BALTIMORE, MD - NOVEMBER 30: A Baltimore City Sheriff's Office officer asks protesters to move in front of the courthouse where jury selection began in the trial of William Porter, one of six Baltimore city police officers charged in connection to the death of Freddie Gray on November 30, 2015 in Baltimore, Maryland.
Rob Carr / Via Getty Images
One of six Baltimore police officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray took the stand Wednesday in his own defense, painting himself as a well-intentioned recruit hoping to restore trust in law enforcement in the same poverty-stricken neighborhoods where he grew up.
William G. Porter faces charges of involuntary manslaughter, second-degree assault, misconduct in office, and reckless endangerment in connection with Gray’s death, which occurred April 12 after he suffered spinal injuries in police custody.
Gray’s death set off protests and, ultimately, rioting in West Baltimore thrusting the 25-year-old’s name into a national movement concerned with police violence against young black people, including Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and Sandra Bland.
On the sixth day of his trial, Porter, 26, took the witness stand a little before 11 a.m. Wednesday wearing a charcoal-colored suit with a gray shirt and a dark blue tie. He spoke in a clear and confident tone, and looked directly at jurors while under questioning from his attorney, Gary Proctor.
Porter portrayed himself as a well-intentioned, empathetic police officer who was hoping to restore trust in law enforcement after being rejected from the Air Force because of color-blindness.
“People had negative views of police,” Porter said. “I wanted to give people a different view to police.…I was always fair.”
Porter said would come to know Gray pretty well in his two-and-a-half years patrolling the neighborhood on foot.
“If he wasn’t dirty,” Porter said, a reference to possession of drugs, “he’d come over and talk to me.”
But Gray also had a reputation among officers as someone who would resist arrest, Porter said. A colleague told him Gray had recently tried to kick out the windows of his patrol car during an unrelated arrest, Porter added.
“He’d actively resist,” Porter said.
“He’d yell?” asked Proctor.
“Yes, he would yell,” Porter responded.
On the morning of April 12, Porter said he was responding to the scene where a man had been arrested after running away from an officer. He could hear yelling in the back of a police van.
After a couple more stops in the neighborhood, Porter approached the rear of the van and noticed Gray was inside, his wrists handcuffed behind his back, his feet shackled, while laying on the floor.
“What’s up?” Porter recalled asking Gray.
“Help,” he said Gray told him.
“How can I help you?” Porter said.
“Help me up,” Gray asked him, according to Porter’s testimony.
Porter then demonstrated for the jury, with an assist from his two defense attorneys, how he lifted Gray off the floor and sat him on the bench in the van’s compartment. He said Gray couldn’t tell him exactly what was wrong with him.
It was then Porter explained that often people under arrest attempt to fake injury or health injuries to avoid going to jail. “Jailitis,” he said they call it. Porter said he didn’t notice any major injuries to Gray, and didn’t read Gray’s increasingly unresponsive demeanor as anything unusual for someone under arrest.
But Porter said he told Officer Caesar Goodson, the driver of the van and one of the six officers facing charges in Gray’s death, that Gray would need medical attention.
“It’s the wagon driver’s responsibility to get him … from Point A to Point B,” Porter testified.
Porter said he didn’t put Gray into a seatbelt, per department policy, because he’d never seen an officer — over more than 150 arrests involving a van in his career — do that before. It simply wasn’t something that was usually done, Porter said.
Throughout the trial, prosecutors have argued that Porter’s failure to place Gray in a seatbelt or promptly seek medical attention means that he bears significant responsibility for Gray’s death. Porter’s attorneys have maintained that he acted to help Gray, implicitly shifting the responsibility for his death to the other officers charged in the case.
from BuzzFeed - USNews http://ift.tt/1Nc2m74
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