More than four years after Vachel Howard's death, footage of what happened inside the Los Angeles Police Department's 77th Street Station Jail has been released. Copies of the previously unreleased tapes were obtained byProPublica and released Thursday "in the interest of establishing a more complete public record" of Howard's controversial death, which occurred just hours after he had been taken into police custody June 4, 2012 under suspension of intoxicated driving.
"Mr. Howard posed no threat whatsoever," V. James DeSimone, who represents Vachel's daughter Tushana, told ProPublica. "He was down on the ground, six officers on top of him, no guns in the nearby vicinity executing a chokehold where there was no threat to the officers or to anybody else. It's out of policy, it's unlawful, and in this case it's murder."
Howard told police, who had suspected he was under the influence of cocaine, he suffered from schizophrenia. Less than an hour after the encounter captured on video, Howard, 56, was pronounced dead at nearby Good Samaritan Hospital. His contributing causes of death were listed by a coroner shortly after as cocaine intoxication, heart disease, and a "chokehold employed by one of the officers."
As Topher Sanders wrote, the footage offers an unsettling look at "an extended wrestling match" involving multiple officers:
"What followed was an extended wrestling match, one that spilled back into the camera’s view. Four officers can be seen grabbing at Howard’s waist and legs. A Taser was employed five times, according to the commission’s report. The officers said Howard was unfazed, often swearing and once removing the Taser probes from his body. The officers reported that at least twice they themselves were exposed to the Taser’s electrical charge.
The 30 minutes of footage purporting to show Howard's death, which readers may consider graphic in nature, were captured via two separate fixed cameras at the 77th Street Station Jail. Though ProPublica first tried to obtain the footage from both the judge in the original case and the police department, those requests proved to be not fruitful.
The LAPD did not offer a statement to ProPublica regarding the video's release. They also did not immediately respond to Complex's request for additional comment.
As reported by CNN in October of last year, a payment from the city in the amount of $2.85 million to Howard's family was approved in what reporters at the time had deemed a "largely under the radar case" in Los Angeles. According to CNN, the department did not issue a press release on the day of Howard's death. Previous in-custody death cases have typically been met with prompt press releases.
Read the full ProPublica report on the footage's release here.
