Dylan Brogan
Genele Laird, an 18-year-old black woman whose violent arrest on Tuesday drew widespread condemnation, will spend at least one more night in the Dane County Jail, according to the Dane County District Attorney’s office.
Friends, family and supporters of Laird gathered at the Dane County Public Safety Building on Wednesday afternoon with hopes that Laird would make her initial court appearance. Arraignment hearings are held daily at 1:30 p.m., but Laird’s case did not appear on the docket Wednesday. She will instead appear on Thursday or Friday at the latest, the DA’s office said, at which point charges will be read and bail will be set. Laird is facing charges of disorderly conduct while armed, resisting police (causing injury), battery to police officer, and discharge of bodily fluids, according to a police incident report.
Madison police officers arrived at East Towne Mall on Tuesday evening after mall security reported a female being "out of control and making threats." Laird, who works at the mall, had accused another mall employee of stealing her cellphone and threatened that employee with a knife, according to police.
Cellphone video of Laird’s arrest went viral on Tuesday and prompted a late-night protest at the jail that drew several Madison elected officials and community activists. Many accused police of using excessive force to subdue the teen. The video shows an officer punching and striking Laird with his knee while trying to place her in handcuffs. The officer also deployed his Taser at least once. The video shows the much smaller Laird resisting the officers and threatening to bite one of them. She shrieks and complains of being unable to breathe.
Many of the protesters who gathered at the jail on Wednesday said Laird’s arrest is emblematic of the trend of police violence against people of color — an issue that rose to national attention with the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson in August 2014 and locally in March 2015 with the killing of Tony Robinson.
“It’s an aggregate trauma,” Rev. Alex Gee told reporters outside the jail on Wednesday. “When do we get to catch our breath? When do we get to not worry about this?”
A handful of Laird’s family and friends were at the jail Wednesday but declined to speak with reporters, other than to confirm that Laird is “doing okay.” Her mother and sister were en route to Madison from Chicago at the time of the demonstration. Members of Young, Gifted and Black also held a brief rally, displaying a banner that said “Hands Off Black Women” and leading chants demanding “community control over police” and urging Laird’s release.
“This is just another incident that adds to the stress that you feel as a person of color in this city,” said Angela Fitzgerald, a senior researcher at the National Council on Crime and Delinquency who attended the demonstration on Wednesday.
A recent transplant from Washington, D.C., Fitzgerald agrees that Madison is a city struggling with race relations, adding that a number of the people of color she’s met during the two years she’s lived here are making plans to leave the city.
Andrea High, a lifelong Madison resident, put it bluntly: “In the last two years, I’ve never seen so much racial tension.”
Caliph Muab’El, a member of Madison’s Black Leadership Council, said the group is raising money to help Laird make bail and is, at her family’s request, in the process of reviewing proposals from a number of law firms that have expressed interest in representing Laird. Outside the jail, a family friend collected cash to put in Laird’s jail account so she can make telephone calls.
At a press conference Wednesday, Madison Police Chief Mike Koval defended his officers’ conduct during what he called a “surgical removal” of Laird from outside the mall. Koval said there was probable cause that Laird created a disturbance on several fronts. The chief cited reports from mall security alleging that the 18-year-old “flashed a knife” and indicated she was willing to use it.
“The charge moving at that point was disorderly conduct while armed,” Koval told a packed room of reporters. Koval said the suspected felony-in-progress created a level of urgency for officers arriving on the scene. If Laird had “surrendered her liberty” at that point, Koval said, things would have gone differently.
“Force when administered, especially when someone is motivated not to be taken into custody, can be very ugly,” said Koval. “If you theoretically — allegedly, as we say — spit in the eye of a police officer, that’s a felony."
Koval said he expressed remorse to Laird’s family that “they had to see their loved one subjected to this.” He said his department will fully cooperate with and support a restorative justice outcome, “but that’s not our call.”
An internal review will determine whether officers used the “appropriate use of force consistent with state guidelines,” according to Koval. The review will be overseen by the Dane County Sheriff’s department. Even so, he fully expects a civil lawsuit to be filed over the arrest.
The chief urged the public not to rush to judgment based on the video. “You take a slice or snapshot of that picture, I think you do lose some predicate, you lose some context. Our engagements [with the public] are characterized overwhelmingly as peaceful,” said Koval. “Is this a moment in time or will this be Madison’s defining moment? I like to believe it's the former and not the latter.”
