Thread by @chrisvanderveen

THREAD

I'd like to walk you through the process we've gone through for our investigation #PRONE

To review, we have found at least 107 deaths of people who died shortly after being held facedown and handcuffed.

Here are 100 of their faces.

#9news
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Like many investigations, this one started with another.

Last year, I started looking into the 2018 death of David Baker.

Baker, a Navy veteran, died shortly after several Aurora police officers pinned him to the ground after a violent confrontation.

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According to the coroner's report, Baker died of "restraint asphyxia"

He died, in essence, because he couldn't breathe enough air in and out of his body.

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For more than a year, mostly in between other reports and work in the newsroom (I became a manager here late 2019), I started pouring through autopsies, federal case filings and media reports looking for other people who died while being held prone

Here's start of database

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This was extremely labor intensive.

Cases would go in, only to go out later as I learned more about them.

Along the way, I started to learn more about cases like these

Robert Richardson of Ohio. Died in 2012.

His death led to $3.5 million settlement

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What struck me is how easy it was to find warnings of the potential dangers of holding a handcuffed suspect prone.

In 1995, for example, officers were warned in this DOJ bulletin to, as soon as suspect is handcuffed,

"get him off his stomach"

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Yet we found case after case where officers lingered on the backs of suspects long after they were handcuffed.

People like Michael Marshall who died in the Denver jail.

His death led to a $4.6 million settlement

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In the middle of all of this, George Floyd's death in Minnesota gave new urgency to the investigation itself.

We teamed up with @AJInvestigates to start working the story from there.

He found a 2010 MN case that should have served as a warning

kare11.com/article/news/l…

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I also started working with other reporters/producers at other @TEGNA stations as we looked for more families impacted by this

@katieawilcox @katiecmoore @JoeDanaReports @MarissaTansino @WFAAcharlotte @jptrahan @andiejudsonnews were more than willing to help

I thank them

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We're going to stick on this story. It's an important one IMHO.

I do NOT believe officers are intentionally doing this, but there is evidence to suggest their training is lacking here.

Why else would someone stay on the back of someone like Roy Nelson for nearly 4 min

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or Anton Black for even longer?

Remember, police have been warned for years to, as soon as suspect is cuffed and prone, "turn them over" and watch their level of consciousness.

Two really simple things

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There are theories as to why this keeps happening.

I'll offer one of those tonight at 9 and 10.

One more thing. In 2014, Congress passed the Death in Custody Reporting Act

it was supposed to require local law enforcement to report quarterly ALL in-custody deaths.

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There's just one BIG problem

It has YET TO BE ENFORCED

yep, 6 years after members of Congress patted themselves on the back for this, the feds have yet to implement it.

Why is that a problem?

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Because what I did over the course of a year could have been a lot easier had this law actually gone into effect.

I would have had a national database to start with

Instead, we had to spent MONTHS looking for these deaths.

And we still have likely undercounted by a lot

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There has to be an easier way to track this.

We'll follow up on this issue in the weeks to come and provide you with a way to let your voice on the matter be heard,
In the meantime, here is part one of our investigation

9news.com/article/news/i…

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