This Thursday, February 7th at 1:30pm at the Shelby County Criminal Justice Center members of the organization Homeless Organizing for Power and Equality (H.O.P.E.) will be having their day in court to fight against issues of police harassment against the unsheltered and insensitivity to people with disabilities.
We want to urge the community to stand with us tomorrow Feb 7th at 1:30pm at General Session Div 1 at 201 Poplar to stand in solidarity with not only our members but for many of our brothers and sisters on the streets who suffer daily harassment due to the profiling of people experiencing homelessness. This is not about the community vs. the police but is about people of good will, decency and humanity standing against those who would misuse their authority and as such are the criminals.
Background
The grassroots group has been meeting at the Manna House at 1268 Jefferson every Thursday night for almost a year now. On Thursday Nov.15th at 7:15 p.m. as the meeting drew to a close, H.O.P.E., organizer Paul Garner was locking the gate to the Manna House and the group was about to depart, when two MPD squad cars made a U-turn and pulled up on the remaining seven members present.
One MPD officer named stepped out of his vehicle and approached the members who were standing by the two staff member vehicles. The officers present were rude and openly hostile to the membership going so far as accusing one of the ladies present of being a prostitute. That member was Marian Bacon, a disabilities advocate and Independent living specialist who works for the Memphis Center for Independent Living, and former trainer for MPD’s Crisis Intervention Team, which responds to calls for individuals who have mental illness issues. Ms Bacon, who suffers from anxiety and pronounced PTSD from a childhood incident involving police officers, was deeply traumatized by the event.
H.O.P.E. members calmly asked the officers if they were being detained or arrested, and asked for their names and badge numbers. To this the lead officer aggressively replied, “You can have my badge number, it’ll be on the ticket I’m about to write you,” The officer then wrote three citations for “Obstructing a Sidewalk” to H.O.P.E organizer Paul Garner, H.O.P.E. member Edward Jackson and H.O.P.E. organizer and Disability advocate Marian Bacon of the Memphis Center for Independent Living.
The officers in question detained our members for over an hour and fifteen minutes and ignored Ms Bacon’s request to sit down or to be allowed to go to the restroom, as due to her physical disability she cannot stand for long periods of time without intense pain. As a result Ms. Bacon was humiliated physically and emotionally to the point that she urinated on herself due to emotional stress and fatigue.
Since last November the group has for filed numerous complaints with MPD at the Union/Crump precinct and with MPD Internal Affairs, which as of yet despite meetings with MPD administrators have yet to receive any official reply about their complaints.
This began on November 16th where members filed formal complaints at the Union/Crump Precinct about the incident. In violation of proper MPD procedure the members received no confirmation that the complaints were received. As a result we spoke with MPD Deputy Chief Martello and Deputy Director Berryhill and with their prompt assistance scheduled a meeting with the acting commander Major Casad at the Union/Crump precinct on December 21st. At this meeting the group was informed that the matter had been transferred to Internal Affairs and that at that time internal affairs had taken no action, as they had no paperwork from our members. This is also a violation of proper procedure as how can our members fill out the proper paperwork if the department never informs them of the matter being transferred to IAD in the first place?
Members of HOPE and witnesses went to Internal Affairs on January 8th and filed numerous statements and complaints in order to ensure that this matter was handled properly. At that time members of HOPE were told by IAD that we would receive notification of the finding of their investigation on January 28th.
Once again proper procedure was not followed as there was no such notification given and when HOPE contacted IAD on January 30th, we were told by Lt. Mark Winters that IAD had completed their investigation on January 10th and had returned the matter to the Union/Crump precinct. They were awaiting the final actions of the precinct and that IAD was still awaiting a response from the precinct leadership. For the past three months our members have been jumping through numerous hoops and at each point we have followed the procedures laid out to us to the letter and yet at we are still no closer to a just solution to this issue than we were when we started.
Where do we go from here?
The group will be fighting these charges Thursday in court and will exhaust the appeals process to ensure justice however our chief concern is resulting emotional trauma to Ms. Bacon who suffers from anxiety and pronounced PTSD from a childhood incident involving police officers.
At the preliminary court date on January 14th Ms. Bacon courageously confronted her fears by going to court despite the fact that she was deeply emotionally distressed and terrified. Sadly the city’s prosecutor refusal to dismiss the charges or hear witness testimony further triggered her PTSD. Ms. Bacon was reduced to tears and had a severe anxiety attack when in the presence of the offending officer. We have raised these concerns for Ms Bacon’s emotional health to the City of Memphis prosecutor Teresa Jones yet despite having legal counsel Ms. Jones refused to allow Ms Bacon to be excused from being in the courtroom during the upcoming court date.
HOPE members will discuss future legal and direct action on this issue at our regular Thursday night meeting as well as being a participant in the MSPJC sponsored Community Police Relations Project-CPR. For the past nine months the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center has been working with over 70 community leaders from across the city and members of law enforcement from MPD, the Shelby County Sheriff’s Dept, Shelby County Juvenile Court and the District Attorney’s office to engage in a process of improving community police relations. We are working to find community led and supported solutions to crime and violence in Memphis.
This project has had members of a Community Circle and the Police Circle meeting monthly in separate groups to open a dialog about the issues both emotional and structural that create barriers to a more respectful and positive relations between the community and law enforcement. Now that these two groups have merged this Core Organizing group is preparing to host a citywide series of community forums that will lead to a community crafted action plan to directly address and promote positive and institutional changes within MPD that can remove barriers to better Police and community relations. HOPE members are and continue to be part of this process and plan on direct engagement with the leadership and the officers of the Crump precinct.