CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Community leaders in Charlotte held a press conference on Thursday saying justice was not served in the Harold Easter case.
Easter swallowed cocaine during a traffic stop, and an investigation showed officers knew yet did not call for medical help, but sat him in a holding room unattended.
In an hour long video released on Thursday, Easter is shown unattended for over 20 minutes when he begins to seize. The four officers and one sergeant involved were cited for termination but resigned on Tuesday before they could be fired.
“Families are losing their lives, and all we want is justice,” said Gemini Boyd with the United Neighborhoods of Charlotte.
Boyd and the other community leaders at the press conference said justice isn’t getting to quit a police force after a policy violation that ended in someone’s death.
“These officers are now able to move on with their lives and potentially find employment elsewhere as police officers,” Boyd said. “Where is the justice?”
Deborah Woolard said watching Easter deteriorate over the hour long video was devastating.
“At the end of the day this family has to relive that and that’s hard, because I had to watch that, that’s hard,” Woolard said, visibly choked up. “I have a son, that’s hard to watch.”
Larry Mims said even though Easter decided to swallow the cocaine, he was still a human being.
“I think that’s what gets lost so many times in these videos, is that we desensitize ourselves and we don’t see this person as a human,” Mims said. “This was somebody’s father, this was somebody’s child.”
Mims said CMPD’s policy changes now requiring suspects to be monitored at all times doesn’t go far enough, because policies can be violated.
“We’d like to see officers held accountable when they violate the policy,” Mims said. “We’d like to put that in the policy, that if you violate the policy you have to stand trial.”
Boyd said the four officers and sergeant who resigned shouldn’t be able to police anywhere else.
“We ask that CMPD request the justice department to revoke their law enforcement certifications to ensure they harm no one else,” Boyd said.
Brentley Vinson, one of the officers involved, is the same officer who shot and killed Keith Lamont Scott in Charlotte in 2016.
The district attorney considered involuntary manslaughter charges for the officers and sergeant involved, but ultimately decided there was not enough evidence, and did not bring criminal charges.