In my first journalism class the professor bestowed on us anxious young news gatherers sage advice about how to determine what events were news worthy. The advice went like this, ''If a dog bites a man, that’s not news. But if a man bites a dog now that's News.”
On an early morning in April 2009, Denver police Officer Devin sparks brutally attacked and beat Michael DeHerrera, a 23-year-old Hispanic male. DeHerrera was talking on his telephone with his father at the time of attack. Deferrer's friend, Shawn Johnson, 24, lay face down on the wet pavement with his hands cuffed behind his back, roughly thrown to the ground minutes earlier by Spark’s partner Officer Randy Murr.
DeHerrera and Johnson were ejected from Denver's LoDo nightclub earlier in the evening because Johnson used the women’s restroom. The officers claim the two young men pushed them as they exited the club, a street surveillance camera and eyewitness accounts indicate the police were probably lying - the camera also showed that the beating of DeHerrera was brutal and unprovoked. The city safety manager, Ron Perea, called the brutality, “justified,'' and no charges were filed against the officers. A year later however, the case has been reopened and the Hispanic community is calling for the resignation of Perea and the firing of the two officers. What has changed in 12 short months?
Police brutality is nothing new in Colorado, particularly against minorities. Recently a 54-year-old black street preacher was tased to death in a Denver jail as he went to recover his shoes - the police refuse to release the video footage of the killing, all the better to fabricate an explanation for murdering a feeble black man and high-fiving over his dead body, as witnesses have testified. A few months before the jail killing a 10-year-old mentally handicapped boy was tased by two sheriff's deputies who said they felt threatened by the child.
What the death of the preacher and the assault on the boy have in common is that they didn't receive any traction in the media as sad as it is, they were, ''dog bites man” stories. As a society we seem to expect police brutality of citizens, especially minorities, it is normal to us now. Bill Johnson of the Denver Post outlined a series of police abuses spanning the country in his recent article about the DeHerrera assault, ''Cops' defense in video case a stale story.” According to Johnson, police abuse is a national pastime.
So if police assaults on defenseless citizens have become common, why is the DeHerrera beating such a big media deal, why is it a, “man bites dog” story? The reason the DeHerrera case has gone viral in the past year is because DeHerrera's father, Anthony DeHerrera, is a 22 year veteran of the Pueblo Sheriff s Department. The Denver cops broke the golden rule of law enforcement called, professional courtesy - you always lie for fellow cops and you never beat their kids.
Deputy DeHerrera most certainly knew about this unwritten code - according to my many police sources, all cops do, and he absolutely knew about the Colorado law enforcement habit of beating minority men. His knowledge of these things is the best way to explain the extraordinary lengths the deputy took to find his son in the early morning hours during a driving snowstorm. If the deputy had the pride and confidence in the law that he claims, why not let the compassionate wheels of Rocky Mountain justice grind to the same logical fair conclusion that it does for thousands who encounter Colorado style justice everyday?
For the deputy, normal Colorado justice was not good enough. Normal Colorado justice, as the deputy knew, could lead to a lengthy term in one of the state's many crowded prisons, or possibly death for his son. Why else would the deputy risk his life and the life of his wife to recklessly drive from Pueblo to Denver at night in a snowstorm, greatly exceeding the speed limit - as the deputy boasts. Or abuse police privilege to gain the telephone records of his adult son from the phone company, or why was he allowed to use the resources of the Pueblo County Sheriff's Office to find where the Denver police had taken his son, or why he dispatched family members in the middle of the night to a possible dangerous location where his son's last phone call was made. Why risk so much if his son was in the hands of a justice system he trusted?
Colorado's prisons are full of Hispanic and black young men whose fathers are not cops. The local papers are full of stories of police abuse that never reach the courts because cops lie for each other - that's what they do, and DAS and safety managers let them. The state is rife with judicial corruption, the DeHerrera case is only different from the rest because “The Man” finally bit a dog that could yelp - a fellow law dog.
Oh, by the way, the 10-year-old child assaulted by the deputies mentioned earlier in this article, was abused by Deputy DeHerrera’s colleagues in the Pueblo sheriff's Office. Deputy DeHerrera didn't have a problem with that child's assault at the hands of the law, but then that boy's father wasn't a cop. The Pueblo Sheriff even called the tasing Justified...does that sound familiar?
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