https://www.yahoo.com/news/genetic-trait-black-people-police-164259549.htmlWhen they carried the body of a 32-year-old Black man named Lamont Perry out of the woods in Wadesboro, North Carolina, there were no protests over his sudden death in police custody.
No reporters camped at the scene. No lawyers filed suit.
Instead, the final mark in the ledger of Perry’s life was made by a state medical examiner who attributed his death in large part to sickle cell trait, a genetic characteristic that overwhelmingly occurs in Black people. The official word was that he had died by accident.
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He had swelling of the brain, and a forensic investigator reported that he had an open fracture of his right leg. He was covered in dirt, and residents of a nearby housing complex told his family that when the officers emerged from the woods, their shoes and the bottoms of their pants were spattered in blood.
Perry’s case underscores how willing some American pathologists have been to rule in-custody deaths of Black people accidents or natural occurrences caused by sickle cell trait, which is carried by 1 in 13 Black Americans and is almost always benign.
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The New York Times has found at least 46 other instances over the past 25 years in which medical examiners, law enforcement officials or defenders of accused officers pointed to the trait as a cause or major factor in deaths of Black people in custody. Fifteen such deaths have occurred since 2015.
In roughly two-thirds of the cases, the person who died had been forcefully restrained by authorities, pepper-sprayed or shocked with stun guns. Scattered across 22 states and Puerto Rico, in big cities and small towns, the determinations on sickle cell trait often created enough doubt for officers to avert criminal or civil penalties, the Times found.
K.C. Cage-Singleton, a 30-year-old landscaper and father of four, was walking in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in October 2009 when two officers approached him because they thought his clothing resembled that of an armed robbery suspect. Records show they chased him into an apartment complex, shocked him with a stun gun and beat him with a baton. The coroner cataloged a slew of injuries, including abrasions, lacerations and broken teeth, but said the manner and cause of his death were “undetermined,” citing “probable” sickle cell trait. The officers were not charged.
Army Sgt. James Brown, 26, had completed two tours in Iraq and was struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder in July 2012 when he turned himself in to the El Paso, Texas, jail to serve a two-day sentence for drunken driving. Authorities said he became violent, and he died after five jailers in riot gear piled atop him, pulled a mesh mask over his head and bound him in a chair. The medical examiner ruled that he had died a natural death caused by sickle cell crisis, and a grand jury declined to bring charges.
Gamel Brown, a 30-year-old property maintenance supervisor, cut his hand on a broken mirror at his home in a Baltimore suburb in January last year, prompting a call to 911. The police who responded said he became “extremely combative,” and they jolted him several times with a stun gun. After he died at a hospital, the medical examiner said that the manner of his death was undetermined — and that it was caused in part by sickle cell trait. The state’s attorney filed no charges.
In three cases, deaths linked to sickle cell trait that were deemed natural or of indeterminate cause were later ruled homicides — as occurred when Martin Lee Anderson, 14, died at the hands of his jailers at a northwest Florida juvenile detention camp in January 2006.
“You can’t put the blame on sickle cell trait when there is a knee on the neck or when there is a chokehold or the person is hogtied,” said Dr. Roger Mitchell Jr., the former chief medical examiner for the District of Columbia and now chair of pathology at the Howard University College of Medicine. “You can’t say, ‘Well, he’s fragile.’ No, that becomes a homicide.”
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In none of the deaths examined by the Times did the person have actual sickle cell disease, though there were instances when imprecise language by medical examiners left the false impression the trait and the disease were the same.
They might as well say that the victims died because of Vitamin D deficiency due to their skin colour!
Many said they suspected some sickle cell determinations might reflect a pattern of bias or conflicts of interest among medical examiners and police officials.
Duh!
David Campbell, 25, stopped breathing in Allentown, Pennsylvania, in October 2011 after resisting his jailers’ efforts to remove his clothing and put him on suicide watch. They responded by dousing him with pepper spray, jamming knees into his back and leaving him tied to a chair, according to a lawsuit brought by his family.
While the results of Campbell’s autopsy were pending, emails show, the head of the Lehigh County Corrections Department sent the coroner a video of the arrest of a Florida man whose death was attributed to “excited delirium”
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The coroner’s ruling in the case stated “excited delirium complicating sickle cell trait, dehydration and abnormalities of the cardiac conduction system during restraint.” Manner of death: “undetermined.”
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Sickle cell trait alone cannot cause death, said Dr. Swee Lay Thein, a hematologist at the National Institutes of Health who has studied the condition. “It has to be something else, and something quite extreme,” she said.
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In 2008, Baron Pikes, known as Scooter, died after being shocked with a stun gun at least eight times by a police officer in Winnfield, Louisiana, while handcuffed and lying on the ground. The coroner ruled the death of Pikes, 21 and Black, a homicide, and the officer, Scott Nugent, was charged with manslaughter.
Still, at the criminal trial, Wetli testified that “the cause of death was exertional sickling due to sickle cell trait.”
Nugent was acquitted.
The Times found other medical examiners invoking the trait as early as the 1970s.
In May 1979, Los Angeles pathologists blamed “massive intravascular sickling” in the death of Jerry Eugene Wright Jr., a 20-year-old Black man whom police officers had mistaken for a drug user. In fact, he had been the victim of a violent robbery; they handcuffed him, put him facedown on the ground and ignored bystanders who warned that he was struggling to breathe. Wright’s family was later awarded $2.1 million after suing for wrongful death.
A panel convened by a coroner outside Augusta, Georgia, concluded that Larry Gardner, 33, had died of cardiopulmonary arrest caused by sickle cell trait in August 1984 after authorities arrested him on marijuana and shoplifting charges. Gardner’s death led to rioting after it was said that he had been beaten in custody.
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The death of Anderson, the 14-year-old Florida boy, shows the potential pitfalls when medical examiners rush to blame sickle cell trait.
An autopsy deemed Martin’s death to be natural, saying the trait was why he had suddenly stopped breathing in January 2006. But a later inquiry found that he had died after drill instructors at a Bay County, Florida, juvenile detention center punched and kneed him, pinned him down, pressed their fingers into pressure points and covered his mouth while forcing him to inhale ammonia.
Seven guards and a nurse were charged with manslaughter. All were acquitted
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The case of Derek Williams, who died in Milwaukee in July 2011, offered another cautionary tale.
The police saw Williams, 22, on a street corner and arrested him on suspicion of robbery after chasing him into the yard of a nearby home. He stopped breathing in the back seat of a patrol car. The police told the county medical examiner that he had been taken into custody “without incident,” and the medical examiner, based solely on that account, ruled that he had died a natural death caused by sickle cell crisis.
After being confronted with information reported by The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which showed, among other things, that officers had piled onto Williams during his cuffing and did not immediately respond to his pleas as he gasped for air, the county reversed itself and declared his death a homicide. Still, none of the officers were charged.
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The urge to elevate sickle cell trait over other factors was evident in more recent cases, too, the Times found, including when the police arrested Darren Boykin in Texarkana, Texas, in 2019.
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In August 2019, a Texarkana College employee saw him walk into an administration building and became suspicious, thinking he resembled a suspect in burglaries on campus. She called the police, who chased Boykin for about one-third of a mile before an officer tackled him from behind. Boykin struggled as the officer tried to handcuff him, records show, and another officer joined to subdue him.
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The medical examiner noted abrasions on Boykin’s shoulder and bruising on his back, the autopsy report shows, but ruled that he had died of complications of sickle cell trait, citing the short distance he had run and the hot weather.
The manner of his death: natural.
Yes, as we have always claimed, racism is natural behaviour for "whites".
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