K THE NEW YORK TIMES NATIONALFRIDAY, AUGUST 7, 2020 N A21Struggle for Racial JusticeSmall Towns and Big Cities
Over the weeks, the rallies for
Ms. Fizer tapered from a hundred
protesters to a couple dozen. Ev-
ery Saturday morning, they wave
signs and ask passing cars to honk
in support of the 25-year-old wom-
an with a big grin and flower tat-
too, who loved swimming and Chi-
nese takeout and dreamed of hav-
ing children, and of a larger life be-
yond her night-shift job at a gas
station. Her family and friends
have become her movement.
“We’re just doing it all on our
own,” Amy Fizer said.
There are hundreds of stories of
law enforcement killings in small
towns and rural areas, but scant
research into how and why they
happen. One analysis by
FiveThirtyEight found that be-
tween 2013 and 2019 there was a
slight rise in shootings by officers
in rural and suburban areas and a
decline in big cities. Experts say
rural shootings may be tied to
higher rates of gun ownership, a
lack of mental health services, or
insufficient training for officers
responding to people in crisis.
Ms. Fizer’s parents said they
know only the barest facts about
what happened the night she died.
She spent the last day of her life
splashing around in a kiddie pool
with her best friend, Taylor Brow-
der, and Ms. Browder’s young chil-
dren, talking about life and her fu-
ture in Sedalia, an old railroad
town of 21,000 people that is home
to the Missouri State Fair. Ms.
Fizer had attended the Sedalia Po-
lice Department’s citizen’s acad-
emy in 2016 but quickly decided
she did not want to become a cop.
She sometimes talked about
working as a parole officer.
Ms. Browder said that Ms. Fizer
headed home to the apartment
she shared with her boyfriend to
take a nap and shower before her
overnight shift at the Eagle Stop
gas station on the edge of town.
At about 10 that night, a Pettis
County sheriff’s deputy pulled her
over for speeding. In an interview,
Sheriff Kevin Bond said that the
deputy “met with verbal resist-
ance” when he walked up to Ms.
Fizer’s car and that he told investi-
gators she claimed she had a gun
and threatened to kill him.
Ms. Fizer’s friends and family
have a hard time believing that.
Ms. Fizer’s boyfriend owned a
gun, they said, but Ms. Fizer did
not like guns or carry one.
Investigators later found five
shell casings by the driver’s side
door of her Hyundai, but no gun.
David Hemenway, director of
the Harvard Injury Control Re-
search Center, said the prevalence
of guns may explain why cities
and rural areas have nearly equal
rates of law enforcement killings
even though murders and violent
crime rates tend to be higher in
cities.
More than half of the people fa-
tally shot by rural officers were re-
ported to have a gun, according to
a seven-year tally by Mapping Po-
lice Violence. Ms. Fizer was
among the roughly 10 percent who
were unarmed.
Ms. Fizer and the deputy who
shot her were both white, a com-
mon dynamic in shootings that oc-
cur in overwhelmingly white, ru-
ral parts of the country. Black and
Hispanic people are killed at
higher rates than white people in
rural areas, but the demographics
of rural America mean that about
60 to 70 percent of people killed by
law enforcement there are white,
according to an analysis by Har-
vard researchers.
Unlike in other cases that have
galvanized efforts to change polic-
ing, there is no body camera
footage of the shooting. The sher-
iff’s office stopped using body
cameras after software problems
and a crash on the hard drive that
recorded the data. Fixing it was
“just cost prohibitive,” Sheriff
Bond said.Sheriff Bond said there had
been no prior use-of-force com-
plaints against the deputy who
shot Ms. Fizer. The deputy, who
has not been named, was put on
paid leave, and the sheriff said he
immediately called in the Mis-
souri State Highway Patrol to in-
vestigate the shooting.
The Highway Patrol finished its
investigation last week and
handed over a report to the Pettis
County prosecuting attorney, who
had a special prosecutor ap-
pointed. Ms. Fizer’s family said
they have not been told about the
results of the report.
“If this would’ve happened in
the city, something would have
been done by now,” said Haley
Richardson, a friend who said Ms.
Fizer was kindhearted and stood
up for vulnerable people. “We’re
going to stay out here. We just
want answers.”
Ms. Fizer’s relatives said that a
divide in money and class be-
tween them and authorities in Pet-
tis County had made them feel like
second-rung citizens. Ms. Fizer
was not rich, and members of her
family had been in and out of pris-
on and struggled with drug addic-
tions.
“If you’re on the outer fringes of
society you’d know,” Amy Fizer
said. “They pull you over. They do
what they want, when they want.”
Some of Ms. Fizer’s friends and
relatives said they had already
been outraged by Mr. Floyd’s
killing in Minneapolis police cus-
tody, which happened about three
weeks before Ms. Fizer was shot.They joined Black Lives Matter
rallies as the movement spread
throughout small towns across
America.
But they also emphasized that
they did not want to abolish the
police. They supported law en-
forcement. Just not this deputy, or
this sheriff. The aftermath of the
shooting led to calls for Sheriff
Bond to resign and prompted a po-
lice sergeant in suburban Kansas
City to challenge the sheriff in
November’s election.
“You have law enforcement
running around without any body
cameras, dash cameras, the min-
imal equipment,” said the chal-
lenger, Brad Anders, who lives in
Sedalia. “The investigation, what-
ever it may reveal, is never going
to be enough. There are questions
that will never be answered.”
The anger over Ms. Fizer’s
death exploded on local Facebook
groups. Sheriff Bond said people
had threatened to publish his
home address and harassed and
threatened a deputy and his fam-
ily, and he warned that “instiga-
tors” were using Ms. Fizer’s death
to sow “social chaos.”
When a statue of a World War I
“doughboy” infantryman hon-
oring veterans was vandalized in
July in the town square — an inci-
dent unrelated to the protests for
Ms. Fizer — his officers opened an
investigation and arrested an 18-
year-old on vandalism charges.
“Do you want this to continue
and cause irrevocable harm to our
community?” the sheriff wrote.
“Are you willing to allow Pettis
County to become the test project
for some social justice experiment
for rural America?”
Ms. Fizer’s father, John, had
complicated feelings about the up-
welling of nationwide anger at the
police. He was angry. He wanted
justice for his daughter. But he
counted himself as a conservative
Republican and worried that the
protests in Sedalia could be co-
opted by left-wing outsiders — a
pervasive, but largely unfounded
fear in small towns after Mr.
Floyd’s killing.
In a Facebook post, Mr. Fizer
wrote that he did not want “Antifa-
type outrage here in our quiet
hometown.”
“I love my law enforcement,” he
said. “I’d hate to think where we’d
be without them.”Amy Fizer, whose daughter was killed by a sheriff ’s deputy, at a small rally in Sedalia, Mo. “We’re just doing it all on our own,” she said.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY WHITNEY CURTIS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESIn Rural Towns, Similar Chants to Find Justice
A march in Sedalia for Hannah Fizer, 25. The deputy who shot
her during a traffic stop has not been charged or disciplined.From Page A1Contact the Newsroom:
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1-800-NYTIMES (1-800-698-4637).NATIONAL
An article on Tuesday about the
Great American Outdoors Act
misidentified the lawmaker who
introduced the measure in the
House. It was Representative Joe
Cunningham, not the late Repre-
sentative John Lewis.OBITUARIES
A picture caption with an obituary
on July 5 about Margaret Morton,
a photographer known for her
pictures of homeless people,
misidentified the man she pho-
tographed preparing a meal forpeople living in a railroad tunnel.
He is Bernard Monte Isaac, not
“Larry.”An obituary on July 31 about the
former Republican presidential
candidate Herman Cain referred
incorrectly to the Burger King
franchises he oversaw when he
was an executive at Pillsbury.
They were in the Philadelphia
area; they were not all in the city
of Philadelphia.Errors are corrected during the press
run whenever possible, so some errors
noted here may not have appeared in
all editions.Corrections
Five years ago, the city entered
a landmark legal settlement with
federal prosecutors, promising to
stamp out the culture of violence
inside its jail complex on Rikers
Island, a place where officers reg-
ularly used excessive force on in-
mates.
But a federal monitor appointed
to oversee the troubled jail system
has found that little progress has
been made curbing the brutality
of guards and that violent inci-
dents have risen sharply since
2016, remaining at an “all-time
high.”
On Thursday, the prosecutors
said the city had failed to abide by
its promises, even as they an-
nounced yet another agreement
with the administration of Mayor
Bill de Blasio to fix the endemic
problems that have plagued the
city’s jails.
Mr. de Blasio and leaders in the
City Council have already agreed
to close the jail complex, which is
one of the country’s largest urban
prisons and has a long history of
violence and abuse against a
largely minority inmate popula-
tion. The city is moving ahead
with an $8 billion plan to replace it
with four smaller jails by 2026.
The city jail population has also
fallen during Mr. de Blasio’s ten-
ure, reaching its lowest level this
spring since World War II. Still, vi-
olence by guards has remained a
stubborn problem.
From 2016 to 2019, the average
number of times guards used
force each month rose to nearly
600 from about 390 — a 54 percent
increase — at the same time the
jail population was falling, accord-
ing to a May report by the monitor
to a federal judge in Manhattan.
Taking in account the jail popula-
tion, the number of times force
was used per inmate more than
doubled over that period.
Audrey Strauss, the acting
United States attorney for the
Southern District of New York,
said on Thursday that the moni-
tor’s reports show the city and the
Department of Correction “have
failed to fulfill core obligations”
under the 2015 settlement, which
was reached as part of a class-ac-
tion lawsuit called Nunez v. City of
New York.
She said her office had reached
a new agreement with city offi-
cials to fix the problems that con-
tinued to plague the jail system.
The proposed new remedial
measures were submitted to a fed-
eral judge for approval late
Wednesday.
“While this office recognizes
that changing a decades-long cul-
ture of violence is not a simple
task, the city and D.O.C. must do
better,” Ms. Strauss said.
Nick Paolucci, a spokesman for
the city’s Law Department, said
the city had worked with the mon-
itor and the U.S. attorney’s office
to develop the remedial measures.
“We are committed to imple-
menting them, as well as all the
Nunez reforms, to further the
safety of everyone on Rikers,” Mr.
Paolucci said.
But the new measures immedi-
ately drew criticism on Thursday
from Benny Boscio Jr., president
of the Correction Officers’ Benev-
olent Association, the union thatrepresents the city’s jail guards.
He said the proposed steps “are
straight out of the Legal Aid play-
book, one-sided and only con-
cerned with compromising the
safety of our officers by treating
them like the criminals they are
charged to supervise.”
Mary Lynne Werlwas, a lawyer
with Legal Aid, said the organiza-
tion was glad to have reached the
new agreement with the city and if
the court approved it, “we will vig-
ilantly enforce it.”
In 2014, the U.S. attorney’s of-
fice, after a two-and-a-half year
long investigation of conditions in
the facilities for adolescents at
Rikers, issued a blistering report
that found a “deep-seated culture
of violence” directed at inmates,
and a systemic deprivation of
their civil rights.
Later, the prosecutor’s office,
under the U.S. attorney at the
time, Preet Bharara, joined the ex-
isting Nunez class-action lawsuit,
which had been brought by Legal
Aid and private law firms.
The 2015 settlement included
new policies restricting the use of
force by guards, the installation of
thousands of wall-mounted video
surveillance cameras at the com-
plex and the appointment of the
monitor.
In his report in May, the moni-
tor, Steve J. Martin, a lawyer and
national corrections expert, said
that the jail’s staff appeared to
“utilize force more often now”
than when the agreement went
into effect.
Mr. Martin cited what he called
“a pattern of unprofessional con-
duct and hyper-confrontational
behavior by staff,” the misuse of
pepper spray on inmates, the use
of “painful escort techniques” and
the “improper use of head
strikes.”
The judge overseeing the case,
Laura Taylor Swain of Federal
District Court, said in an order in
June that the report’s findings
were of “great concern.”
The new agreement requires
the city speed up the prosecution
of disciplinary cases against offi-
cers accused of excessive force
and immediately discipline offi-
cers when federal monitor recom-
mends it.
The city also agreed to assign
more senior supervisors to the
jails to oversee correction cap-
tains and to evaluate the mental
health of inmates who have been
involved in repeated conflicts with
guards and determine if the exist-
ing rules for handling those in-
mates are appropriate.
But Insha Rahman, an expert
on bail reform and reducing jail
populations who works at the
Vera Institute of Justice, said the
proposed steps the city had
agreed to were unlikely to change
what she called a “culture of vio-
lence and fear,” because they con-
tinued to rely on the Correction
Department to police itself.
The proposed remedial order,
she said, was “meaningful inas-
much as it underscores the imme-
diate and urgent need for culture
change at Rikers Island, but what
it lacks is real teeth.”
Ms. Strauss’s office, in its state-
ment, said the correction depart-
ment had made “some significant
improvements” in other areas.Violence at Rikers Doubles
Despite Efforts to Restrict
Use of Force by Guards
By BENJAMIN WEISERRikers will be replaced by four smaller complexes by 2026.DAVE SANDERS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESWASHINGTON — Chad F. Wolf,
the acting secretary of homeland
security, on Thursday defended
his deployment of tactical agents
to face protesters in Portland,
Ore., after the standoff prompted
accusations that the operation
had politicized his agency.
Mr. Wolf told the Senate Home-
land Security Committee that the
local government in Portland had
created a security void at the fed-
eral courthouse, forcing him to de-
ploy agents from Immigration and
Customs Enforcement and
Customs and Border Protection to
support the Federal Protective
Service, which provides year-
round security at the courthouse.
The tactical teams provoked a
national backlash after they used
tear gas on crowds and detained
protesters in unmarked vehicles.
Mr. Wolf and Gov. Kate Brown of
Oregon, a Democrat, agreed last
week to replace the federal agents
in front of the courthouse with
state police officers.
“The full-augmented D.H.S. law
enforcement posture remains in
Portland,” Mr. Wolf told senators.
“They will continue to remain un-
til we are assured that the Hatfield
federal courthouse, as well as
other federal facilities in Portland,
will no longer be violently at-
tacked.”
In the days since federal agents
pulled back, the crowd sizes have
reduced to hundreds from thou-
sands, and protests have moved
away from the courthouse. On
Wednesday night, the protests
continued, with a crowd showing
up at the Portland police bureau’s
east precinct, spray-painting sur-
veillance cameras and smashing
the glass front doors. The police
pursued the protesters through
the streets, at times using tear gas
despite local restrictions against
it. Eight people were arrested.
Senate Democrats admonished
Mr. Wolf for the deployment, say-
ing that federal agents, including
U.S. marshals, had only escalated
tensions. They questioned why
such agents would employ tactics
so aggressive that the inspectors
general of the Departments of
Justice and Homeland Security
have opened investigations.
Republicans used images of
protesters pointing lasers at fed-
eral officers and lobbing commer-
cial-grade fireworks and bottles at
the courthouse to back the deploy-
ment. Mr. Wolf said 277 homeland
security agents were injured from
July 4 to July 31.
Videos have also capturedagents clubbing a Navy veteran
who stood peacefully and firing
rubber bullets at demonstrators.
Senior Homeland Security De-
partment officials have attributed
those episodes to the U.S. Mar-
shals.
Senator Kamala Harris of Cali-
fornia, who is being considered for
the Democratic vice-presidential
nomination, pressed Mr. Wolf on
the use of force against journalists
and legal observers, which is now
the subject of litigation, as well as
the tear-gassing of demonstra-
tors.
“Have you consulted with medi-
cal experts about the impact of
chemical irritants on protesters,
including pregnant women?” Ms.
Harris asked.
Mr. Wolf said he had not exam-
ined the effect specifically on
pregnant women. He then tried to
differentiate between the crowds
gathered during the day and those
that he said were more violent af-
ter midnight. Videos have cap-
tured a line of mothers outside the
courthouse after midnight.
“I would advise you,” Ms. Har-
ris pressed, “it is well known there
are mothers, including pregnant
women, attending these protests.
I would advise you to consult with
medical experts.”
Mr. Wolf said no agents had
been suspended for excessiveforce.
And he called criticism from his
predecessors, including Michael
Chertoff, a homeland security sec-
retary under George W. Bush,
“dead wrong.” Those critics have
said the department should have
worked harder to collaborate with
local officials before deploying the
agents.
“I’m not going to get into an ar-
gument,” Mr. Chertoff said, add-
ing that he based his views on vid-
eos capturing the unrest and that
he was still concerned that Presi-
dent Trump was using the depart-
ment for political purposes.
Mr. Wolf and Mark Morgan, the
acting commissioner of Customs
and Border Protection who spoke
at a separate media briefing, con-
tinued to push back against criti-
cism over the agents wearing
camouflage uniforms as they de-
tained demonstrators on Port-
land’s streets. Mr. Morgan pointed
out that the uniforms were labeled
“POLICE.”
Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, the act-
ing deputy secretary of homeland
security, submitted remarks to a
Senate committee this week say-
ing the department would “rap-
idly” replace the uniforms. Mr.
Morgan provided clarity on
Thursday: The agency is chang-
ing the color of the uniforms from
camouflage to green.Homeland Security Dept. Chief Defends Agents in Portland
By ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGSMike Baker contributed reporting
from Seattle