Florida Cops Kill

ANOTHER ONE

You’ve probably noticed that the OD has run numerous articles on police killings and brutality. There is a reason for that. It is to demonstrate that police violence, especially against young African American men, is a nationwide epidemic. You may hear about a case in your town, or occasionally a spectacular incident caught on tape somewhere else, but this stuff goes on every day and it must be stopped.

The latest example comes from Cocoa City, Florida where Police Chief David Crawford has now resigned in the wake of the latest in a series of incidents that have rocked the local police department in recent weeks. Crawford's resignation comes as demonstrators continue to march to protest the handling of 36-year-old Willie Kimbrough, who died Dec. 4 shortly after he arrested by Cocoa police and held for several days in the Brevard County Jail in Sharpes. Crawford had come to the defense of his officers after the allegations. Crawford said his officers used reasonable force because Kimbrough repeatedly resisted arrest with violence. The officers remain on active duty. Larry Battle, a member of the Kimbrough family, said the fact that the chief left shows there's something amiss in the department. Battle said he didn't know why Crawford left, but he's glad he did. "I feel that justice hasn't been served" in Willie Kimbrough's case, Battle said. "I hope the city manager resigns, too."

According to an arrest report, an officer spotted Kimbrough and two other men shortly before midnight Nov. 30 ducking behind a vehicle in the parking lot of a Cocoa lounge. They ran when confronted by the officer, who turned his attention to Kimbrough. After a brief chase, police say Kimbrough hurled a large brick at the officer when he drew his gun and again ordered him to stop, according to the report. When other officers arrived, Kimbrough was arrested and charged with aggravated battery on a law-enforcement officer, battery on a police officer, resisting arrest without violence and loitering.

But Cocoa resident Quay Johnson, 26, said she saw officers kicking and hitting Kimbrough as he lay on the ground. "He wasn't fighting back or trying to get away," she said. "I think it was too much." A booking mug shows Kimbrough with a bulging black eye; an injury police said was there before his arrest.

Willie Kimbrough died four days after an altercation with Cocoa police. A report from an independent medical examiner concluded Kimbrough was beaten very severely, and his death was caused by kidney failure related to beating injuries. In fact, a retired South Florida medical examiner, Dr. Ronald Wright, called Kimbrough's beating death a homicide. "His (Kimbrough) claim that he was beaten while handcuffed and leg shackled is substantiated by the presence of injuries at the expected locations of the handcuffs and leg shackles, and the absence of the usual defense wounds that one would expect," Wright wrote in his report. "Mr. Kimbrough's death was preventable, obviously if he had not been beaten. "More tragic is it was preventable for some days after his beating," Wright said. "He was in dire need of medical care during his incarceration at the Brevard County jail. Treatment would have saved his life."

Kimbrough's family is going to court today to ask that the Brevard County medical examiner's autopsy results be made public. "The police kicked him and punched him and sat on his neck," said his mother. "At the jail, he was coughing up blood and there was blood in his urine and nobody did anything." Kimbrough's attorney, Paul Bross of Merritt Island, said he was shocked when he went to visit his client at the jail Dec. 2 and found him in a wheelchair. "He looked like he had been hit by a bus," Bross said. "He couldn't walk. He could barely breathe." Bross said Kimbrough told him he had been beaten by eight officers, who hit and stomped him even after he was handcuffed and shackled. The attorney said he pleaded with a doctor in the jail's infirmary to help Kimbrough. Bross said Kimbrough was given some Tylenol and then wheeled back to a cell.

In the early hours of Dec. 4, the family bailed him out of jail and took him home. Not long thereafter, they The rushed him to Cape Canaveral Hospital, where he died. Joanne Kimbrough says her son was no angel. "But nobody deserves to die like that," she said. "And everybody who had a hand in it is going to pay a price."

Last Sunday more than 100 protesters marched from Cocoa City Hall to the police department demanding justice. The crowd called for the city to suspend the officers they suspect were involved in the beating.

The Cocoa Police Department also was embroiled in controversy last month after 23-year-old Shawn Callahan was injured and hospitalized for a week after police used a Taser stun gun on him during the Oktoberfest street festival in Cocoa Village. Five officers were investigated for possible misuse of Tasers, and the City Council temporarily suspended the department's use of the weapons. At that time, Crawford ordered all officers to undergo additional training before the stun guns were reissued.

Sources: WESH (Winter Park, FL), WKMG (Orlando), Florida Today, WFTV (Orlando), Orlando Sentinel


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