Feature:
Another
"Drug
Related"
Death
--
Austin
Policewoman
Kills
Unarmed
Teen
6/17/05
Thursday, June 9, was just another day in the war on drugs in Austin, the capital city of Texas. A city as racially segregated as any, Austin is bisected north to south by the towering, double-decked Interstate 35, a concrete barrier that very cleanly marks the divide between the primarily white -- or "Anglo," as they say in Texas -- west side of the city and predominantly black and Hispanic East Austin. It was in shabby subdivisions of southeast Austin that Thursday evening that 18-year-old Daniel Rocha died, his heart penetrated by a single slug fired at point blank range by Austin police officer Julie Schroeder -- into his back.
As the officers questioned passengers, one of them bolted, and, according to Schroeder, she tried to get Rocha to stay in the car, yelling commands such as "stay where you are" and "don't run." But Rocha instead lunged at her, knocking her to her knees, and they struggled until Officer Doyle joined the fray. Then, Schroeder said, she reached for her Taser to subdue Rocha, and when she realized it was missing, feared Rocha would get possession of it and turn it against herself and Doyle, so she shot him once. "Her fear was that he was about to disable the sergeant and that since the two of them hadn't been able to control him, that she wasn't going to be able to do it alone," an anonymous police source told the Austin American-Statesman early this week. "At that point, she really believed that Don Doyle was about to be Tased and disabled and that a weapon either could be used on her or him or both." But Schroeder's account was immediately challenged by eyewitnesses to the incident. "He [Doyle] had his hand on his back and her [Schroeder] knee on his back. By then, he lifted up his shirt and said 'I don't have nothing,' and that's when I heard the gunshot go off," one witness told the American-Statesman. "There was not a struggle. I did not see a struggle," said eyewitness Tamara Thompson. "All of a sudden she just grabbed him, put him down there and threw him on the floor," witness Sonya Lopez told the newspaper. "I thought they were going to try to put handcuffs on him... and all of a sudden, the shot just went off." Rocha's family has hired Austin attorney Bobby Taylor, who told the American-Statesman he had talked to those witnesses. "Two witnesses said they saw police grab Daniel Rocha out of the car and throw him on the ground," Taylor said Monday. "One of the witnesses heard Rocha yelling, 'I don't have a weapon. I don't have a gun.' You don't shoot someone in the back when they're laying on the concrete, saying 'I don't have a gun,'" Taylor said. For what it's worth, an autopsy on Rocha showed no trace of drugs in his system and no signs of struggle, according to Travis County Medical Examiner Robert Bayardo. As for the "drug activity" that precipitated the encounter, the Austin police said they found a small amount of "narcotics," but the American-Statesman described the stash as a small amount of "a leafy green substance." Rocha's killing over a pittance of pot is bad enough by itself. But it is only the latest in a series of controversial police killings in Austin dating back to December 2000, when Austin police participating in a local drug task force shot and killed 19-year-old Antonio Martinez, who was unarmed and sleeping on a couch at a friend's house when a SWAT team burst through the door. Seconds later he was dead. At least four other Austin residents besides Rocha -- all black or Hispanic -- have been killed under questionable circumstances by Austin police since then, and 11 Austinites have been killed by police since 1998. The department didn't improve its reputation with an increasingly edgy and fearful minority population when 10 officers were caught making racist and other "inappropriate" remarks on their police radios the night a popular black nightclub, Midtown Live, burned down in March. The uproar over the revealing peek into Austin's cop culture eventually forced Chief Stan Knee to seek a US Department of Justice review of the department. That review, which is also looking into yet another Austin police killing, is ongoing. Over the weekend, as the police department stonewalled, community outrage grew. On the corner where Rocha died, a memorial appeared, as well as a sign marking it "D. Rocha's Corner." Signs began to appear in the neighborhood with messages such as "Guns Don't Kill People. Cops Do" and "Administrative Duty Isn't Justice," a reference to Schroeder's current status as departmental and grand jury investigations are underway. "This is an ongoing problem," said Gloria Terrazas, one of Rocha's neighbors, referring to what she viewed as police using unnecessary force. "The police always seem to get away with it," she told the American-Statesman. The Austin Police Association stood by one its own, asking the public to await the result of the investigations. "We have a process that's in place. We have the criminal investigation by our homicide unit. We have the professional standards and policy review by our internal affairs," said association vice president Wuthipong Tantaksinanukji, "and then we have the grand jury proceedings. And I just ask the public just to hold judgment until all the process is gone through to make this an impartial case." But with trust in the department and its officers eroded by the killings, some are now calling for an independent investigation. "There are things that need to be brought out, and unfortunately, the Austin Police Department's history in investigating themselves is not the best," said Rocha family attorney Taylor. "So, we're going to try and get other people to look at the facts here and see what occurred." Two Hispanic organizations, the League of United Latin American Citizens, and El Concilio, a coalition of Austin Mexican-American neighborhood associations, are calling on the US Justice Department to investigate. The shooting has raised community tensions, said LULAC spokesman Marcos DeLeon. "The way we see it, if a crime was committed here, then it should be prosecuted. And many of us feel that way -- the community feels that way. This was an innocent young person and he was shot. He was shot. And there must be some kind of resolve here," DeLeon said. "We are now feeling unsafe in our own community and fear that we are not being provided protection and safety by our police department," Gavino Fernandez of El Concilio said. On Monday, more than a hundred people including numerous Rocha family members attended a protest rally at police headquarters demanding justice in the Rocha case. Led by the East Austin environmental and social justice group People Organized for the Defense of Earth and her Resources and the Austin NAACP, the demonstrators called for police restraint and accountability. "They're not white and on the west side of Austin. They are youth of color that are forcefully tortured, killed and criminalized, and it's not fair. We need to stop this now before another one of our youth gets hurt," PODER spokesperson Erika Gonzalez said. "We should have a police policy that says people not armed should be disabled, not shot and killed. We've been saying this for three years now, and obviously we think this should have been avoided," NAACP President Nelson Linder said. "This very quick resort to violent, lethal force by police has been an increasing problem in the last couple of years," said PODER's Carmen Llanes. "The communities are wondering why this keeps happening. There are constant problems with our young people being harassed and profiled, and it is now getting to a lethal point," she told DRCNet. "Remember, Daniel Rocha was unarmed and hadn't been arrested, but he ends up being shot in the heart. It ruptured his aorta; he died almost immediately. This is completely unacceptable," she said. "A lot of the problems come from drug law enforcement. People in our communities are more likely to be seen as suspects in drug crimes without any evidence," said Llanes. "There are a lot of assumptions made that smack of racial profiling. All the kids think the police have it out for them, so there is an increasingly hostile relationship between police and community residents. They don't feel the police are there to protect them," she said. "Instead, the police are out there going after them." All the heat prompted typically uncommunicative Austin Police Chief Knee to try to cool things down Tuesday, but it's unclear whether he succeeded. Instead of addressing concerns about police violence in Austin's minority communities, Chief Knee defended his officer. "An officer has the right to go home at night. An officer has the right to protect themselves and to overcome resistance to arrest," Knee said. Rocha family attorney Bobby Taylor had a different take. "I think every police officer has a right to go home at night, and I think every civilian has a right to go home at night. Police officers are civilians who have special duties, special responsibilities. But that doesn't mean you kill somebody to assure yourself the right to go home at night," Taylor said. The police homicide investigation should be completed next week, when it will be turned over to a Travis County grand jury. If the grand jury feels the investigation was lacking, it can open its own investigation. Officer Schroeder also faces an internal affairs investigation after the criminal investigation. In late news, the US Justice Department Thursday ordered the FBI to investigate Rocha's death. But even that news wasn't enough to placate an angry crowd of community residents who gathered Thursday night for Austin Police Department forum on the shootings to pepper Chief Knee with jeers and hostile questions. Anger over the Rocha killing continues to build. Still, long-time readers of Drug War Chronicle will not be holding their breath waiting for an indictment, let alone a conviction for the police shooter.
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