Page 14 Daily Mail, Wednesday, August 7, 2019
A picture
to shame
America
Sickening: A tethered Donald Neely is led by white police officers
Black suspect led on rope
in shocking echo of slavery
Mail Foreign ServiceIN a scarcely believable
scene, a black man is led
on a rope through a US
city by two white police-
men on horseback.
The shocking image, which
immediately triggered mem-
ories of the American South’s
shameful history of slavery,
brought widespread con-
demnation yesterday.
But despite civil rights groups
saying the sickening practice
was redolent of 1819 – not 2019- the police chief of Galveston,
Texas, could only issue a mealy-
mouthed apology.
Pictures of 43-year-old tres-
passing suspect Donald Neely
showed him handcuffed and
tethered as he was led around.
Commenters called the scene
‘disgusting’ and ‘degrading’, but
Police Chief Vernon Hale said:
‘This is a trained technique and
best practice in some scenarios.’
However, he admitted that his
officers, while acting without
malice, ‘showed poor judgment
in this instance and could have
waited for a transport unit at
the location of arrest’.
He said his department has
‘immediately changed the policy’
to prevent use of the technique,
adding: ‘We understand the neg-
ative perception of this action.’
Mr Neely was freed on bail.
James Douglas, president of
the Houston chapter of the
National Association for the
Advancement of Coloured Peo-
ple, said: ‘This is 2019 and not
- I am happy to know that
Chief Vernon [Hale] issued an
apology and indicated that the
act showed poor judgment, but
it also shows poor training.’ And
Leon Phillips, director of the
Galveston County Coalition for
Justice, told the BBC that Mr
Neely was ‘mentally ill’, adding:
‘This was a stupid mistake.
What I do know is that if it was a
white man, there’s no way they
would have done that to him.a rising number of protests
against police mistreatment of
black citizens. Eric Logan, 54,
was killed by Sergeant Ryan
O’Neill in June as the officer
investigated car break-ins in
South Bend, Indiana.
Officials said Logan moved
toward Mr O’Neill with a knife,
prompting the officer to fire.
But this claim was disputed by
Mr Logan’s family, who said the
officer shot Logan while he was
walking to his mother’s home.
His relatives sued the police. Mr
O’Neill resigned last month.
And dozens of demonstrators- black and white – marched in
Colorado Springs on Saturday
in protest over the fatal shoot-
ing of 19-year-old De’von Bailey
during a routine police stop.
‘This is 2019,
it’s not 1819’The police chief says they didn’t
break any policy, but what is the
policy on transporting a pris-
oner? How do I know that the
policy wasn’t written in 1875?
There are a lot of unanswered
questions.’ It comes as the
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