Thread by @VABVOX

When I was in college, my then-partner and I were the star witnesses in the first federal police brutality trial in Philadelphia. It was eight months of different stages of trial, threats by police, disruption of our lives, testifying. It was a life-altering experience.
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We were driving home late one night from an all-night market and witnessed police chase a car in front of us. Soon we were trapped between several police cars & the car they'd chased. They dragged the Black man in the car out & beat him with nightsticks. We tried to intervene.
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It was a horrifying, terrifying scene. I was 19--I thought I was invincible. I got out of the car and yelled at the police to stop. I reached for one officer's arm, raised, holding a nightstick. He whirled around at me, threatened me, ordered me back in the car. I was yelling.
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The beating ended and they put the seemingly unconscious man in a police van and drove off. We were ordered to drive on. We went home and I called the police to report what happened. Then I called a lawyer friend who told me to call the FBI. The police came to our apartment.
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One of the officers had my petite partner cornered in our living room and said to me, "What if this guy had just raped your girlfriend here?" I said I'd want him prosecuted. (I've been mouthy since childhood.) I got between him and her (I'm tall). It was a tense scene.
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After the police left, I said to my partner that we had to go back to the scene and take pictures. We went back. It had already been washed down, but we retrieved the man's shoes, his glasses, checkbook, pieces of broken nightstick and took them home. Key evidence for trial.
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We brought the case of this Black man beaten by police to the FBI. It was a long, arduous process of trying to get justice for him. The racist, misogynist, homophobic system was set against us--two young queer women--for just trying to do the right thing. We were demonized.
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We were put in front of a lineup with nothing between us and the cops. We were put through several pre-trial motions in which we were threatened in the actual court rooms. We were grilled by police and FBI at all hours. It was a grueling experience that wore us down.
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The trial took several weeks and was the lead story on the local news. Then-Mayor Frank Rizzo said "the girls" didn't know what we were talking about. We got non-stop threats in the mail, on the phone. I had to take incompletes for my courses that semester. It was brutal.
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The 3 police officers were acquitted and I pretty much lost my mind for a while. I was so young and so incredibly naive about the system. I wrote a column about what happened for the local daily that had covered the trial, the Philadelphia Inquirer, which they published.
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The newspaper won a Pulitzer for their coverage of the trial & police brutality. My partner & I broke up. I joined the domestic Peace Corps to somehow seek some justice for someone. I shifted direction at college and headed into journalism. That experience re-shaped my life.
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The man who was beaten--we had thought he was killed that night. I had called every local hospital searching for him. He never got recompense from the city. They did drop the charges of resisting arrest. He was grateful we came forward, but it didn't change anything.

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The FBI only brought that case to trial because my partner and I were white. They told us so. I was a college student, she a social worker. We were smart, articulate and driven for justice. But the police won. They won because the jury couldn't see the victim as a victim.
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The victim we tried to help was badly beaten with bruises, black eyes, facial cuts. He survived. But he should never have been hurt. He should never have been arrested. He should have gotten monetary damages. He should have gotten justice.
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Watching Derek Chauvin's trial, I can't help but worry that despite what we know and what we saw, the victim, George Floyd, will be portrayed as a criminal unworthy of justice. In the decades since I witnessed that beating, justice has not come for victims of police violence.
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I desperately wanted justice for the man I saw beaten when I was in college. I have wanted justice for every victim of police violence whose stories I have reported on. I want this trial to be different. I want justice for George Floyd. I want this trial to end the violence.
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