- Orignally published by the Virginia Pilot on August 31, 2004 [here
]
By MATTHEW ROY, The Virginian-Pilot
NORFOLK -- It was shot through a rain-splattered police windshield: a
videotape that captured some of the final moments of Kenny S. Jefferson
, who died Aug. 14 after struggling with police on Chesapeake Boulevard
.On Monday, city officials allowed a Virginian-Pilot reporter and an
NAACP leader to watch about 15 minutes of the videotape in the city
attorney's office, with ranking police present, including Chief Bruce
P. Marquis .
City Attorney Bernard Pishko said the tape shows that police acted
appropriately while doing a tough job: responding in the rain, getting
exposed to Jefferson's blood from wounds he incurred punching car
windows, keeping their tempers, staying attentive to him after he was
subdued and ultimately attempting to save his life.
John Wesley Hill , president of the city's chapter of the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People and a former police
officer, said he did not see any inappropriate action on the tape.
But Hill said he has questions about what the tape didn't show -- the
use of pepper spray on Jefferson before the arrival of the supervisor.
Hill questioned if the spray could sometimes aggravate situations
rather than make them better. The NAACP has asked the city for
information about pepper spray, including how often it has been used
and its possible effects, and Hill contended that Norfolk's leaders
should be concerned about its use .
Capt. Michael Young said officers fired two quick bursts of pepper spray at Jefferson, with little apparent effect.
Marquis weighed in on pepper spray, calling it "about as safe a non lethal that you can use on someone."
Police involved in the incident had been temporarily placed on
administrative duties. But they returned to their usual work a little
more than a week ago after Commonwealth's Attorney John R. Doyle III
said in a letter to Marquis that the videotape and witness statements
showed they "only used the degree of force necessary to restrain Mr.
Jefferson."
The video was shot from the car of a supervisor who arrived as several
officers struggled to handcuff Jefferson, who lay face down on the wet
road . Some of the action was obscured by officers grouped around him,
their backs to the camera.
Officers cuffed his hands behind his back, then cuffed his ankles together and bound his ankles to his wrists.
A short while later -- Young said it was just more than a minute --
Jefferson was moved to his side, then his back. At some point, an
officer felt for a pulse, and appeared to monitor him for a bit.
Eventually, police attempted to revive Jefferson with chest compressions and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, Young said.
Jefferson, 26 , who police and witnesses say had punched out windows of
passing vehicles and behaved bizarrely that day, was pronounced dead at
a city hospital a short while later.
The state medical examiner's office has yet to release a cause of death
pending laboratory tests. Officials have suggested Jefferson was under
the influence of some substance .
Pishko made the video available for viewing to a Virginian-Pilot
reporter after the newspaper requested to see it under the Freedom of
Information Act. However, Pishko said that he had grounds to withhold
the videotape under the act because it was part of a confidential
administrative investigation and said that making it available for
viewing was "discretionary."
He declined to allow the newspaper to take images of the video. "I just
don't think that it's the type of thing that should be plastered all
over the place," Pishko said.
In an interview later Monday, Melody Vergara of Virginia Beach, who had
two children with Jefferson, said he was a good, generous person.
She said he had an anxiety disorder and also been hospitalized recently
for a seizure. His actions that day, she said, were "crying for help."
She also questioned the police use of pepper spray in an interview
Monday. Her eyes were irritated after she identified his body at a
hospital, she said.
