Disturbing talk from Fort Worth police
Worried about being the victim of police racial profiling, Christopher Swen switched on his cellphone’s audio recorder when he was pulled over for a traffic stop after working late on the night of Sept. 9, 2013.
The recorder stayed on for a long time. It captured the exchange between Swen, who is a native of Africa and is black, and the officer who stopped him. Things quickly got heated.
The officer asked Swen to get out of the car. Then, as Swen tried to get back inside to turn off the engine, the officer threw him to the ground and arrested him.
There are plenty of distressing things about this — but it later got much worse.
It started when a black man felt it necessary to protect himself from police through the easily available device of a cellphone recording.
When society reaches perfection, there won’t be any need for such fear. But we are not there today, as Swen’s experience shows.
There are enough gray areas about the traffic stop itself and the reason and manner of the arrest to say that Swen and the officer both let the situation get out of control. The audio depicts Swen as defensive and argumentative, and he quickly accused the officer of racial misconduct.
Swen told the officer he wanted to turn off the car’s engine, but he shouldn’t have tried to pull away and get back in the car. Wiser choices on both sides might have avoided confrontation, but choices were made under duress.
What happened afterward is more disturbing. The only reason we know about it is Swen’s cellphone audio, which continued after officers took the phone from him and an ambulance took him to a hospital for treatment of injuries suffered in the arrest.
An investigating officer following or preparing to follow the ambulance is heard discussing the arrest, presumably by cellphone with another police officer.
The investigating officer clearly has doubts about the need for the arrest, saying Swen was “being African” and “he doesn’t understand what’s going on.”
But he said, “We’re going to arrest him because he’s hurt, quote unquote, right?”
He discusses having coached the arresting officer on how to explain the arrest. He says instead of detaining Swen for “resisting detention,” which he said was not a valid charge, “I kept saying arrest him for evading [arrest].”
In a perfect world, a police officer would know why he is arresting someone and would not need coaching.
But the most disturbing part came next:
“It’s just one of those deals, like, oh s---, we got nothing, and we hurt the guy,” the investigating officer says. “In the old days we could just let him go, but now it’s like you better come up with something.”
We must not be so far away from perfection that police decide to “come up with something” to justify having hurt a man who was simply driving home from work late one night and was afraid of them.
The district attorney’s office declined to accept charges against Swen. He has sued Fort Worth and seven police officers, saying excessive force was used.
The lawsuit will play itself out over time, as lawsuits do. But the recorded police comments in this incident call for thorough examination and thoughtful analysis.
Swen’s experience also shows the need for Fort Worth to move forward in naming a new police chief. An acting chief has been in charge since former Chief Jeff Halstead retired in January.
Only with a strong chief on board, with a vision for the department’s operation and tone, and a command staff dedicated to carrying out that vision, can there be hope of solving the most difficult problems.
This story was originally published July 16, 2015 at 5:33 PM with the headline "Disturbing talk from Fort Worth police."