10 years after Tyrone West’s death, supporters won’t stop fighting to hold police accountable

Ten years after her brother died during a struggle with Baltimore Police officers, Tawanda Jones stood in front of community members and supporters with a message: She will not stop fighting for accountability for the officers responsible.

“I been angry all day. I been angry, I been hurt,” Jones said. “But at the end of the day, none of that’s gonna stop me.”

Jones and many others have gathered this way, every Wednesday, since Tyrone West’s death on July 18, 2013, following a traffic stop. West began to resist, according to news reports and then-State’s Attorney Gregg L. Bernstein. Officers pepper-sprayed him and hit him with batons. He died while officers pinned him down to the ground.

Jones and supporters gathered Tuesday to mark the 10th anniversary of West’s death, and again the next day for the West Wednesday protest, which has been held weekly since 2013. They are demanding that the state’s attorneys for Baltimore City or the Maryland Office of the Attorney General reopen the case and prosecute the officers involved.

“Say his name,” a supporter shouted.

“Tyrone West!” the group chanted back.

This year, Jones said, she believes something will change in West’s case.

“I feel like something is coming,” she said. “I feel like accountability is coming.”

Jones wants all of the officers who were involved “charged to the full extent of the law” with depraved heart murder, a form of second-degree murder where the defendant is accused of having a reckless disregard for the victim’s life. She railed against authorities Wednesday for failing to prosecute the officers, and instead blaming others.

Asked at a Wednesday morning news conference whether the investigation into West’s death should be reopened, Mayor Brandon Scott deferred to the state’s attorney’s office, saying, “We’ll see what happens.”

He said the work that Jones has done with West Wednesdays has led to police reforms through the city’s federally monitored consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice.

“As she and his entire family know, because I’ve said it to them for many, many years: I am so sorry that they had to go through that situation and that he lost his life,” Scott said.

In a Thursday statement, a spokesperson for the state’s attorney’s office said it had “formally requested” that the state attorney general’s office investigate West’s case, “understanding that Mr. West’s loved ones have obtained additional information that would compel a new investigation into the incident.”

The statement pointed to a law that goes into effect in October that expands the authority of the attorney general’s office’s Independent Investigations Division to prosecute police-involved deaths and look into instances that police encounters results in “serious bodily injury.”

The state attorney general’s office issued a statement late Thursday, which read: “We recently received a request from the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office in reference to this case. SB290 gives the Office of the Attorney General authority to investigate and prosecute these types of cases that occur on or after October 1, 2023. Our Office will work with the State’s Attorney to better understand his request and to ensure that the family of Tyrone West receives the justice that they deserve.”

The Baltimore Police Department did not respond to a request for comment.

At West Wednesday, the group also spoke about others they say have been killed by police officers, including Freddie Gray, a Black man who died from injuries sustained in police custody in 2015, and Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old Black man killed by a Bay Area Rapid Transit Police officer in California in 2009, emphasizing that they are fighting for all of them. A tearful mother sang a song for her daughter, who had been killed. A supporter read out the names of people across the country who, over the past few weeks, died in police custody. For those who had yet to be identified, the group said in unison: “Cell blocks for killer cops.”

Ten years ago, two police officers — Nicholas Chapman and Jorge Omar Bernardez-Ruiz — pulled over West, 44, for backing into an intersection on Kitmore Road. They suspected he had drugs when they saw a bulge in his sock after he left the car.

West began to resist when police tried to inspect his shoe, which they found contained cocaine, the state’s attorney’s office said at the time.

A woman who was riding in West’s car that night, Corinthea Servance, later told investigators that West fought with an officer, and that the fight went on for minutes. West charged at one officer and poked him in the eye, authorities said.

At some point, the officers called for backup, and six additional Baltimore Police officers and one Morgan State University campus officer responded to the scene.

Officers punched West, they acknowledged in statements, pepper-sprayed him, hit him with batons and pinned him to the ground. Bernardez-Ruiz said he jumped on West after the man swung at him, The Baltimore Sun reported. He said he tried to handcuff West but he “exploded.”

Servance told investigators that officers continued to hit West after he gave up, The Sun reported.

“He was saying, ‘You got me, you got me, stop hitting me,’” Servance said.

Another witness, James Price, told investigators that when the other officers got there, “all of them piled in, beating him and kicking him, beating him and kicking him, until the guy went out.”

“They could’ve put handcuffs on him without doing all that,” Price said.

As part of a lawsuit against the city, West’s family said in 2017 police could not produce the drugs when an attorney subpoenaed them for inspection. The department was also unable to produce a “chain of custody document,” which tracks a piece of evidence’s collection, analysis and when it changes hands, the family said.

The state’s attorney’s office did not press charges against the eight Baltimore Police officers and one Morgan State University campus officer who were involved. Bernstein said at the time that the officers used “objectively reasonable force.” All were assigned desk duties.

In August 2014, an independent board convened on West’s death found officers did not use excessive force.

But it also determined that the officers made mistakes that “potentially aggravated the situation” and did not follow certain department policies. They didn’t pat down West or tell their dispatcher where they’d stopped him or why, among other failures. The report also said that other incidents revealed “lapses in tactical decision-making” and “departures from BPD policies,” though it said the Police Department was working to improve.

The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner ruled West’s death was a result of a heart condition, and that the heat and police struggle made it worse, the board’s report said.

A 2015 review of the autopsy questioned the medical examiner’s ruling and found that, instead, West died from being “restrained in such a way that he was unable to breathe.” Another autopsy later commissioned by members of West’s family concluded he died due to “positional asphyxiation” when being restrained by police.

In 2021, then-Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh announced the need for independent experts to review “in custody” death reports under former Chief Medical Examiner David Fowler, and later specified it would focus on 100 people whose cases involved restraint by police officers. Fowler, who headed the department when West’s initial autopsy was done, refused to label George Floyd’s 2020 killing by Minneapolis Police as a homicide during court testimony.

At the time, Jones said, “I wanted to knock my TV off the wall.”

The West family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against city and state officials, which was settled for $1 million. Jones, though, said she didn’t accept the settlement because it included a nondisparagement clause that would have prohibited her from speaking out against the officers involved. The money went to West’s children, she said.

“It’s not about the income,” she said to the group Wednesday night, “it’s about the outcome.”

Bruce Emmerling, who stood with the group Wednesday, said he joined in 2013 and has been to hundreds of West Wednesdays. Getting to know West’s family, he said, made the issue personal. And there’s so many people “who have had the same pain, the same circumstances,” he emphasized.

“And just seeing that there’s never been any kind of justice, never been any kind of really truthful outcome,” he said.

Jones thanked supporters who gathered Wednesday and those who had stuck with her for the last 10 years. Even if people were to stop coming out, she said, “I promise you I will be right there by myself, with no one by my side.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Because my brother did not deserve to be brutally murdered.”

Emily Sullivan contributed to this report.

This article has been updated to reflect that the law referenced by the Baltimore State's Attorney's Office takes effect in October.

cadence.quaranta@thebaltimorebanner.com

Cadence Quaranta

cadence.quaranta@thebaltimorebanner.com

Cadence Quaranta is a breaking news reporter with the Banner.

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