January, 18 2021, 11:00pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Lacy Crawford, lcrawford@lawyerscommittee.org (202)-558-7900 press@lawyerscommittee.org
Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law Joins Lawsuit on Behalf of Black Man in Violent Attack by White West Va. Officers
Body camera footage shows law enforcement using racist language, pummeling plaintiff; officers have history of violence.
WASHINGTON
Two white police officers pulled a Black West Virginian man from his home and beat him for half a minute causing serious and permanent injuries in the early morning of New Year's Day 2019, according to a lawsuit the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law joined last Friday. In joining the case, the national Lawyers' Committee and Umina Legal filed an amended complaint that describes the issues of race present in the case.
Defendants include the officers at the scene of the attack, Zachary Fecsko and Aaron Dalton, and their supervisor, the former chief of police, Richard Panico. Both officers Fecsko and Dalton have a history of violence on the job.
The plaintiff, Mr. Andre Howton, a 55-year old Black man, was assaulted after law enforcement removed a woman, who was white, from Mr. Howton's home. After they removed the woman, Fecscko, a white man in his twenties, inexplicably yanked Mr. Howton from his doorway, telling him "get your ass out here, boy!" With Officer Dalton shouting encouragement, Officer Fecsko then proceeded to pummel Mr. Howton, while Howton lay pinned on the sidewalk, steps from his front door.
"The utter disregard for the constitutional rights of Mr. Howton, who requested assistance from these officers, is outrageous," said Tianna Mays, senior counsel in the Criminal Justice Project, at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. "The officers have a history of violence and should be ashamed to call themselves public servants. The failure to terminate them is only eclipsed by the failure to hold the system accountable at large."
The use of the word "boy" has a history of being used to refer to Black men in a demeaning and insulting manner. Courts have previously found that the use of the word "boy" - as used by Officer Fecscko - can have serious racial implications, similar to the n-word, and may be evidence of racial hostility. "We must recognize the connection of this case to the work of Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday the nation celebrated on Monday. Doctor King shed light on the use of the word 'boy' as a tool of oppression," said Arthur Ago, director of the Criminal Justice Project at the Lawyers' Committee.
"The type of behavior of the officers here - calling an older Black man "boy," pulling him from his home, and then beating him mercilessly - is part of a pattern of unchecked violence against Black communities, motivated by a sense of superiority and a lack of accountability," said Arusha Gordon, associate director of the James Byrd Jr. Center to Stop Hate, a project of the Lawyers' Committee. "From the murder of George Floyd, to the beating of Mr. Howton, this racist violence needs to stop. We are proud to join this lawsuit and look forward to fighting hand in hand with the firm of Umina Legal to ensure justice for Mr. Howton."
Attorneys Beth Lebow and Ryan Umina of Umina Legal stated: "We are extremely pleased that the Lawyers' Committee is joining us in the fight for justice on Mr. Howton's behalf. This case represents some of the most flagrant constitutional and civil rights violations that the State of West Virginia has ever seen, and the Defendants, in this case, must be held accountable. Bad actors, such as these defendants, only make the jobs of the many hard-working, good men and women in law enforcement more difficult. For the safety of our citizens and our communities, we must now do our part to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again."
The Westover Police Department continues to allow both officers involved in the incident to remain employed, despite the lawsuit being filed earlier this year and the officers' previous history of violence.
Read the amended complaint here
The Lawyers' Committee is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, formed in 1963 at the request of President John F. Kennedy to enlist the private bar's leadership and resources in combating racial discrimination and the resulting inequality of opportunity - work that continues to be vital today.
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Congressional Report Calls Trump Deportation Plan 'Catastrophic' for Economy
"All it will do is raise grocery prices, destroy jobs, and shrink the economy," JEC Chair Martin Heinrich said of the president-elect's plan to deport millions of immigrants.
Dec 12, 2024
Echoing recent warnings from economists, business leaders, news reporting, and immigrant rights groups, Democrats on the congressional Joint Economic Committee detailed Thursday how President-elect Donald Trump's planned mass deportations "would deliver a catastrophic blow to the U.S. economy."
"Though the U.S. immigration system remains broken, immigrants are crucial to growing the labor force and supporting economic output," states the new report from JEC Democrats. "Immigrants have helped expand the labor supply, pay nearly $580 billion a year in taxes, possess a spending power of $1.6 trillion a year, and just last year contributed close to $50 billion each in personal income and consumer spending."
There are an estimated 11.7 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, and Trump—who is set to be sworn in next month—has even suggested he would deport children who are American citizens with their parents who are not and attempt to end birthright citizenship.
Citing recent research by the American Immigration Council and the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the JEC report warns that depending on how many immigrants are forced out of the country, Trump's deportations could:
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- Reduce the supply of workers for key industries, including by up to 225,000 workers in agriculture and 1.5 million workers in construction;
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Highlighting how mass deportations would harm not only undocumented immigrants but also U.S. citizens, the report explains that construction worker losses would "make housing even harder to build, raising its cost," and "reduce the supply of farmworkers who keep Americans fed as well as the supply of home health aides at a time when more Americans are aging and requiring assistance."
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Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), who chairs the JEC, said Thursday that "as a son of an immigrant, I know how hard immigrants work, how much they believe in this country, and how much they're willing to give back. They are the backbone of our economy and the driving force behind our nation's growth and prosperity."
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Along with laying out the economic toll of Trump's promised deportations, the JEC report makes the case that "providing a pathway to citizenship is good economics. Immigrants are helping meet labor demand while also demonstrating that more legal pathways to working in the United States are needed to meet this demand."
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In a statement, Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of the advocacy group America's Voice, thanked Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) "for calling this important discussion together and shining a spotlight on the potential damage."
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One advocate called the CFPB's new rule "a major milestone in its effort to level the playing field between regular people and big banks."
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The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, one of President-elect Donald Trump's top expected targets as he plans to dismantle parts of the federal government after taking office in January, announced on Thursday its latest action aimed at saving households across the U.S. hundreds of dollars in fees each year.
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Adam Rust, director of financial services at the Consumer Federation of America, called the rule "a major milestone" in the CFPB's efforts "to level the playing field between regular people and big banks."
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The rule is set to go into effect next October, but the incoming Trump administration could put its implementation in jeopardy. Trump has named billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk to co-lead the Department of Government Efficiency, an advisory body he hopes to create. Musk has signaled that he wants to "delete" the CFPB, echoing a proposal within the right-wing policy agenda Project 2025, which was co-authored by many officials from the first Trump term.
"The CFPB is cracking down on these excessive junk fees and requiring big banks to come clean about the interest rate they're charging on overdraft loans."
"It is critical that incoming and returning members of Congress and President-elect Trump side with voters struggling in this economy and support the CFPB's overdraft rule," said Lauren Saunders, associate director at the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC). "This rule is an example of the CFPB's hard work for everyday Americans."
In recent decades, banks have used overdraft fees as profit drivers which increase consumer costs by billions of dollars every year while causing tens of millions to lose access to banking services and face negative credit reports that can harm their financial futures.
The Federal Reserve Board exempted banks from Truth in Lending Act protections in 1969, allowing them to charge overdraft fees without disclosing their terms to consumers.
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Similarly, in April Barr claimed at a hearing that "the vast majority of Americans" believe credit card late fees are legitimate after the Biden administration unveiled a rule capping the fees at $8.
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The new overdraft fee rule follows a $95 million enforcement action against Navy Federal Credit Union for illegal surprise overdraft fees and similar actions against Wells Fargo, Regions Bank, and Atlantic Union.
Consumers have saved $6 billion annually through the CFPB's initiative to curb junk fees, which has led multiple banks to reduce or eliminate their fees.
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Police use of "catch-and-release" tactics is particularly worrying for press freedom advocates, according to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker.
Dec 12, 2024
Arrests and detainments of journalists in the United States surged in 2024 compared to the year prior, according to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, a project of the Freedom of the Press Foundation.
The tracker reports that journalists were arrested or detained by police at least 48 times this year—eclipsing the number of arrests that took place in the previous two years combined, and constituting the third highest number of yearly arrests and detentions since the project began cataloging press freedom violations in 2017. 2020, however, still stands as far and away the year with the most arrests and detentions.
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While a year with a high number of protests typically leads to more arrests, "it was protests in response to the Israel-Gaza war that caused this year's uptick," according to the tracker.
The vast majority of the arrests and detainments out of the total 48 were linked to these sorts of demonstrations, and it was protests at Columbia University's Manhattan campus that were the site of this year's largest detainment of journalists.
The report also recounts the story of Roni Jacobson, a freelance reporter whose experience on the last day of 2023 was a harbinger of press freedom incidents to come in 2024. Jacobson was on assignment to cover a pro-Palestinian demonstration for the New York Daily News on December 31, 2023 when she was told to leave by police because she didn't have city-issued press credentials with her. She recounted that she accidentally bumped into an officer and was arrested. She was held overnight at a precinct and then released after the charges against her, which included disorderly conduct, were dropped.
Even five arrests that the tracker deems "election-related" took place at protests that were "at least partially if not entirely focused on the Israel-Gaza war." Three of those election-related arrests took place at protests happening around the Democratic National Convention in August.
One police force in particular bears responsibility for this year's crackdown: Nearly 50% of the arrests of journalists this year were at the hands of the New York Police Department (NYPD). Many of those taken into custody had their charges dropped quickly, but the tracker notes that the NYPD's use of "catch-and-release" tactics was particularly worrying to press freedom advocates.
Two photojournalists, Josh Pacheco and Olga Federova, were detained four times this year in both New York City and Chicago while photographing protests. They were both "assaulted and arrested and [had] their equipment damaged" while documenting police clearing a student encampment at Manhattan's Fashion Institute of Technology; however, they were released the next day and told their arrests had been voided.
"While [we are] glad that some common sense prevailed by the NYPD not charging these two photographers with any crime, we are very concerned that they are perfecting 'catch-and-release' to an art form,” Mickey Osterreicher, general counsel for the National Press Photographers Association, told the tracker.
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Besides covering protests, 2024 also saw the continued practice of "criminally charging journalists for standard journalistic practices," according to the tracker. For example, one investigative journalist in Los Angeles was repeatedly threatened with arrest while attempting to cover a homeless encampment sweep in the city, and then was detained in October, though he was let go without charges.
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