It Does Happen Here!

Some city politicians and the police officers' union want you to believe that unjustified killings or other major police misconduct are things that happens in big cities like New York City or Los Angeles, but not in Austin. They can only claim this by overlooking the large number of documented cases of citizens suffering serious bodily injury or death at the hands of rogue APD cops who mostly act without fear of reprisal.

These men suffered death or seriously bodily injury at the hands of APD officers in the last three years; the list is not comprehensive:

• Stephen Scott was a black Austinite beaten to death by up to eight cops in March 2000 while he was unarmed, handcuffed and shackled. Police officials claimed Scott died of a heart attack, not the beating, but the county coroner specifically ruled out heart attack as the cause of death in the official autopsy.
• Johnny Cornell was a black Austinite with mental impairments killed by an APD Officer Stan Farris in 1999. Farris shot Cornell three times in the left side and once in the back. Cornell was Farris' fourth shooting victim in his career, and the second to suffer mortal wounds. Farris said Cornell madly rushed him "head on" with a knife wielded over his head, but civilian witnesses said Cornell was not running but walking, and toward his mother, not the officer. The coroner's diagram indicated the final shot entered Cornell's back after he was already down.
• Herbert Vences was a non-English speaking Mexican national killed by a APD Officer Troy Brown in 1999 because he allegedly pulled an 14-inch stick from a tree (in view of the officer) and threatened to stab him with it. The Mexican government formally protested the killing.
• Albert Juarez was a Hispanic Austinite shot in 1999 by APD Officers Billie Hancock and Duane Williams after Juarez allegedly charged the officers with a box cutter. Juarez had been assaulting his wife, who was hospitalized from the beating but maintained that her husband was unarmed and the officers didn't have to shoot him.
• Rodney Wickware was a black Austinite who was strangled to death in 1998 in the presence of five APD officers. The coroner ruled that Wickware had a crushed larynx, and that he died of lack of oxygen to the brain. But he and the police contended that the crushed larynx had not caused the lack of oxygen, but instead that Wickware had attempted to commit suicide by drinking antifreeze immediately prior to being beaten up by the cops. Wickware's family contends that police forced the anti-freeze down his throat to give themselves an alternative justification.
• Gregory Steen is a black Austinite shot in the back by an Austin police officer in October 1997 while running away unarmed from a police raid. Steen feared that being present at a drug bust would violate his parole, so he fled out a window. APD Officer Keith Sheffield shot Steen in the back from 60 feet away, but Chief Stan Knee overturned a measly one-day suspension, implying that Sheffield had complied with departmental policy not to shoot unless officers or other citizens were in 'imminent' danger. Steen survived, but lost a kidney and most of his colon.