New Haven Cop Transporting Handcuffed Unrestrained Black Man in an Empty Van Appeared to Intentionally Slam Breaks Causing Him to Violently Hit His Head, Leaving Him Paralyzed, Ignored Cries for Help
/
ANOTHER BASELESS DESTRUCTION OF LIFE BY GOVERNMENT AUTHORITIES. From [HERE] The family of Richard “Randy” Cox, the 36-year-old who paralyzed during transport by New Haven police, and civil rights attorney Ben Crump will speak Tuesday during a news conference outside Superior Court on Elm Street.
Crump was part of the legal team that secured a $27 million settlement for the family of George Floyd, who was killed during an encounter with Minneapolis police in May 2020, sparking nationwide protests.
The press conference, at which Cox’s family will be present, will be held at 11 a.m. outside the courthouse at 121 Elm St. The NAACP is planning a community meeting at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Stetson Branch Library, located in the Q House, 197 Dixwell Ave. Crump will be present there, as well.
Five New Haven officers have been placed on paid administrative leave after Cox was injured following his arrest for allegedly possessing a gun at a block party June 18. State police are conducting an investigation.
Cox was unsecured in a police transport van when the officer driving stopped abruptly, causing him to be thrown and injured, according to city accounts and Crump, who recently joined the family’s legal team with co-counsel Jack O’Donnell.
Police videos show that the abrupt stop caused Cox his head to violently slam into the front wall of the van and then crying for help and saying he couldn’t move. He was driven to police headquarters, taken from the van and brought to a cell in a wheelchair, which Mayor Justin Elicker has said violated police procedures.
“Randy’s quality of life will forever be diminished by the irresponsible actions of Oscar Diaz and the other New Haven police officers while he was under their custody,” Crump said Monday in a statement.
“Law enforcement respecting every life they interact with and are responsible for is imperative to building trust with communities they serve, especially communities of color,” he said. “As Randy Cox continues to fight for his life and future, we will fight for justice for him, his family and the New Haven community.”
Attorney Jack O’Donnell, who visited Cox Sunday and has been in touch with his family, said Monday that Cox is “still paralyzed from midchest down,” has had two surgeries and will soon undergo spinal surgery in hopes of relieving his paralysis. “They’re hopeful,” O’Donnell said of Cox’s family. “Not optimistic, but hopeful.”
O’Donnell, who said he has been Cox’s attorney for several years, said “one arm is paralyzed. The other has very minimal use.”
“He can’t talk because he’s on a breathing tube and he’s intubated, so we communicated by eye blinks and head nods,” O’Donnell said.
Floyd’s death sparked protests nationally and in Connecticut. The state’s 2020 police accountability law, which placed investigations into police use of deadly force in the hands of an independent inspector general, was passed in part based on allegations of wrongdoing made against the Minneapolis police.
Officers Ronald Pressley, Jocelyn Lavandier and Luis Rivera, who were in the detention area and involved in handling Cox, were placed on leave Thursday. Officer Oscar Diaz, who was driving the van, and Sgt. Betsy Segui were placed on leave earlier last week.
Police are reviewing their procedures for transport and for treating arrestees who have medical needs.
In his statement, Crump contended that Cox was thrown head-first into the back wall of the police transport van and was still lying on the floor when he told officers he wasn’t able to move.
“He was not offered immediate medical aid, and then was dragged off the van by the feet and thrown into a wheelchair that may have exacerbated his life-threatening injuries,” Crump said in the statement.
Mayor Justin Elicker last week called the handling of the incident by city police “quite concerning.”
While in custody, police have “an obligation to treat every individual in a manner than ensures their safety and well-being,” Elicker said after reviewing videos of the police handling of the injury. “Some of the actions taken by the officers in my personal judgment fall short of that.”
Acting Police Chief Regina Rush-Kittle confirmed last week that Cox may be paralyzed and the injury stemmed from an abrupt stop an officer made to avoid being involved in a crash while on the way to the police station.
Scot X. Esdaile, state president of the NAACP and national criminal justice chairman, said, “I travel the country with Ben Crump because we do a lot of cases together.”
He said they had just come back from Buffalo, N.Y., where a mass shooting took place in a grocery store on May 14. Ten Black people were killed.
Esdaile said the Cox case is similar to the Freddie Gray case in Baltimore in 2015, in which Gray was injured inside the police van and died a week later from injuries to his spinal cord. The city of Baltimore reached a $6.4 million settlement with Gray’s family before they filed suit.
“I’m seeing that the mayor and the Police Department are stating that this is not a reflection of the NHPD, but I think they have their heads in the sand because this type of behavior has been happening in New Haven for many, many years.”
He called the response of the police and the mayor “shallow rhetoric.”
Esdaile said Elicker promised after the death of George Floyd in 2020 that he would ensure that such an incident would not happen in New Haven. “We want a concrete plan to come up with comprehensive changes for this culture of police brutality in the city of New Haven,” he said.
He said the problem is a national one. “I’m glad Ben Crump is coming into town,” Esdaile said. “I’m glad there’s going to be a national light on the New Haven Police Department.”
“We absolutely have more work to do but we have made significant progress over these last several years,” Elicker said in response to Esdaile.
“After George Floyd, we began fundamentally rethinking public safety in our city,” he said. “We’ve created the Office of Community Resiliency, under which we house departments that confront challenges around public safety in all their complexity, associated with substance use, homelessness, gun violence … to think more holistically about how to ensure public safety.”
The mayor added, “We’ve held officers accountable, including firing some officers when they have acted inappropriately.” He said he has added “several nationally renowned police reform experts to the Police Commission and the next class of recruits has received special training in de-escalation.
O’Donnell said a newly released documentary, “Civil: Ben Crump,” which is being streamed on Netflix, will be shown at Yale University. “We’re just trying to see if we can get Yale student involved, just trying to rally the community,” he said.
