Pr. George’s Officers Detained him First
by Jo Becker and Lena H. Sun, Washington Post
Law enforcement authorities are investigating the death of a District resident who died in police custody Saturday night after he was detained by Prince George’s County officers and turned over to D.C. police.
Brian Keith Martin, 35, of the 4200 block of East Capitol Street, was pronounced dead at Washington Hospital Center at 10:25 p.m. Saturday, less than an hour after Prince George’s police officials said Martin collapsed in the middle of Southern Avenue on the District side of the border. Officials said that before Martin lost consciousness, he told them he had smoked crack cocaine.
A county police spokesman identified the officers who detained Martin as Sgt. Kelly Graves, a 16-year veteran of the force who normally supervises the maintenance of evidence, and Police Officer 1st Class Michael Kane, who has been on the force four years. They have been assigned to administrative duties pending the outcome of an autopsy by the D.C. medical examiner and an investigation by a D.C. police team that probes deaths in custody.
Acting Prince George’s Police Chief Gerald M. Wilson said yesterday that though he will wait for that investigation to be completed before making any final determinations, he believed that his officers acted as “good Samaritans” by responding to a medical emergency.
Based on photographs taken by his department’s evidence team, Wilson said he had no reason to believe that his officers had any physical contact with Martin other than to handcuff him.
“There was not a discernible scratch on his body, looking at him from head to toe,” Wilson said in an interview. “We didn’t strike him, there was no bruising, he wasn’t cut.”
Six people have died while in the custody of Prince George’s County police since April 1999. Three of those deaths were ruled homicides by Maryland’s chief medical examiner, including the latest death in March.
Wilson, who became acting police chief March 1 after John S. Farrell resigned amid federal investigations into alleged brutality by the department, gave the following chronology of the events of Saturday night:
About 9:30 p.m., a man -- later identified as Martin -- was waving a hammer and yelling incoherently as he walked toward Graves, who had pulled over a motorist on a routine traffic stop near Southern Avenue and Boones Hill Road.
When the man fell in the middle of the street, Graves radioed for backup and Kane quickly arrived. Concerned about the man’s size -- Martin was 6 feet 2 inches tall and weighed more than 210 pounds -- Graves handcuffed him as a precaution. At no point did the man overtly threaten the officers or break the law.
“We are not alleging he committed any crime,” Wilson said. “The action we took was for his safety and the safety of our officers.”
Next, two additional Prince George’s officers arrived, and D.C. officers showed up because Martin had been restrained in their jurisdiction. The District police officers swapped the Prince George’s handcuffs for a set of their own, which Wilson said was “significant.”
“If there had been any indication that we had done anything untoward, I doubt that the Metropolitan Police Department would have taken him into custody,” Wilson said.
A D.C. police spokesman said the officers called an ambulance. D.C. fire spokesman Alan Etter said the ambulance was dispatched at 9:38 p.m. and arrived several minutes later.
Martin was talking until the ambulance arrived, Wilson said. No one felt that Martin was in imminent danger, he added; the thought was he needed a routine medical and psychiatric evaluation based on his erratic behavior and admitted drug use.
“Panic didn’t set in until he became unconscious while he was being administered to,” Wilson said.
Martin’s girlfriend, Lavina Herbert, 29, said yesterday that police told her that Martin lost consciousness in the ambulance and that by the time he got to Washington Hospital Center, he was dead.
Herbert said Martin, who owned a carpet installation business, left their apartment between 7:30 and 8 p.m. but did not tell her where he was headed. Before he left, Martin smoked “about $10 worth” of crack cocaine, she said. The apartment is about 15 blocks from the 4700 block of Southern Avenue.
Hours passed with no word from Martin. Herbert said she became so worried she started “pacing the complex.” About 1:30 a.m., police detectives arrived to tell her Martin was dead.
Though Martin was a regular drug user, she said, she knew of no previous instances when he was high that he had behaved in the manner police described. “He was usually quiet and wouldn’t go outside,” she said.
Wilson said that based on the information he has, Martin died with “someone trying to help him,” and for that he commends his troops. He promised a complete and thorough accounting of what happened.
“We have the absolute responsibility to be as open as possible about what occurred,” he said, “because someone is dead.”