By David M. Greenwald
Executive Editor
Sacramento, CA – Attorneys for Nakia Porter filed suit in Federal Court in Sacramento on Wednesday following an incident on August 6, 20202, where Porter and her father were driving from Oakland to their home in Sacramento.
The vehicle was already stopped and in park when approached by Sheriff’s Deputies. She had stopped to take over driving for her father.
At the press conference attorney Yasin Almadani explained that Porter, age 33 and weighing all of 125 pound “had done nothing wrong” when she was approached by the deputy and explained that they were simply switching seats.
However, as she was explaining this, the complaint explained, Deputy McCampbell suddenly appears, pointed his gun at Porter and said, “Get back in the car now. This is a traffic stop. Get back in the car.”
“Without provocation and in a show of brute force, the deputy suddenly decided to handcuff and arrest Nakia as she was complying with their commands,” he said. “Nakia pleaded in fear for an explanation as her father and children helplessly in a horror inside the car, staying inside because that’s what the Sheriff’s deputies had ordered them to do.”
At this point, Almadani alleges, “Without any provocation. Sheriff’s deputies, Dalton McCampbell and Lisa McDowell, then dragged Nikia out of the view of McDowell’s patrol dash camera and physically beat her punching kicking her, striking her in the back of the neck, the head, the face stomach, as she struggled and prayed for her life and desperation pleading God helped me.”
McCampbell who he described as a large male deputy, “forced Nakia onto her stomach and mounted her while McDowell, a large female deputy grabbed her by the hair, even pulled out her braids and shoved her face into the concrete. She’d done nothing wrong. The beating was so extreme that Nikia lost consciousness.”
McCampbell he said “was not fazed in the least bit, catching his breath from the beating he had just delivered to her. He sat on her for almost a minute before he dragged her handcuffed and unconscious and tossed her body into a Sheriff’s vehicle. Nikki remained unconscious for over five minutes.”
He explained that is the sign of a grade three conclusion and he emphasized that she had done nothing wrong. All of this was caught on the body-worn camera video.
The Deputies booked Nakia Porter overnight based on what he called “a fabricated story.”
“They submitted that to the district attorney’s office to get her prosecuted on false charges. Fortunately, body camera footage contradicted the Sheriff’s office POS accounts, and the district attorney declined to prosecute,” he said.
He added, “We now have sound reason actually, to believe that the Solano County Sheriff’s office may be concealing evidence that would further implicate them in this crime.”
Betty Williams from the Sacramento Branch of the NAACP spoke during the press conference.
“It’s hard for me to speak because I have seen that video,” Williams said. “I’m thinking in Solano County, we have a new Mississippi back in the 1950s and 60’s, where Solano County Sheriff’s feel that they can do anything.”
She said, “Looking at that video – they’ve done this before. They were so comfortable that they felt it was okay to pull her from the camera and beat her to unconsciousness.”
She reminded the media, “Mind you this happened after the George Floyd – so we’ve already had unrest in the nation, but these officers see not to care.”
The NAACP is asking for a full independent investigation into this matter.
George Johnson with the Tri-City NAACP out of Fairfield added, “The black woman is the most disrespected individual in these not yet United States.”
He recounted the history in this country and proclaimed, “I tell you today, the NAACP is here to stay with this family without no fear.” He said, “institutionalized racism doesn’t just reside in Solano County Sheriff’s department, the Solano County Board of Supervisors, but it’s also in the district attorney’s office.”
Nina Ross, founder of Women For Equality speaking as a mother of three Black children, “As I watched the video comprised the bodycam footage (from) the Solano County Sheriff’s department. I was immediately triggered.”
“She did nothing,” she said. “It is so obvious that she was beaten and terrorized because of the color of her skin.”
“It’s haunting,” she said. “And to be honest, being the mother of black children in this country is haunting. It is often haunting. This country, there’s a deep-rooted racism… it makes me scared.”
Dr. Kristee Haggins from UC Davis said she watched the video since 3:30 in the morning.
“The inhumanity of what happened throughout the entire process,” she said. “The terror, the abuse, the lying…”
She looked at Nakia, “That could have been me. But it was her. It’s unfair. It’s tragic.”
A representative from CAIR, Asama Kamel, also spoke out.
“Doesn’t it feel like we find ourselves here all the time, another quote, unquote, traffic stop in which another black family is brutalized, terrorized, beaten, and bloodied with absolutely no consideration for their humanity,” he said.
“How many folks got to die?” he asked. “How many of our people will get beaten senseless before we realized that this is just for these filings, this is police practice.”
“This isn’t police brutality,” he said. “This is just policing. When it comes to black folks from Sacramento to Ferguson, to Minnesota, to Los Angeles, to New York, it is not police brutality. If the state sanctions this violence and the state-sanctioned this violence the moment they saw that footage and the whole department did not move to serve Nakia, JB, and the three children the justice that they deserve on a silver platter.”
Also made it as an AP story today: ‘I think she’s out,’ deputy says after violent arrest
This one is getting national coverage.
Classic example from going from specific officers, beyond a jurisdiction, to broad brushing an entire profession, statewide and nationally…
Some might say a case of “profiling”, but they’d be accused of racism, so I won’t say that.
Whatever…
That said, if 25% of the narrative is true, those officers should never serve in any sort of law enforcement, anywhere, ever again… and, know a lot of law enforcement folk who would agree…
I think the problem is that only dealing with the specific officers is not going to solve the problem here. It’s systemic not individual. It’s cultural. It’s training. It’s the policing environment.