What you need to know about the police brutality case that’s causing an uproar in Asheville and making national news. What happened, how the problem stretches to the highest levels and how this violence is rooted in our city’s segregation

Above: A sign highlighting the APD’s brutality against Johnnie Rush, a local black man who was attacked by an APD officer in August for supposedly jaywalking. Photo courtesy of Dizy Walton.

It’s been almost a month since a leaked body cam video revealed horrific violence in an attack last August by a then-Asheville Police Department officer on a black resident. The news shook Asheville to its core, leading to a major political backlash, the removal of the longtime city manager, multiple proposals for reforms and more.

The case has made national news multiple times, most recently when additional body camera footage was released by court order last week.

There’s a lot going on here, from what happened on that August night to the complicity of multiple levels of city government to the roots of this brutality in Asheville’s long-lasting and particularly harsh racial segregation. Whether you’re an Ashevillian wanting to know more or someone from elsewhere wondering how the hell this happened in a supposedly progressive mountain utopia (answer: Asheville isn’t utopian or particularly progressive), here’s what’s behind the attack on Rush, the fallout its revelation created, and its context.

Warning: this story involves images and video of racist violence.

What happened?

Just around midnight last Aug. 24, trainee officer Verino Ruggiero confronted Johnnie Rush, a black Ashevillian walking home from work, about supposedly jaywalking. Ruggiero first did this at a gas station on the outskirts of downtown Asheville, accompanied by Officer Chris Hickman, who was overseeing his training.

They then followed Rush down the street in their patrol car, where they stopped and got out, with Ruggiero claiming Rush had jaywalked again and trespassed by crossing through the parking lot of a closed business. Rush repeatedly asked why the officers are harassing him, while Ruggiero belligerently (he actually said “you think I’m a punk” to Rush) confronted him and said he was going to ticket him for crossing the street.

Hickman got even more aggressive and, after a further back-and-forth grabbed for Rush while demanding he put his arms behind his back. When Hickman lunged for him, Rush briefly ran as Hickman chased him, the police officer threatening that “you’re going to get fucked up hardcore.”

Hickman then assaulted Rush, with Ruggiero’s assistance, tackling him to the ground and repeatedly punching him in the head both with his fists and the butt of his taser gun. He also electrocuted him repeatedly, crushing him into the ground as Rush shouted that he couldn’t breathe while Hickman put him in a chokehold. Officer Luis Delgado arrived and grabbed Rush’s ankles while Hickman shocked and choked him.

The three handcuffed Rush and took him across the street, where more cops have arrived, including Sgt. Lisa Taube. Hickman blatantly lied to Taube, claiming Rush had taunted them while he ran and had reached for Hickman’s taser.

From all the footage available in the videos, Rush wasn’t even jaywalking. The streets he was crossing were largely empty. Under North Carolina law, crossing the street without a crosswalk or stop sign isn’t illegal; the pedestrian just has to yield to traffic. Jaywalking only takes place if a person is directly blocking vehicles. Repeatedly, from Ruggiero to Hickman to Taube, every APD officer and supervisor in the videos either isn’t aware or doesn’t care about that fact.

For context: jaywalking and “trespassing” by walking through the parking lot of a closed business aren’t even offenses the APD usually enforces.

Under the department’s use of force policy, Taube was supposed to investigate Hickman and get statements from Rush. She instead repeatedly sided with Hickman, intimidating and taunting Rush when he insisted that his beating was unjustified. Minutes after Hickman had confessed to her and the other assembled officers that “I beat the shit out of his head,” Taube even mocked Rush’s injuries, asserting he didn’t need to go to the hospital (“maybe they can provide you a band-aid”) and claiming to Rush’s significant other (who approached the scene asking why he was being arrested), that the injured man must be intoxicated.

Despite department officials later claiming they were appalled by Hickman’s actions, none of the officers express any surprise or dismay that entire night. One notes “you know how he is” when referring to Hickman, worrying that he might be depressed when the adrenaline of brutalizing someone for crossing the street wore off.

Though ostensibly under investigation from that point on, Hickman and Ruggiero even got to take Rush — the man they attacked, who had just told their supervisor he wanted to press a complaint against them — to the county jail after he’s released from the hospital, by themselves, with no other police officers around. Rush was charged with assault on a government employee, trespassing, traffic offenses and resisting an officer. The charges were dropped Sept. 18.

How did the APD’s leadership react?

Like they didn’t give a damn. While Hickman was placed on desk duty the next day after APD Chief Tammy Hooper reviewed the footage (and additional footage, still unreleased, of several other incidents involving his conduct) and later resigned in January just before he would have been terminated, the police bureaucracy mostly buried the case. Taube was reprimanded for “poor performance” and assigned mandatory retraining. Ruggiero was re-assigned to continue his training with another officer. Everyone besides Hickman remained on the APD.

Under the APD’s use of force policy, Hooper was supposed to quickly call for a criminal investigation in any case “that results in death or serious physical injury” from the State Bureau of Investigation, an outside agency that examines local police conduct. Instead she waited nearly five months, so long the SBI said they couldn’t credibly look into Rush’s case. The office of District Attorney Todd Williams also didn’t show any particular urgency to inform the public or press for an outside criminal investigation or charges, even though they were made aware of the attack in September.

The problems didn’t stop there. Hooper supposedly declined to inform then-City manager Gary Jackson or Asheville City Council, though she apparently sent word of the case to an assistant city manager and an assistant city attorney. The handling of the case was so bad that even Council, who perpetually see the conduct of city staff through rose-colored glasses, had to resort to using terms like “cascade of poor decisions” in official announcements.

Importantly, though, any of those steps would have almost certainly meant the case would have hit the public eye. Hooper waiting so long means that Rush’s assault stayed buried during a close local election where racial inequity and police brutality were major issues. The matter also remained hidden during the APD’s re-accreditation process. That timing has only bolstered the backlash.

How do we know about this?

In late February, the Asheville Citizen-Times released a leaked copy of the footage from Hickman’s body cam, and the case exploded into the public eye. Council released normally-sealed personnel files about the case. While Hooper’s original emphasis had been on tracking down the leaker, the city did recently get a court order for nine body cam videos (including the one the Citizen-Times originally covered) to be released to the public. Those additional videos revealed even more about the brutality used by Hickman and the complicity of the other officers and Taube.

If someone within the APD hadn’t mustered a shred of conscience and leaked the video, the matter would have likely remained hidden. As it is, it’s set off a massive public backlash, partly because of the city’s long-simmering problems with police brutality and racial segregation.

Has this happened before?

Yes, a lot. Asheville is an incredibly segregated city. That goes back through a history of redlining so severe it’s studied by national scholars as an example of how racist policies can devastate communities over most of a century. The State of Black Asheville and committed local activists have repeatedly documented major racial disparities in areas like health, labor and housing that are bad even by North Carolina standards.

Law enforcement is a major part of that. The APD, already possessing an abysmal lack of diversity, has become an even whiter department in recent years. Last year, the APD’s racial disparities in traffic stops and searches were the worst of any major city in North Carolina.

Use of force against black Ashevillians has been a repeated source of anger and controversy. In 2013, A.J. Marion was shot and killed under unclear circumstances. In 2016 Jerry Williams was killed, also under disputed circumstances, by APD Sgt. Tyler Radford. Williams’ killing tapped into years of tension and set off multiple protests, with many in Asheville’s black community sharing their own stories of being harassed by local law enforcement.

Later that year, Officer Shalin Oza was caught on video throwing a teenage girl to the ground in a public housing development. Early in 2017 he was filmed holding an AR-15 and threatening a group of black teenagers with arrest. Last summer, Officer Zach Raymond sparked public outrage when he injured an intellectually disabled black man after slamming him into the pavement during a bomb hoax.

In 2015, Council hired Hooper, who’d spent over two decades as an official in the police department of Alexandria, an largely white and well-off enclave near Washington D.C., after the previous police chief resigned amid departmental turmoil. She was touted as a progressive reformer but during her tenure the APD’s already dire issues have become even worse.

She defended Radford, Raymond and Oza’s carrying of an AR-15, clamped down on protests after Williams’ killing and quashed efforts by the local NAACP for even modest traffic stop reforms while racial disparities worsened dramatically. She also skirted the usual budget process and used dubious stats to back a major expansion of policing in downtown, despite objections from many locals that it would lead to more minorities being harassed due to minor or fabricated offenses (like jaywalking). Most of Council still voices their complete confidence in her.

Is this tied into the city’s rapid gentrification?

Absolutely. In cities across the U.S. marginalized communities face more harassment from law enforcement as areas gentrify. Asheville, one of the fastest gentrifying cities in the country, is no exception. During the city’s tourism boom, segregation has worsened and black household wealth has collapsed.

Rush was attacked while walking through “South Slope” a rapidly gentrifying area with breweries, high-end housing and tourist attractions. These mostly white-owned businesses have moved into,  demolished and even renamed what was once part of the largely black Southside neighborhood. Indeed, the spot where Rush was stopped is just between “South Slope” and the still predominantly black part of Southside. Gentrification is putting so much pressure on locals in the area that both local and federal governments launched extensive studies on the problem.

Importantly, both Ruggiero and Hickman claim to Rush that they received complaints from businesses about people crossing the street. Using claims of such complaints, and arbitrary or made-up enforcement of minor offenses, to harass or keep minorities and lower-income people out of increasingly wealthy and white areas happens in almost every city in America. It’s impossible to separate that from what happened to Rush.

What’s been the political fallout from this?

Major, and growing. Asheville’s de facto segregation was a big issue before this. Indeed, it was key in the last two local elections. But the brutality of the assault on Rush, the complicity of multiple officials and the fact that these problems keep getting worse has spurred a powerful political backlash. Locals have packed forums and spoken for hours at Council meetings. Buncombe County Commissioner Al Whitesides, a veteran of the civil rights movement, harshly criticized Council in a joint meeting, saying he was tired of their excuses for not seriously dealing with police brutality. Council member Sheneika Smith, one of two African-Americans on that board, has condemned city government’s “long neglect of equity” and refused to back down when multiple police officers took offense at her criticisms.

The federal government has launched two investigations into Hickman’s conduct, both in Rush’s case and in another involving a West Asheville resident. During the ensuing public backlash, Hickman was finally charged with assault by the District Attorney’s office, who also threw out 27 cases the former officer was involved in.

Some in Asheville’s liberal, non-profit and religious establishments have defended Hooper while calling for some policy changes at the APD. But plenty of locals, including Asheville Black Lives Matter, left-leaning Ashevillians and longtime progressive activists, have called for the police chief’s removal and the resignation of the mayor and vice mayor, among others. They’ve also pushed for a major overhaul of the APD and serious changes in how the city allocates resources and decision-making power in dealing with the city’s segregation. Council closed sessions to discuss personnel matters have become an almost weekly occurrence.

A week after locals blasted Council for nearly three hours, the elected officials removed City manager Gary Jackson, who had held office for nearly 13 years, by unanimous vote. Jackson, with the deference of several “progressive” Councils, had long pulled city policy in a more conservative direction, including on policing. While he announced his retirement in February, he was due to stay in office until the end of the year and play a role in picking his successor. In a matter of weeks, Council went from effusively praising him to kicking him out.

The elected officials have also proposed measures ranging from a stronger equity office to more checks on use of force to an attorney, jointly funded by city and county governments, to help locals pursue complaints about police misconduct. Three county commissioners, including Whitesides, have called for increased oversight and training of all local law enforcement agencies, but even these basic measures have received pushback from the county sheriff and other officials.

The issue is also shaping the upcoming primaries for sheriff and district attorney. In the latter, challenger Ben Scales has blasted incumbent Todd Williams’ conduct, asserting that his office failed to properly handle the case, inform the public and rein in police abusing their power.

Asheville’s a tourist town with a culture of political complacency, rapacious greed and liberal racism that belies its reputation for progressivism. I’ve lived in the South my entire life, and this remains overwhelmingly the most segregated city I have ever seen. By Asheville standards, the above is almost shockingly swift political action, and a testament that relentless public pressure and national bad press are having some impact.

But some of what’s been most notable is what still hasn’t happened. The other officers who participated in the events of that night still have their jobs. So, shockingly, does Hooper. Notably missing among the reforms proposed by Council are those pushed by the NAACP last year to reduce racial disparities in traffic stops.

That controversial police expansion is still set to go ahead, to the tune of about $1.4 million. Currently, it’s a major factor causing a $3 million city budget gap that could lead to social services and transit improvements being scaled back to put more cops on the street in the city’s core. That issue (Council takes up the matter at today’s meeting) is likely to be the next flashpoint in a fight that will last as long as Asheville remains a city where black residents can’t even cross the street in peace.

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