B4 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.SATURDAY, AUGUST 1 , 2020
D’Quan Young
Young was shot by an off-duty
police officer the evening of May 9,
2018, outside the Brentwood Rec-
reation Center in Northeast Wash-
ington.
Police said the officer, James
Wilson, was in plainclothes and
headed to a cookout with friends
when Young approached him on
15th Street. Police said the two
exchanged words before the
shooting.
Because Wilson was not on
duty, he was not wearing a body
camera. Authorities released foot-
age from a surveillance camera
mounted at the recreation center.
The video shows Young walking
across the street and toward Wil-
son. Moments later, Wilson drops
a bag and pulls a firearm. Young is
obscured. D.C. Police Chief Peter
Newsham told reporters that itappears Wilson did not identify
himself as a police officer.
Police said they have not deter-
mined who fired first. B ut police
said there was an exchange of
gunshots. They recovered a gun
and said they matched Young’s
DNA to the firearm. Authorities
said prosecutors ruled the shoot-
ing justified.
Young’s sister, Monica Wood,
has questioned the police account,
saying relatives were initially told
on the scene that an officer had not
been involved.
Caleb, the family attorney, ac-
cused police of withholding por-
tions of the body-worn camera
footage that he said shows the
responding officers interacting
with the off-duty officer.
“If the officer committed a shoot-
ing that he said was justified, the
officer would have remained at themayor for public safety, said the
videos “resolve some questions
that people may have, but they
don’t resolve others.”
Police previously had released
such footage only in cases approved
by the mayor, typically interactions
that raised controversy or generat-
ed intense public interest.
D.C. officials said relatives of
four other victims of deadly police
interactions in recent years have
exercised a provision under the
law to prevent public viewing of
the videos.
Marqueese Alston
Alston’s mother, Kenithia Al-
ston, has been pushing for D.C.
Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) to
publicly release the body camera
footage of her son’s shooting for
more than a year. During days of
demonstrations in D.C. in June,
she repeatedly spoke to crowds at
Black Lives Matter Plaza, hoping
to draw attention to her son’s story.
The young man was killed June
12, 2018, when officers spotted
him in Southeast Washington af-
ter noticing what they concluded
was the outline of a gun in his right
front pocket. He ran, police said,
and officers chased after him
down an alley.
The video moves fast, but
slowed down, it shows Marqueese
Alston turning to his left, holding
what appears to be a gun in his
right hand. Police said there are
two distinctive sounds of gunfire
— first from Alston’s gun, then
from two officers, identified as Ca-
leb Demeritt and Ronald Kohch.
Authorities said they found the
gun, shell casings from bullets
fired from it, and additional am-
munition in Alston’s pocket. They
said Alston’s DNA was found on
the weapon. Authorities said the
shooting was ruled justified.
Kenithia Alston has disputed
whether her son was armed and
suggested he was a bystander who
got shot as police jumped from their
cars to confront a group of people.
Her attorney, Zina Makar, said it
was “really unclear” to them what
was in Marqueese Alston’s hand.
Kenithia Alston said in June
that she had watched the body
camera video and that it did not
back the police account.
Makar said the way that police
have handled the case felt more
like “a self-serving PR stunt than
VIDEOS FROM B1
an honest attempt to get at the
truth.”
She said that Alston wanted the
release of the full body camera
footage and the personnel records
of the police officers who shot her
son. She said her client would have
opposed Friday’s release becauseshe does not believe it tells the full
story of her son’s death.
Kenithia Alston wants “the
unedited, complete raw footage,”
Makar said.
Police said they are planning to
release the full-length footage
from the officers who fired.scene, and other officers would have
interacted with him,” Caleb said.
“But there was no footage of that.”Jeffrey Price
The traffic crash that killed
Price occurred May 4, 2018, on
Division Avenue in Northeast
Washington.
Police said officers had re-
sponded to a 911 call for a report of
gunshots involving people on an
ATV and a motorcycle. Police said
Officer Michael Pearson respond-
ed to help and entered an intersec-
tion as Price’s dirt bike sped north
in the southbound lane of Division
Avenue.
The dirt bike operated by Price
struck the passenger side door of
Pearson’s cruiser.
Video from Pearson’s cruiser
shows bits of glass as a window
smashes when the impact occurs.
Police did not release video from
other officers who were nearby.
Police said Price had been
speeding, his bike left a 114-foot
skid mark before it hit the cruiser,
and he was not wearing a helmet.
Police said Pearson had failed to
stop for a stop sign to make sure
the intersection was clear, a viola-
tion of the department’s general
orders for police vehicles even
while responding to emergencies.
As a result, Newsham said the
accident was ruled “preventable,”
and Pearson was given a five-day
suspension. He served one day;
the rest can be applied if there are
further infractions.
Price’s uncle, Jay Brown, said
the family had no warning the
video would be made public, pre-
venting them from processing the
traumatic footage together. Police
said they were in touch with the
family attorney.
Brown said relatives do not be-
lieve the police account and called
the officer’s suspension “an insult
to the family and an insult to the
justice system.”
“This officer intentionally ran
this stop sign and used his vehicle
as a barrier that led to the death of
my nephew,” Brown said. “If he
wanted to get out of the way, he
would’ve never ran that stop sign.”
[email protected]
michael.brice-
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]Clarence Williams contributed to this
report.Videos of 3 fatal encounters with D.C. police are released
MICHAEL BRICE-SADDLER/THE WASHINGTON POSTKATHERINE FREY/THE WASHINGTON POSTan empty hand and pepper spray
or a Taser,” Liberati said after the
BolaWrap demonstration outside
his department’s headquarters.
Officers from 600 agencies in
nearly every region of the coun-
try have attended demonstra-
tions of the product, and approxi-
mately 90 departments have tak-
en steps to purchase them, the
company said. Los Angeles police
are running a pilot program with
1,000 of the devices, and SWAT
officers in Fort Worth successful-
ly subdued someone with a Bo-
laWrap, according to the compa-
ny.
In the Washington region,
about a dozen departments have
attended a demonstration, but
Liberati’s six-officer force will
become one of the first to invest
in the devices.
Developed around 2016, the
BolaWrap was modeled after the
bolas used by gauchos to wrangle
animals. It went to market in
2018, and Taser founder Thomas
Smith signed on in 2019 as presi-
dent of Wrap Technologies. The
company has been selling the
device to law enforcement agen-
cies for about a year, but over the
past two months, Smith said,
interest has increased as depart-
ments across the country explore
calls for police reform measures
after the killing of George Floyd
in the custody of Minneapolis
officers.
The increase coincides with
calls locally and nationally to
redirect police funding toward
social workers and those trained
in mental health crisis interven-
tion. Police officers are not
equipped to deal with these situ-
ations, advocates for such chang-
es say, leading to unnecessary,
violent encounters that some-
times turn deadly.
“Mental health is really what
started the company,” Smith said.
The mandate to the product in-
ventor was to create something
that would not rely on “pain
compliance.”
The device, according to the
company, launches an eight-foot
tether at 513 feet per second to
restrain a subject 10 to 25 feet
away. The BolaWrap and all its
related equipment, including a
holster and cartridges, can cost
between $1,000 and $1,300 per
device, the company said.
A year into sales, Smith said he
DEVICE FROM B1
envisions the BolaWrap catching
on gradually — the same way the
Taser did when it was introduced
in the 1990s.
Though several departments
locally have attended BolaWrap
demonstrations, few have signed
on to use the device.
The Prince George’s County
Police Department, one of the
largest law enforcement agencies
in the area, attended a demon-
stration last summer, but police
spokeswoman Christina Cotter-
man said that “after analyzing
the product and associated costs,
we ultimately decided against
purchasing the equipment.”
D.C. police also received a
demonstration, but the depart-
ment has no plans to buy the
device. D.C. Police Chief Peter
Newsham said he has seen videos
of the BolaWrap and is skeptical.
“Any less-than-lethal option is
something we always consider,”
Newsham said. But from the
video, “I questioned its ability to
take someone down who is not
trying to be taken down.”
The product has also drawn
broader criticism from reform
advocates who have said that
funding should be put into proac-
tive — not reactive — mental
health resources.“Mental health should not be a
policing issue,” Human Rights
Watch senior researcher John
Raphling wrote in an analysis of
the BolaWrap. “Police are poorly
equipped to help people having
mental health crises when com-
pared to mental health profes-
sionals — another weapon on
their tool belt will not change this
fact.”
Smith said the BolaWrap is not
a “silver bullet” but a useful
de-escalation tool for officers
who find themselves handling
crises.
“It’s going to be a breadth of
things that are going to address
this, and I think we’re one piece
of it,” Smith said, adding, “We’re
going to reduce those higher
levels of force being used.”
Though the region’s largest
departments have not bought
into the BolaWrap, others around
the nation have. The Los Angeles
Police Department’s BolaWrap
pilot program began in February.
Cmdr. Ruby Flores, who works in
the training division, said the
department has been working
with BolaWraps since 2018 to
help develop the product. It is
keeping deployment data to
track the device’s success rate.
Other departments in Califor-nia, Florida and Texas have re-
ported detainments or arrests
made with a BolaWrap, Smith
said, including the first docu-
mented successful deployment,
by the Fort Worth Police Depart-
ment during a SWAT call for a
hostage situation.
The BolaWrap requires a
three-foot radius around the sub-
ject to deploy properly, which
makes indoor use more difficult.
In Fort Worth, officers drew a
man out of a home with tear gas
and then deployed the device.
At the Landover Hills demon-
stration, Ross, the former Phila-
delphia police commissioner,
said the small hooks at each end
of the BolaWrap cable are de-
signed to embed in the subject’s
clothing. But they could also
hook their skin — which is what
happened during a second dem-
onstration involving Liberati.
The BolaWrap was deployed
too high on the chief’s body,
hooking his hand and leaving
him bloody.
“I had my hands too low, and
that was my fault,” Liberati said.
“But I’m fine, I’m fine.”
[email protected]Peter Hermann contributed to this
report.Lasso device is touted as a nonlethal tool for police
MARVIN JOSEPH/THE WASHINGTON POST
The Landover Hills Police Department will become one of the first law enforcement departments in the
region to invest in the BolaWrap, seen during a demonstration.BY LAUREN LUMPKINCatholic University will invite
fewer students to campus this
fall as the novel coronavirus
continues to spread through the
country, the school’s president
announced Friday afternoon.
The university will restrict the
number of students who can live
on campus and take classes in
person when the semester starts
Aug. 24, said John Garvey in a
letter to the campus community.
Priority will be given to first-year
and certain transfer students.
Most sophomores, juniors and
seniors will not live on the cam-
pus in Northeast Washington
and will take their fall classes
online.
“I understand this is disap-
pointing news, because it is dis-
appointing to us,” Garvey said.
“But the large and sustained
increase in infections nation-
wide poses a serious risk that we
will be unable to provide the care
necessary for a full complement
of our student population.”
About 1,600 students had been
expected to reside on campus.
Now roughly 700 will, said Karna
Lozoya, a school spokeswoman.
Garvey indicated the university
is equipped to care for a “smaller
cohort” of students.
A limited amount of on-cam-
pus housing will also be made
available to some upperclass-
men, including resident assis-
tants, international students andthose with personal circum-
stances that would make it diffi-
cult to take online classes away
from campus, Garvey said.
The university will conduct
new student orientations and
the first two weeks of classes
online to comply with an order
from D.C. Mayor Muriel E.
Bowser instructing travelers
from 27 “high-risk” states to
self-quarantine for 14 days. The
District defines a high-risk area
as one that is seeing new daily
cases exceed 10 per 100,000
residents.
Catholic and other private uni-
versities in D.C. had intended to
bring all students back for a mix
of in-person and online courses,
but those plans faded this week
as the city started enforcing new
travel restrictions and coronavi-
rus hot spots continued to
emerge across the country.
“We will continue to monitor
public health conditions to de-
termine when we can resume
in-person courses and other ac-
tivities,” Garvey said.
Garvey in his announcement
did not indicate the school will
offer discounts to students who
will take all their classes online.
Georgetown, George Washing-
ton and American universities
disclosed plans to discount tu-
ition by 10 percent for under-
graduates when they scrapped
plans to bring most students
back to campus.
[email protected]THE DISTRICTCatholic University to limit
students allowed on campus
ABOVE: D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) speaks at a news
conference on Friday. LEFT: Kenithia Alston holds a photo of her
son, Marqueese Alston, who was killed by D.C. police in 2018.wapo.st/medicalmysteriesS0137-2x3Read “Medical Mysteries,”
Tuesdays in Health & Science.He beat
leukemia. But
then things got
really bad...