A Black Prince George’s County police officer is afraid for his security after he reported a fellow officer for a use-of-force violation in opposition to a suspect who turned out to be misidentified.
In October 2020, Officer Michael Brown had been on responsibility within the Maryland county with fellow officer Cpl. Darryl Wormuth. Collectively, they tracked down an armed 17-year-old suspect named Kayvon Hines. After efficiently restraining him, Wormuth struck the teenager within the throat.
Authorities quickly discovered that Hines was wrongly recognized because the suspect the officers have been meant to be after.
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Brown advised NBC4 Washington he was alarmed as a result of their division was by no means educated to place their fingers on anybody’s neck.
Brown, with the help of his accomplice, PGPD officer Thomas Lester, reported Wormuth, leading to Wormuth getting charged with misconduct in workplace and second-degree assault.
Wormuth was initially sentenced to 45 days in jail and had his police powers suspended for the assault and misconduct prices. However the sentence was placed on maintain when new proof got here to gentle.
Throughout the investigation, officers discovered a protracted sequence of racist exchanges on Wormuth’s telephone between him and different officers working throughout the division. One textual content trade confirmed Wormuth calling African-Individuals “f*cking animals” and referring to Black cops as “Black folks in a white man’s job.”
But regardless of stepping as much as do the correct factor, Brown was fairly discouraged throughout Wormuth’s trial when he noticed what number of of his fellow largely white officers supported Wormuth. Brown overtly admitted to the truth that he felt that his division was doing little to guard him from his co-workers all through the method of the investigation.
In accordance with Brown, he and the officers that stood with him have now grow to be generally known as the “snitches” and have been labeled as different derogatory phrases throughout the division. Accusations additionally surfaced of officers conspiring to not again up Brown’s squad within the line of responsibility in retaliation.
“I felt betrayed,” Brown mentioned in an interview with NBC4 Washington.
Brown mentioned he was additionally left in the dead of night all through many of the investigation concerning the total contents of the texts and who despatched them, by no means figuring out who was actually out to get him at any time.
“My security… wasn’t a precedence,” he mentioned.
This isn’t the primary time a PGPD officer has been responsible of violent acts in opposition to residents. In January 2020, the identical 12 months because the incident involving the misidentified suspect, Cpl. Micheal Owen shot and killed a 43-year-old Black man named William Inexperienced after he was already handcuffed.
Later that 12 months, the courtroom ordered the division to ship $20 million in settlement cash to Inexperienced’s household.
The summer season of that 12 months was crammed with protests within the county over police brutality. The division confronted accusations of hiring racist officers to guard and serve the neighborhood.
Throughout the preliminary week of the protests, the police chief on the time, Hank Stawinski, stepped down after 4 years in workplace. A lawsuit was filed in opposition to the division in 2018 for violating racial discrimination legal guidelines.
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