For the past week, protests against police violence have spread across the country. Tens of thousands have taken to the streets. Hundreds have been arrested. The protests began in the wake of the fatal police shooting of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota. Today we look at a side of the Baton Rouge story that has received little attention: what has happened to the individuals who filmed and distributed the shocking videos of Alton Sterling’s death. The videos show a Baton Rouge police officer pinning Sterling to the ground outside a convenience store, then pointing a gun at his chest and opening fire.
video was filmed by Abdullah Muflahi, the owner of the Triple S convenience store where Sterling died. He recorded it on his cellphone. Muflahi has since filed a lawsuit against the city of Baton Rouge, the Baton Rouge city police and four of its officers. The lawsuit alleges the police took his phone, locked him up for hours in a police car, seized his security camera footage in the store without a warrant. The lawsuit also contends Muflahi was prevented from making a phone call to his family or an attorney. He’s seeking damages for false imprisonment and the illegal taking of his property, as well as for release of his store’s security camera footage.
Activists say this fits a pattern of police retaliation against people who dare to film police misconduct. In New York City, Ramsey Orta, who filmed the police killing of Eric Garner, is slated to go to jail for four years on unrelated charges—making him the only person at the scene of Eric Garner’s killing who will serve jail time.
Abdullah Muflahi talking:
I got out of the store, they were already slamming him on top of a car and were tasering him. That’s when another officer ran and tackled him onto an SUV, then both cops slammed him on the floor.
When they slammed him on the floor, that’s when I pulled it out and started recording.
After the shooting. After they had killed him, one of the officers got up and grabbed me. And when backup had arrived, he grabbed me and pushed me towards another officer and told him to put me in the back of a car.
I was in shock. I didn’t know if it was real or if I was in a nightmare or—I didn’t know what was going on.
when I first moved down to Baton Rouge, he was selling CDs in front of the store that I first started working at. That’s how me and him actually met.
after the shooting, one of the officers that was there, I’m not sure what he said, but the other officer that was close to me had said, “Just F— him. Just let him lay there,” talking about Mr. Sterling. That’s when then they grabbed me and put me in the back of a cop car.
at first, they asked me if they could go and copy the surveillance. And I told them I would like to be present at the store if they were going to go in there. They told me that it wasn’t possible and that I couldn’t watch the footage, because I’m a witness. But they went inside my store anyways. And when they came back—I had knocked on the window and told one of the officers that was close by to tell them that I didn’t want them inside my store without me being present in there. And that’s when they came to me and told me that they were going to go get a search warrant and just take the surveillance camera.
I was never presented with a warrant at all.
Joel Porter talking:
they violated his rights in many ways. First of all, Mr. Muflahi was only an innocent person, a person who witnessed a horrible killing. He was illegally detained for six hours, four hours in the back of a hot police car, was not permitted to go to the bathroom. When he asked to go to the bathroom, he was escorted to the side of the building by a police officer, where he was forced to use the bathroom in the public’s sight. He was not allowed to go back inside of his building. His business was commandeered for at least six hours. He was then taken down to police headquarters, where he was once again detained illegally for two hours behind closed doors. This is not the kind of activities of how a police officer should treat innocent people in society. Once again, he’s an innocent victim. And my client believed that those responsible, Baton Rouge city police, should be held responsible for illegally detaining him, for illegally commandeering and seizing his building and the security equipment out of his building. And he just wants them to be held accountable. He wants America to know how he was treated. And he wants somebody to be held responsible.
They confiscated the entire security system. Without a warrant. They took the video footage and the equipment. What they did, they swooped down in an effort to control the evidence, in an effort to control the witness, in effort to control the narrative. They swooped down. They grabbed all of the witnesses. They grabbed my client, grabbed his cellphone and seized him. And that was, once again, in an effort to control the narrative of what happened. But they did not know that he had taped the killing. And had they known that, he never would have gotten his cellphone back. And we felt that it was important that America see the violence that black males face in this society.
It is my understanding that DOJ is involved. There has been conversations with the FBI. I know they are involved. So, yes, it has been turned over.
Abdullah Muflahi talking:
they didn’t say anything. He didn’t even know what was going on. He was confused the whole time. And the whole time, he was asking them, “What did I do wrong? What’s going on? I didn’t do nothing wrong.”
They tasered him. After they slammed him on top of the hood, they backed off—they backed up off of him and tasered him. And that’s when the other cop then ran and tackled him. He was telling them, “What did I do wrong?” He was pretty confused. He didn’t know what was going on, why they were there or what happened to even, you know, have them out there in the first place.
six shots they had fired.
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– For the past week, protests against police violence have spread across the country. Tens of thousands have taken to the streets. Hundreds have been arrested. The protests began in the wake of the fatal police killings of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota.
– Chris LeDay posted online the first video of the Alton Sterling shooting that went viral. He obtained the video from a friend of a friend. He shared the video with some 10,000 followers on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Soon after the video went viral, LeDay says he was detained at his job at the Dobbins Air Reserve Base. Police then led him from his job in shackles, held him for 26 hours. He was released after paying $1,200 in traffic fines.
Chris LeDay talking:
originally, I’m from Baton Rouge, so that’s why this hits close to home. I just live in Atlanta. I received the video from a girl who knew the young lady who shot the video. And being that I have a platform that I knew we could put it on to try to make it go viral, that was the main goal for me from jump. And, you know, like I said, Louisiana, we always have a high public corruption rate. You know, we have the highest prison rate per head in the world. So, it just goes to show how they always try to, you know, keep us in prison. A lot of oppression goes on. When I got the video, the main thing I wanted to do was just put it out there, because it was a cold-blooded case of murder, clear-cut. And I wanted to put that on display for everyone to see, so these cops could stop getting away with this type of ordeal.
I’m a musician, and I’m rooted in the community. You know, I helped a lot of other musicians that are popular now amass success with their careers, as well. So that’s how I gained my following, strictly through the music business and a lot of work that I’ve done in the area.
I was actually in New Orleans the night that the shooting happened. And the very next day, when I received the video, I went—you know, I was headed back to Atlanta that day to go to work. And when I come into work, you know, the protocol is—I don’t have an official badge yet, so—because I’ve been at the job about a month. And, you know, the job was so flexible, to the point where they said I was able to work whenever I wanted to, which was one of the key factors of me taking that job. And, you know, the protocol is, if you don’t have the paper, the paper that gets you on and off the base, all you have to do is show your ID, and you call the person from the job to come up front and escort you on, which I did. And I noticed that they were taking a long time with my identification. And as time passed, I saw my co-worker come up front to the gate, and they would not let him come near me. They ended up keeping him about 40 to 50 feet away from me. And when I tried to ask what was going on, they asked me to stand in a certain area. So, literally, I’m just, you know, confused as to why it’s taking me so long to get on base, because I’m really just trying to go ahead and go to work.
And after about 30 minutes passed, I decided that—you know, I see all these extra cops coming up. There’s more and more cops showing up. So I decided to take action into my own hands, and I put it on Facebook. I tagged my mother and my father, and I let them know. I said, “Hey, you know, I’m surrounded by cops right now, both city and military. I’m not really sure what’s going on. But I want to let you guys know that if anything happens, I’m not resisting,” and basically letting them know that I was being cooperative, because these days you can’t really trust the cops, just point blank. So, I didn’t know what was going to happen next.
So I asked the cop, I said, “Am I being detained?” And he said, “Yeah.” And I said, “Well, for what?” And he said, “We’ll let you know here shortly,” which is illegal to be detained without even letting us know what’s going on. So they still didn’t give me a charge for why I was being detained. They come back several minutes later and tell me that I have an open warrant in Dunwoody, Georgia, for assault and battery, as they’re putting the cuffs on and somebody’s reading me my rights. So, instead of me overreacting, I stayed calm, because I’m 6’3″, I’m 270 pounds. I didn’t want to give them a reason to slam me or put their hands on me, aside from putting the cuffs on me. And I kind of just chuckled, and I was like, “I’ve never been arrested for this a day in my life.” So it was all a shock to me.
Dobbins Air Force Base did not have a official jail cell, so they took me to their headquarters and put me in a room for over an hour and a half. So I’m, you know, questioning them about this charge, and they know little to nothing about how this charge came about. The cop told me also earlier that I fit the description. And that was as vague as he was: I fit the description. I’m like, “The description of what?” He didn’t follow up on that. They never said what I fit the description of. All they told me, eventually, was about the case that I had for assault and battery, which I’ve never been arrested for in my life.
I’m just in handcuffs. So, they wait for Dunwoody police to show up. And the Dunwoody cop shows up, and he has all of my charges on paperwork—I mean, on his paperwork. So I just so happened to look over my shoulder and look down at the paperwork, and I see that there’s no aggravated assault and battery on there, it’s only traffic tickets that I had from a couple of years ago that needed to be paid. And I asked about the assault and battery charge, and I said, “Well, what happened to it?” And they simply said, “Oh, well, I guess not.” And they left it at that.
So, the Dunwoody cop then decides to take it a step further. As they’re swapping out handcuffs, he asks me to see my legs. So I’m wondering why he wants to see my legs. He puts shackles on my legs to escort me from the military base to DeKalb County prison. And before I walk out the door, I said—I looked at the cop who was in charge, which was a black man at the time, and I said, “Really, bro?” I said, “2016, and you’re all still allowing us to get shackled?” And the guy put his head down, and he didn’t really have a response. He just put his head down and shook his head. And they escorted me to jail.
– they came to a military base, arrested you, shackled you, and it was all over traffic tickets, soon after you posted this video?
And the crazy thing is, an investigative reporter called me last night, and he said he called Dunwoody police to get down to the bottom of it, and Dobbins said that Dunwoody was looking for me and that they told them that they attached my name to the base and they knew I was coming to work that day, so when I came, they should hold me. Dunwoody police told the investigative reporter that they never were looking for me. You know, it was just a case of the—you know, which was strange to me, because when it’s a traffic situation, you know, if they catch you in traffic and you just so happen to run your name, then that’s a different story. But nobody sets up a sting operation to detain somebody for traffic tickets. And that’s the thing that I’m trying to make people realize.
They never did mention the video. However, DeKalb County told me that I wasn’t able to bond out, even though it was traffic tickets. They said I had no bond, and they were very adamant about it. Customarily, you get to see a judge the next day for things of that nature. And they told me I would have to wait until next Wednesday, which would have been a full seven days away, to see a judge for this case.
My son’s mother, her mom is a lawyer. She ended up calling around and getting down to the bottom of it. All Dunwoody wanted was the $1,200 that I owed them in traffic fines to send the paperwork over to release me. But DeKalb County was pretty adamant about saying I still didn’t have a bond. So, essentially, they dressed me out; they ended up putting me in the orange jumpsuit. They assigned me to my own cell with a cellmate. They ended up fully processing me for something that I should have been able to just pay and get out of jail for. They ended up fully processing me. And at this point in time, I’m just playing the waiting game. So I just ended up going to sleep in the back and just waiting until, luckily, they sent the proper paperwork through and they ended up letting me go. But they didn’t—they never said anything else about an assault and battery charge. They never said anything about anything—any of the other matters that took place beforehand.
My job is still up in the air. And it’s contingent upon the same people who arrested me, for them to clear me to be able to come back on the base. So my job, when I spoke to my supervisor the following day, you know, they do a strict background check. It’s called a security clearance. You have to have a security clearance to be able to work around these military planes. And he said, you know, “We know you’re prior military, so we figured you knew better than to omit such information.” And I was like, “Exactly. I wouldn’t omit that—pretty much that information of that magnitude. I would never leave that off of my security clearance, if did have an assault and battery charge.” So, the guy even told me—my supervisor, I’m speaking of—he said, “We wouldn’t even worry about traffic tickets. That wouldn’t have affected your job in the first place.” I’m just playing the waiting game. I was U.S. Air Force, and I served in the OIF.
the main thing I wanted to do was try to help the Sterling family get justice, and use my platform to put these cops on display. I think it was an atrocity, and they handled it wrong. It was a clear-cut case of murder, in my opinion, even though I’m not an expert. But I saw his kid crying, you know, his son crying on television, and that really broke my heart, because, you know, I have three children, and I’m very active in their life. But specifically, I have two boys, you know, and us as being black men in this country, especially in Louisiana, it feels like it’s almost illegal to be black. And it just broke my heart to see him crying for his father, who he will never see again, you know, all due to negligent police behavior. And something has got to be done about it.
I couldn’t imagine not being able to come home to my kids, you know. And just sitting in jail that one—those 26 hours, you know, my boys had to stay with my daughter’s mom from a previous relationship. And all they kept saying was, you know, “I just want my dad. I just want my dad.” And I’m sitting in jail over something that I didn’t do, basically for exposing the underhandedness of BRPD cops and that lowdown murder that they just committed on camera. And when I heard that they said that their body cameras fell off, that’s a cop-out. That’s a complete cop-out. And they need to be held accountable for it. And we see what they’ve done. And it hurts.
Abdullah Muflahi talking:
I’ve known Alton Sterling for six years. And, yes, I know his son. His son was at the store with him a few weeks ago on Alton—on his dad’s birthday. He came out with his dad. And after they left the store, they went to the movies together.
Joel Porter talking:
Mr. Muflahi has also has received death threats. He’s received all type of negative hate on social media. And so, we need to get behind Mr. Muflahi. We need to protect him. He’s only an innocent victim in this matter, yet he’s being held responsible for what Baton Rouge city police officers did.
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Chris LeDay
Air Force veteran who posted the video of the police shooting of Alton Sterling on social media, helping it go viral.
Abdullah Muflahi
Triple S convenience store owner who filmed Alton Sterling’s death.
Joel Porter
one of Abdullah Muflahi’s attorneys.
— source democracynow.org