Thomas Breen photo
Crump (right) with Randy Cox's mom Doreen Coleman at Stetson.
Dixwell’s Stetson branch library transformed into a courtroom Tuesday evening, as a nationally prominent civil rights lawyer previewed the case he might make if a jury gets to hear what happened when New Haven police took Richard “Randy” Cox for a ride that left him hospitalized and paralyzed.
“Why don’t they believe us when we tell them we’re injured?” the attorney, Ben Crump, asked aloud. “When we tell them that they’ve brutalized us?”
He posed those questions during a speech he gave Tuesday evening to a packed room of over 150 mourning, upset, and motivated New Haveners on the library’s second floor at the Q House on Dixwell Avenue.
The event, organized and hosted by the NAACP, came hours after Crump — a civil rights lawyer best known for his representation in high-profile cases like the police killing of George Floyd — joined local civil rights leaders, attorneys, and family and friends of 36-year-old New Havener Richard “Randy” Cox for a press conference on the Elm Street courthouse steps downtown.
At Tuesday's Stetson Library meeting.
Crump’s speech Tuesday night served as a sort of practice run for the legal argument he and local co-counsels Jack O’Donnell, Lou Rubano, and R.J. Weber would likely make in court in a prospective civil lawsuit on behalf of Cox, who remains hospitalized and paralyzed from spinal injuries he sustained while in police custody on June 19.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Doreen, I’m just trying to make the case,” he said to Cox’s mom, Doreen Coleman, before zooming in on some of the graphic, video-recorded moments of her son injured in the back of a police van, and later pulled and dragged by officers at the 1 Union Ave. detention center who accused him of lying about being unable to move. (Click here, here, and here to read more and watch video footage of what happened.)
Crump’s speech at the Stetson Library served as much more than just a detailed account of the video recordings of Cox’s mishandling by police. It went beyond a specific legal argument for a potential trial to come.
It also represented an experienced and skilled orator’s opening salvo in the court of public opinion, whereby Crump connected the specifics of Cox’s case to a larger, national story of police violence towards — and dehumanization of — Black people that he has spent his professional life telling.
“You know, they didn’t believe George Floyd when he said ‘I can’t breathe’ 28 times,” Crump told the crowd.
“They didn’t believe Eric Garner when he said ‘I can’t breathe’ 19 times. And they didn’t believe Randy Cox here in New Haven when he said ‘I can’t move my arms.’ ”
"It Made Me Sick To My Stomach"
Cox's sister, Latoya Boomer.
Others on Tuesday’s speaking lineup talked as well about how disturbing the videos are that show police officers’ handling of Cox after he was arrested on weapons charges at a Lilac Street block party.
The videos show Cox flying headfirst against the wall of a police transport van after Officer Oscar Diaz abruptly stopped to avoid a car crash after speeding on Division Street. Diaz later pulled the van over to check on Cox and called for an ambulance, but then continued driving to the 1 Union Ave. detention center instead of seeking out immediate medical help on site upon learning that Cox was hurt. At the detention center, fellow officers pulled Cox’s crumpled body out of the van, processed him in a wheelchair, accused him of just being drunk, dragged him into a holding cell, and cuffed his ankles — all as Cox told them that he was injured and couldn’t move. A medical crew assessed Cox while he was in the cell, and later took him by ambulance to the hospital for surgery.
“At any point in time, if someone is saying, ‘Help. I think my neck is broken. I can’t move,’ how many times do they need to say it?” asked Cox’s sister, Latoya Boomer. “I think once is enough.”
“I couldn’t finish watching the video,” she said. “It made me sick to my stomach.”
State Rep. Robyn Porter.
State Rep. Robyn Porter agreed. “I wasn’t able” to finish the videos either, she said. “I got as far as the wheelchair. I couldn’t watch no more. I couldn’t, and I won’t. ‘Cause it don’t take a video. I’ve seen enough of it to play over in my mind. I don’t want to add Randy to that list. I don’t. I choose to pray for him instead.”
Local NAACP President Dori Dumas.
Greater New Haven NAACP President Dori Dumas also pointed to those police videos when describing the impetus for Tuesday’s gathering.
“We’re here tonight because we were saddened and sickened by the video and the treatment of brother Randy Cox,” she said. “Nothing about that was OK. It was inhumane. No matter what the situation is, you need to treat people with decency, with respect, and like they’re human.”
Crump: "Thank God We Have The Video"
Crump with state NAACP President Scot X. Esdaile.
By the time Crump took the mic, he described visiting Cox in the hospital earlier on Tuesday.
“It was, to say emotional would be an understatement. … He could communicate by blinking his eyes and moving his hand and, most sadly, by crying tears.”
He thanked state NAACP President and Newhallville native Scot X. Esdaile, who also serves as criminal justice chair of the national organization. When a major event, happens, “he’s the brother that everybody turns to” for counsel.
Then he turned to the police video footage to ground his argument that the officers who mishandled Cox are criminally and civilly liable — and that what happened to Cox in New Haven connects to a broader narrative of police misconduct across the country. (All of the video footage released by the police so far can be watched in full in this Independent article. The videos can also be watched directly on YouTube here, here, here, here, here, here and here.)
Key moments of the police arrest, transport, and detention of Richard Cox.
“Thank God we have the video,” he said. “We have to keep showing the world that video. Because if we don’t show it to them … it’s like when Mamie Till Mosley kept the casket open for Emmitt Till. They’ve got to see that Randy Cox is not just a hashtag. He’s not just a cause. He’s not just a case. But Randy Cox is real, and his life matters. And if we don’t keep showing that video, they will try to sweep it under the rug.”
Crump banged his hand against the podium as he described the sound of Cox’s injured and immobile body being pulled by officers out of the van at the detention center.
He spoke almost in a whisper as he repeated what Cox told to Diaz when the officer stopped the van en route to check on his injured passenger on College Street.
“Randy told him, ‘I fall,’ ” Crump said. “It was very clear. And ‘I can’t move my arms.’ ”
He described how Cox told the officers at the detention center that he thought his neck was broken; how the officers didn’t believe him, told him he was drunk, and put him in a cell anyway.
“Now, how serious is that, when you tell an officer, ‘I think my neck is broken,’ and they just disregard it? They mocked him. ‘Oh, you can get up. You’re not even trying.’ ”
“I mean, where’s the humanity?” Crump asked. “Where’s the professionalism? Where’s the training?”
Crump and NAACP local attorney Michael Jefferson with Cox's local legal team Lou Rubano, Jack O'Donnell, and R.J. Weber.
He argued that the video shows that what Cox received while in police custody was indeed a “rough ride.” Because “Latoya and Quay’s brother went into that police paddy wagon walking and talking and breathing on his own,” Crump said. “And he came out that paddy wagon unable to speak, unable to walk, and unable to move. And you can’t tell us that that wasn’t a rough ride.”
As difficult as the video is to watch, he said, one has to watch it to see exactly what happened to Cox — and just how harmful the police officers’ actions were.
“You cannot deny him reasonable medical assistance that was obvious,” he implored. “It was obvious. You cannot just have deliberate indifference when it comes to Black people because you think they’re irrelevant. You think we’re inferior. You think we’re insignificant.”
“Well, I’ll tell you this,” he continued. “Thank God the video caught how you really felt about Randy Cox.”
Before closing his speech with quotations from Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Declaration of Independence, before calling Cox’s mom to the front of the room and reminding the crowd that, “but by the grace of God, it could have been any one of your children,” Cox described the necessity of both policy and cultural change when it comes to how police treat Black people in this country.
“When a citizen says that, ‘I am feel I am injured,’ that the police can’t just discount them,” he said. “That the police has to get a medical personnel to examine and review the person to make sure that, if they say their neck might be broken, that it ain’t broken.
“Because if not, we will have more Randy Cox. We will have more George Floyds. We will have more Eric Garners. We will have more Breonna Taylors. We will have more Ezell Fords. We will have more Stephon Clarks. We will have more Terence Crutchers. We will have more Walter Scotts. We will have more … ” He paused, looked down, and put his hand on the podium.
“Too many names,” Dumas said from beside him.
Crump shook his head and agreed. “Too many names.”
Click on the video below to watch Tuesday night’s event in full, which included addresses by Asst. Police Chief Karl Jacobson and Mayor Justin Elicker.
Why isn't Crump or Jefferson the lead lawyer? Those other three lawyers seem a bit vulture like. What is their history with human rights cases? We know Crump and Jefferson's history with these types of cases. Can the NHI comment on this? [Reporter's note: Thanks very much for the question. During Tuesday night's meeting, Mr. Cox's sister, Latoya Boomer, said that she was the one who reached out to these three local attorneys. "They came because I called them," she said in response to a question from someone in the crowd about why these three. Attorney Crump also described Attorney O'Donnell as the Cox's "longtime family attorney."]