and now-former MPD officer Derek Chauvin, the killing of an innocent EMT during the execution of a no-knock warrant at the wrong house in Louisville, and several other high-profile cases. Indicative of their incredibly-poor relations with their community, especially their black constituents, the Huntsville PD responded with inappropriate force at the department level. When negotiations with a local civic group broke down and the federal government was called on to intervene, Mayor Battle expressed "frustration," apparently unaware that there is no compromising human life.

     Since then, there have been a number of major cases of police brutality. In December 2020, an officer tackled a female passenger in a car that was pulled over before taking his badge off to avoid being identified on film. In April 2021, a grandfather who had been tackled by metro police for not following commands even after he said he was from India and did not speak English was awarded $1.75 million in damages; trials against the officers resulted in acquittal by overwhelmingly-white juries. In June 2021, officers became the subject of an internal investigation for stomping on a suspect laying flat on the ground. The most depraved and horrific example is that of Officer William Darby, who, in August 2021, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the 2018 killing of Jeffrey Parker, a suicidal 49-year-old man. He posed no threat to the two officers who had been on the scene for several minutes, but he was shot by Officer Darby eleven seconds after his arrival. The city of Huntsville spent $125,000 to defend the officer and kept him on the force even after he was charged with and convicted of homicide. All of the money allocated to defend Darby has been spent, but the city is still backing an expected appeal of his sentence. (He was never fired; he resigned before his sentencing.)

     Nor, unfortunately, is this new. In 2015, Officer Brett Russell was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison after a conviction on civil rights charges. This stemmed from a 2011 incident in which Russell pulled a handcuffed defendant from the back of a patrol car, beat him, and then lied and omitted information repeatedly in the police report after refusing to take the victim to the hospital.

     Every year, the Huntsville PD is in the news at least once for a major incident of police brutality, and, with local officials refusing to take action, it must fall upon the DOJ to do this job.