2020 Civil Unrest, Protests, Demonstrations, et al.

Attorney Earl Gray, who is representing former Minneapolis officer Thomas Lane, filed notice Thursday that he plans to call Greg Meyer as a use-of-force expert witness at his client's Aug. 23 trial.

Meyer is also an expert on police training, intervention, detention and arrests, said Gray's filing, which included Meyer's 37-page resume.

Gray did not return a message seeking comment. Meyer declined to comment when reached by phone Thursday at his Los Angeles-area home.

Meyer worked for L.A. police from 1976 to 2006 and testified at a 1994 federal civil trial in the King case that came after the state's criminal trial against four officers charged with beating King.

Meyer has been critical of bans on "neck restraint holds" and "upper-body control" holds, also known as "chokeholds."

Floyd died May 25 after former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for more than nine minutes while former colleagues J. Alexander Kueng and Lane pinned the rest of Floyd's body stomach-down in the street. Former officer Tou Thao controlled an angry crowd nearby. All four were fired.

Meyer raised questions about the efficacy of neck restraint bans during a 2014 appearance on a National Public Radio show on Eric Garner, who was killed after a New York City police officer put him in a chokehold.

"Now you have a big gap in the use-of-force process," Meyer said about such bans. "What are you going to fill that with? Well, it got filled [in L.A.] with the night stick."

In 1991 Los Angeles police officers were trying to stop King, who was unarmed, for speeding when he fled. They used stun guns and beat him with batons following a high-speed chase. Bystander video of the King incident seen around the world stirred concerns about race and policing. King was Black.

In 1992, jurors in the state's case acquitted the officers, leading to several days of riots in L.A. and other cities. The officers were tried in federal court in 1993 on charges that they violated King's civil rights. Two were convicted and received prison time; two were acquitted.

Meyer testified in a third trial that occurred in 1994 — a federal civil trial to determine whether the city and, independently, the officers — owed King financial compensation. It was there that he testified that the officers did not use excessive force because of police policy.

Jurors awarded King $3.8 million from the city but decided that the officers did not owe punitive damages.

"The jury learned … that the roots of the King beating were to be found in poor policy which encouraged Los Angeles police officers who encountered resisting suspects to hit them with metal pipes ('police batons,' if one prefers to minimize the impact)," Meyer wrote in a 1994 opinion piece.

In a different opinion piece published that year in the L.A. Times, Meyer blamed the City Council and board of police commissioners for taking "so-called chokeholds" out of "routine use," priming officers to use their batons instead.

"How could the jury hold the officers personally accountable for the results of such a poor policy process?" Meyer wrote.

Meyer implored the public to demand "more rational" policies from their police and urged police to "adopt a more humane use of force on a scale."

"If we can put a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth, why can't we put a man on the ground and take him safely to jail?" Meyer wrote.

Meyer has served as an expert witness in several cases.

The use of outside experts by both defense attorneys and prosecutors is common practice in trials, and retired officers from other agencies are regularly called to assess use of force, training and policies in officer-involved shooting cases.

Kueng's attorney, Thomas Plunkett, also filed notice Thursday that he planned to call retired Missouri police officer Steve Ijames as an expert witness. Ijames testified for the defense in the 2020 trial of Washington County Sheriff's Deputy Brian Krook.

Krook shot 23-year-old Benjamin Evans, who was intoxicated, suicidal and armed with a gun, in 2018 without warning while a colleague continued negotiations with Evans in Lake Elmo.

Ijames testified that had Krook warned Evans, it would have sounded like a threat instead. Krook was acquitted of second-degree manslaughter.

Lane, Kueng and Thao are each charged with aiding and abetting murder and manslaughter and will be tried together. Chauvin is charged with second-degree murder and manslaughter in the case scheduled to begin March 8.

Staff librarian John Wareham contributed to this report.

By Mike Baker and Hallie Golden

PORTLAND, Ore. — Protesters in the Pacific Northwest smashed windows at a Democratic Party headquarters, marched through the streets and burned an American flag on Wednesday in a strident challenge by antifascist and racial-justice protesters to the new administration of President Biden, whose promised reforms, they declared, “won’t save us.”

In Portland, Ore., lines of federal agents in camouflage — now working under the Biden administration — blanketed streets with tear gas and unleashed volleys of welt-inducing pepper balls as they confronted a crowd that gathered outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement building near downtown. Some in the crowd later burned a Biden-for-President flag in the street.

Another tense protest in Seattle saw dozens of people push their way through the streets, with some breaking windows, spray-painting anarchist insignia and chanting not only about ICE, but the many other issues that roiled America’s streets last year under the administration of former President Donald J. Trump.

“No Cops, Prisons, Borders, Presidents,” said one banner, while another proclaimed that the conflict over racial justice, policing, immigration and corporate influence in the country was “not over” merely because a new president had been inaugurated in Washington, D.C.

“A Democratic administration is not a victory for oppressed people,” said a flier handed out during the demonstrations, during which protesters also smashed windows at a shop often described as the original Starbucks in downtown Seattle. The communiqués used expletives to condemn Mr. Biden and “his stupid” crime bill, passed in 1994 and blamed for mass incarcerations in the years since.

Hours after the inauguration of Mr. Biden, federal agents in Portland used tear gas and other crowd-control munitions to disperse demonstrators who had gathered to protest the harsh arrest and detention practices wielded by federal immigration authorities under the Trump administration.

Mr. Biden has signaled that immigration is going to be a key issue of his presidency, using some of his first executive orders on Wednesday to end construction of the border wall and bolster the program that provides deportation protections for undocumented immigrants who were brought into the country as children.

The conflict in Portland capped a day of demonstrations in the liberal city, where different groups of protesters either decried Mr. Biden or called for activism to pressure the new president to take forceful action on immigration, climate change, health care, racial justice and income inequality.

Earlier in the day, a group of about 200 people — a mix of racial justice, antifascist and anarchist activists — marched to the local Democratic Party headquarters, where some of them smashed windows and tipped over garbage containers, lighting the contents of one on fire. “We don’t want Biden — we want revenge,” said one sign, referring to killings committed by police officers.

In a city that has seen months of demonstrations over racial injustice, economic inequality, federal law enforcement and corporate power — and some of the harshest law enforcement responses to such protests — protesters have vowed to continue their actions no matter who is president. “We are ungovernable,” one sign in the crowd said.

In Seattle, about 150 people marched through the streets. Some spray-painted buildings with an anarchist symbol and broke windows, including at a federal courthouse. They chanted both anti-Trump and anti-Biden slogans.

One member of the group handed out fliers to people on the street that said, “Biden won! And so did corporate elites!” The fliers explained that a “Democratic administration is not a victory for oppressed people” and that “Biden will not save us.”

“I came out here because no matter what happens, Biden and Kamala aren’t enough,” said one of the protesters, Alejandro Quezada Brom, 28, referring to Vice President Kamala Harris. He said the new president needs to know that “the pressure’s not off” for progress on immigration and policing reforms.

Seattle police officers followed the group and began to surround it as night fell. At least two protesters appeared to be arrested.

At yet another demonstration in Portland, people gathered to hear speakers who celebrated Mr. Trump’s departure but also called for continued pressure on the new government.

“The fight has just begun,” said Ray Austin, 25. He said that the damage done by Mr. Trump could not be undone by the likes of Mr. Biden and that the nation needed a groundswell of people demanding more.

Speakers at the event called for a Green New Deal to fight climate change, a “Medicare for All”-style health insurance system, overhauls of police departments to address racial disparities and other fundamental changes. But that event was more subdued than others around the city.

In the aftermath of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis last May, protesters in Portland mobilized on the streets nightly, much of their ire targeted at the mayor and the police force that repeatedly used tear gas to subdue them. The crowds swelled during the summer after Mr. Trump issued an executive order to protect federal property and agents wearing camouflage brought a crackdown to the city.

Those conflicts have since subsided, but protesters in Portland have continued to mobilize.