It was the evening of June 19 when Randy Cox’s family received a phone call: Mr. Cox had been arrested by police officers in New Haven, Connecticut, and was on his way to a reservation.
The family was worried, but was told to wait.
The next phone call, hours later, was confusing and frightening: Mr. Cox, 36, had fallen, was in the hospital, and needed emergency spinal surgery.
The full picture of what happened during those hours came into sharp focus this week when Mr Cox’s family and his lawyers unveiled a police video showing Mr Cox banging his head forward in the back of a police van. and lame, breaks his spine and paralyzes him from the chest down. The van had stopped abruptly and there were no seat belts to hold Mr. Cox.
“You can’t even describe it in words,” his older sister Latoya Boomer said on Wednesday. “Insane.”
Mr Cox, who is Black, was hospitalized on Wednesday, on a ventilator, with almost no movement under his neck, his family and his lawyer said. After he was injured, police mocked Mr Cox for not being able to sit, a video shows.
It was the latest in a series of alarming meetings with police in which black people were injured or killed – episodes that fueled distrust of law enforcement and sparked widespread protests against police bias and brutality. He bears a striking resemblance to the case of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old Baltimore man who died in 2015 after being forced to drive unrestrained in the back of a similar police vehicle.
“It brings me to tears,” said Jack O’Donnell, Mr Cox’s lawyer for several years. The graphic video of his client’s injury, Mr O’Donnell said, was difficult for him to watch.
In an interview Wednesday, New Haven Mayor Justin Eliker said what happened to Mr Cox was “terrible” and vowed that the city would handle the investigation transparently and quickly. Hours after the incident, he said, the city notified state authorities and state police, who launched their own investigation.
“It is very important for us to react to this quickly, decisively and openly,” said Mayor Eliker.
All police officers involved in the incident – one lieutenant and four police officers – were put on paid leave while the department conducted its investigation, Mr Eliker said.
Mr Cox spent most of June 19 at a neighborhood party when police responded in the area following a gun complaint, Mr O’Donnell and police said. Officers confronted Mr. Cox, found a weapon, said later, and arrested him.
Mr Cox was first placed in the back of a patrol car that had seat belts, Mr O’Donnell said. But the officers soon called a larger van. The van, which is commonly used to transport suspects, did not have seat belts in the section of the vehicle, he said.
In police footage published by the press, Mr Cox is seen sitting unbound in the back of the van. He kicks several times in front of the transport area. Then he hit his head hard at the rear end: the van had stopped abruptly. Mr. Cox’s limp body lay motionless as he whimpered for help.
“I’m stopping, I’ll check on you,” the driver, identified as Officer Diaz, can be heard shouting in the video.
Officer Diaz stopped the car to check on Mr. Cox, who said he could not move. The officer then called the radio for medical assistance and proceeded to the detention center. Upon arrival of the van, police officers could be seen mocking and blaming Mr. Cox for his stance and failure to sit up.
“If you have to drag me, do what you have to do,” Mr. Cox told police, who then pulled him by the legs from the van.
At one point, a police officer suggested he might be drunk. Mr. Cox begs that he feels nothing and cannot move. Eventually, the police pulled him out and transferred him to a wheelchair. Later, they dragged him by the handcuffs to his handcuffs in the detention center.
Mr Cox underwent surgery to fuse several broken vertebrae, his sister said.
New Haven City policy does not require officers to detain detainees in the back of police vans, but requires officers to call an ambulance or medical personnel to the scene immediately if a passenger becomes physically ill or injured.
In an email to city residents last week, Mayor Eliker said the abrupt stop of the van appeared to have occurred when the police officer driving was stopping to avoid an accident.
“This is not a moment of pride for me or the police department. We are all discouraged by what happened, “Assistant Chief Carl Jacobson, who is expected to take over as the next chief of the New Haven Police Department, told a community meeting this week. “I want justice for Randy, too. We will work hard to make changes. “
Although officials did not appear to have hurt Mr. Cox maliciously, Mayor Eliker said, their behavior “shows a level of insensitivity that is deeply disturbing.”
Mr. Cox stays in the hospital, barely able to move. Mr O’Donnell said doctors were “hopeful but not optimistic” that he would fully recover.
“In the beginning, he could speak when he first arrived at the hospital, but his oxygen and breathing were not good,” said his sister, Ms. Boomer. He could answer “yes” or “no,” she said, and was able to show slight signs of movement in his left arm.
Mr Cox has been charged with possession of a weapon in connection with the incident and a trial is scheduled for July 21, Mr O’Donnell said.
Kirsten Neuss participated in the study.
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