Is This Man a Terrorist?
Beaten, drugged and jailed: the strange story of Getu Berhanu Tewolde
By Jonathan Barnes
Photos by Shawn Brackbill
"Freaks!" yelled some passersby in Ozzy Osbourne t-shirts, hanging out the windows of their car and gawking as they drove by in rush-hour traffic. Cars screeched and halted, spewing out fumes that simmered in the humidity. Pedestrians walked around and at times walked through the peaceful protest of about two dozen people, and at least one passerby seemed angry that the collection of clerics, labor leaders, African-Americans and other activists had the temerity to assemble.
A slight breeze didn't take the edge off the protest, and maybe it was the heat that made the authorities so antsy. The group had been assembling across the street from the Greyhound bus station for 10 minutes when Vista Hotel security guards approached them.
Asking the organizers what was going on, the guards were given polite responses and went on their way. That left the few dozen activists to their protest of what they feel was ugly treatment by the Pittsburgh Police of Getu Berhanu Tewolde on his arrival in Pittsburgh on February 1. While traveling from Washington, D.C. to Denver, Getu, an Ethiopian immigrant, was arrested at the Greyhound station downtown. He was charged with making terroristic threats, causing and risking a catastrophe and aggravated and simple assault. This all occurred as a result of an incident during a layover in Pittsburgh.
Gathered downtown around the corner of 11th and Liberty on Thursday, June 13 during the dinner rush hour, activists from nine organizations and three churches toted signs reading "Free Getu," and chanting the same. By turns, they stood at a makeshift podium on the sidewalk to hammer the message of the grave wrong done to Getu.
"There's an old saying in labor -- that an injury to one is an injury to all," said John Lambiase, president of district six of the United Electrical Radio and Machine Workers of America. "Getu is different from the authorities, he is not different from the people. People of integrity do not beat people, do not drug people and abuse power."
As the speakers took their turns at the podium, the obvious theme of freedom of speech and the less obvious notions of freedom of space and movement emerged.
During what should have been a brief stop in Pittsburgh on February 1, Getu brushed against a Greyhound employee, Angela Street, while returning to his seat at the end of the stop. Street yelled accusations at him and the driver told Getu to get off the bus, according to Getu. Once he was inside the bus station, someone ordered Getu to sit. He refused to sit and tried to calm the crowd that was gathering around him. A police officer was called and asked Getu to sit, but because he didn't identify himself as an officer and Getu didn't see any badge, he refused. The policeman attacked and beat him, according to Getu, "disarming" Getu of the pen he was holding in his palm.
This story has been told several times, but in the beginning many just saw quick clips of Getu on television and no doubt many thought he must be guilty. He was yelling crazy, terrorist-sounding stuff on a Greyhound bus, reportedly things like "I'm Jesus" and "the Lord of Lords asked me [to choose] life or death" and "Americans are going to die." He'd had the crap kicked out of him by the police. He was a foreigner, and an African at that. If we got a dozen more like him, some people certainly thought, it'd be a good start.
But such knee-jerk reactions to this gray situation, where it seems there's plenty of blame to spread around, might be potentially as destructive as accepting carte blanche Getu's version of events.
At the busy corner last week, the rumble of traffic and windy conditions intermittently drowned out the unamplified voices of the speakers, and at times it seemed they were preaching to themselves, as protesters sometimes do.
Amnesty International Pittsburgh's Pamela Jordan strode to the podium and declared Getu had been denied due process and subjected to cruel and unusual punishment. "The conditions of Getu's confinement were egregious," she said. "Given only two hours a week to leave his cell. The [forced] medication, in combination with his solitary confinement" constitute cruel and unusual punishment, she said.
While many go to jail because of drugs, Getu was detained partly through the aid of mind-altering substances. Local authorities intentionally hopped him up on goofy pills, he said.
After his beating, Getu was placed on Disciplinary Housing Status at the Allegheny County Jail. He was tucked into the Mental Health pod under 24-hour solitary confinement and given eight pills a day without a behavioral clinic examination. He was allowed only two hours per week to leave his cell and shower and couldn't meet with a public defender because he was in solitary confinement, according to the Free Getu Coalition's web site, www.freegetu.org.
The incident that led to Getu's arrest might have been avoided if a few jingoistic idiots hadn't felt threatened by this 5-foot-2-inch, 125-pound stranger, others in the rally said. Mary Zimmerle, an organizer of the gathering and a member of the Zi activist organization, called Getu's arrest "an example of unrestrained hysteria. When we treat people who are different as the other, we dehumanize them. This leads to horrible consequences."
Just after she spoke the words, a third carload of hecklers passed by. This group was wearing dirty workmen's clothes, and they sounded like they'd been drinking. "You suck!" they yelled, flipping the protesters the bird.
Pittsburgh NAACP president Tim Stevens wasn't swayed by the catcalls. "Part of patriotism is a commitment to make our nation better than it is," he said. "It is trouble when someone comes to our city and their first experience is handcuffs. That is a sad commentary."
As if to underscore the point, a couple of Pittsburgh Police officers rolled up in a car and started asking questions. "Everybody has a right to assemble, as long as people can pass by on the street," one of the officers said, and the two left.
Stevens picked up where he'd stopped without missing a beat, jumping back into his solo riffs with a jazzman's flair. "Obviously we have to be about protecting our nation. But we also have to protect what we are as a nation. We don't have to be intimidated because a couple people sat on the cement."
Getu's trial was postponed until March 15 because he had to be cleared by the behavior clinic due to the felony charge. After getting pressure from the Free Getu Coalition and the ACLU, Getu received an exam and a lawyer visited within the week of his preliminary hearing. He passed the exam, moving his case forward and leading to his release on bail.
The "simple assault" charge was dropped at the March 15 preliminary hearing. The "causing and risking a catastrophe" charge was dropped as well, but a second "terroristic threat" charge was added before Getu's formal arraignment on May 20. A pre-trial conference was scheduled before deadline, on Wednesday, June 19, during which Judge John Zatolla was to set a trial date.
In the meantime, Getu is sorting out his feelings.
Meeting Getu gives you a sense of who was wronged. The soft-spoken man bears little resemblance to the images of him captured on the local "breaking news" television segments, his face puffy and his eye blackened from the beating. He said last week that he was amazed by the support of so many Pittsburghers. On the one hand, he said in soft, sometimes halting English, Pittsburgh has some aggressive people by which he clearly means the officers who arrested him. On the other, he added, "I didn't expect that Pittsburgh had such kind people" as his supporters.
He attributed the ordeal to the fact that he looks different from many Americans. "On the bus when the woman swore at me, it was because I looked different," he said. "I even said sorry."
Why charge Getu with making terroristic threats? Contacted after the demonstration, Allegheny County district attorney's office spokesman Mike Manko would not speculate on what led police to charge Getu, deferring questions to Zone 2 commander Bill Valenta. "It was a police investigation, you'd have to ask them," Manko said.
Getu's supporters have asked the district attorney to drop the rest of the charges against him, but Manko was guarded on the question. "I'm not going to discuss whatever strategy we have before a case goes to trial," he said.
And though the tide of media opinion has turned in favor of Getu, Pittsburgh Police officials tell a far different story of the incident that led to Getu's arrest.
"In essence, Mr. Tewolde was in a bus station and there was an incident between him and another person on the bus," said Zone 2 commander Bill Valenta. "At some point in time, Mr. Tewolde said everybody on the bus is going to die. The police officer arrived in full uniform and Mr. Tewolde proceeded to attack him with a pen. It was the behavior of Mr. Tewolde that dictated his response. He chose to act in an aggressive manner and attacked our officer."
The incident led police to evacuate the bus station building, to search the building for bombs and to call in the FBI's local counter-terrorism team, Valenta said. "We probably had the involvement of 50 to 60 personnel hours, all because of this guy becoming upset on the bus."
Valenta said he is bothered by the media attention that has depicted Getu as an innocent. He also takes umbrage at the suggestion that he would allow his officers to brutalize anyone. "We have written statements by 10 people who witnessed [Getu] going off. I oversee 120 police officers and ensure that they follow the law the right way. I'm very comfortable with what we did, from start to finish."
Given the fact that the Pittsburgh Police Department is under a federal consent decree instituted in 1997 due to police misconduct, it's easy to see why African-Americans in Pittsburgh might be wary of what police say. Many citizens aren't aware that the consent decree is in place, though it is meant to help them, and others don't believe it will work. Despite widespread resentment of the decree among police officers, and rampant mistrust of police officers among African-Americans, city officials are negotiating an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice that would end the consent decree this summer, though there is a backlog of cases that the city's Office of Municipal Investigations has not dealt with.
The office was created from the former Office of Professional Standards and was physically moved out of police headquarters to facilitate the filing of complaints. But given that the consent decree was forced upon the city due to a long history of local police abuses that resulted in the deaths of Johnny Gammage, Maneia Bey and others, many people have little patience for OMI's backlog of cases. To the injured party, justice delayed always seems to be justice denied.
Even if what Pittsburgh Police officials say about Getu's case is true, the fact that he was detained for several weeks and drugged in a prison mental health facility should be cause for alarm, even among those officers who say Getu was treated fairly. It seems axiomatic that people, native or non-native, shouldn't get lost, Josef K.-like, in a trial put off forever by inscrutable bureaucrats.
Comments:
Although this article is very thorough and discusses some of the history of Pittsburgh's police brutality problems, one important detail was left out: Getu was cleared by the FBI, but arrested anyway because of the “totality of the circumstances”, according to Commander Valenta (Fox 53 10 O'clock News broadcast on February 1).
No comments:
Post a Comment