Police use of force in question after tasing incident

The debate about excessive police force has hit close to home—at a grocery store near East Campus.

At approximately 5 p.m. last Wednesday, the Durham Police Department responded to a trespassing call at the Harris Teeter on Hillsborough Road, according to a statement issued by the DPD. After Deonte Holder—a 24-year-old Durham resident—refused to leave the premises, officers attempted to place Holder under arrest and “after several warnings were forced to deploy a Taser in an attempt to safely gain custody of him,” the statement said.

Holder was subsequently “arrested and charged with trespassing and resisting, delaying and obstructing an officer” and the incident is currently being reviewed by the DPD’s Professional Standards Division, “which is standard procedure any time an officer deploys a Taser,” the statement noted.

Witnesses to the incident have questioned whether the police acted appropriately in using force to subdue Holder. Adrienne Harreveld, Trinity ‘14, wrote in an email that she was concerned about DPD’s conduct.

“It all seemed a bit extreme,” wrote Harreveld, a former columnist for The Chronicle and currently program coordinator at Duke’s Research Network on Racial and Ethnic Inequality. “None of them were found with any stolen goods and no security footage indicated they had stolen anything. [Holder] was upset, sort of yelling asking what he did wrong, but a taser was not at all necessary. The officer didn’t even search him before he tased him.”

Kammie Michael, DPD public information officer, confirmed that Holder was not charged with possession of stolen goods. Holder has been released from prison after his bail was paid.

In her explanation of the incident, based partly on a conversation with three of Holder’s friends, Harreveld wrote that “four young black men between the ages of 19-24” had entered the store to buy hamburgers for a nearby cookout sometime before she entered.

Based on her account, the store manager asked one of the four men to leave—and he did—but the other three stayed and continued shopping. When the police arrived and told the three they would be arrested for trespassing, two of the men decided to leave but the third, Holder, was eventually tased and arrested.

When Harreveld walked into the store at about 5 p.m., she saw “one of the young men”—one of the two who had decided to leave—“being handcuffed in the vestibule entrance,” but that “the officer stopped handcuffing the man and told him to leave the store.”

Harreveld then walked to the produce section, at which point she saw “three officers surrounding a young man [Holder] who had his hands up saying ‘Please search me, I didn’t steal anything. I’m not trespassing.’”

After turning away, Harreveld wrote that she “heard what was like a clapping sound and saw the man on the ground screaming” and that eventually a DPD supervisor arrived and asked for an ambulance.

Michael confirmed that the officer who used the taser was Corporal Dock Culver, who was listed as a victim on the police report, and is on full duty as the PSD investigation continues.

After the incident, Harreveld wrote that she spent an hour talking with Holder’s three friends before dropping them off at their cookout.

She added that at one point, a man asked Corporal Culver, “What if this was your son?” and that Culver started to yell until another officer “had to hold him back and tell him to calm down repeatedly.”

Other witnesses, however, expressed concern that people should not jump to conclusions about police misconduct.

In a comment on a post on the “All Duke” Facebook page, April Ratliff, Trinity ‘15, another witness to the incident and a research associate at Duke’s Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, expressed frustration that people were jumping to conclusions by accusing Harris Teeter or DPD of wrongdoing and added that its important to consider multiple perspectives.

“Cops don’t just randomly taze (sic) people who are following the law and cooperating,” she wrote in the comment. “Keep that in mind.”

Ratliff said the police were in the store for about 15 minutes before the incident occurred, leading her to believe that the men would have had plenty of warnings—acknowledging however that she did not actually see any police interaction during that time.

“I just want people to not be so quick to take sides,” Ratliff said.

Danna Robinson, communication manager at Harris Teeter, issued a statement assuring customers that their safety is the store’s highest priority.

“While the incident at our Shops at Erwin Mill location was an isolated situation, we take it very seriously and are examining to understand what happened, why it happened, and what we can do about it in the future,” she wrote in an email. “Please know that we invest a lot in advertising to welcome customers into our stores. We would never ask someone to leave without good reason.”