Graham faces protest over controversial cop
There is one thing Graham’s city leaders can probably look forward to hearing this summer.
“Officer Strader has got to go,” said Avery Harvey at the Graham City Council’s May meeting.
More: Graham officer draws fire over Pines Apartments arrests
Harvey was among a dozen or more to protest at the meeting and a half dozen speakers to give the council the same message, and many of the people at that demonstration are organizing the next one, said Faith Cook, a leader of last summer’s protests in Graham.
“This needs to be national news,” Cook told the Times-News. “People need to know what is going on here.”
Cook, Harvey and others protested about this time last year after Graham Police hired Strader about six months after the Greensboro Police Department fired him for violating its use-of-force policy. He was also one of the Greensboro officers involved in the 2018 “hog-tie” death of Marcus Smith.
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After three arrests and a documented use of force at the Pines Apartments April 21, many of the same people are again going to the city saying they were right.
“Douglas Strader has done exactly what we warned you he would do,” said Kristofer Loy. “He has attacked a member of this community – he has brutalized a member of this community.”
On Thursday, April 21, Graham Police stopped a car at the Pines Apartments in the 700 block of Ivey Road at about 2:20 p.m. according to Graham Police news releases. The stop was not related to any incident at the apartment complex.
In the Graham Police incident report, Strader wrote, “I know through direct experience that the residents in that building will attempt to interfere with any police activity in that area.”
Jason Hicks, a High Point resident, told the council what the police called interference was people trying to hold police accountable.
A crowd of residents approached the officers and “became agitated,” according to police. Officers told the crowd to get back, and more officers came to the scene. At least three people refused to back up from the scene when officers ordered, according to the release, and police used physical force, including, Strader wrote, spraying pepper spray on the ground and making four arrests including a juvenile.
Graham Police say they are investigating the use of force but haven’t yet announced any conclusions.
Bystander videos circulating on social media show a Graham Police officer identified as Strader wrestling with a young man struggling to take him to the ground and handcuffing him with help from another uniformed officer, while an officer in a suit pushes back a bystander trying to intervene.
Strader wrote that when he got to the Pines, he saw a police sergeant confronting a group of people about the traffic stop, and one of them ran when the sergeant tried to arrest him. Strader cut him off and pushed him back to the sergeant. Then he arrested another man with a phone and a clenched fist approaching officers aggressively. That man grabbed his wrist, Strader wrote, to break his grip. Once he got the young man under control, Strader wrote that he walked him to his patrol car where the young man “continued to actively resist by attempting to bite me and then kneeing me in the groin and two separate uses of force occurred to gain control of him.”
In a second bystander video, Strader has the young man pushed back against a police car, his hands cuffed behind his back and Strader’s arm against the side of his neck. The man shooting the video and the young man being arrested can be heard saying the officer is choking him, while the young man’s face turns red and he seems to struggle to breathe. The young man strikes the officer possibly in the groin with his right knee twice, and the officer punches him in the torso and then face while holding something in his fist before putting him in the back of the police car with some help.
In 2018, Strader was one of eight Greensboro Police officers involved in the death of Marcus Smith. Officers put Smith in a “hog-tie” restraint after taking him into custody. Smith died from cardiopulmonary arrest, according to the Greensboro News & Record, and the state Medical Examiners Office said officer’s actions contributed to his death, which it deemed a homicide. None of the officers were charged in that incident, but the City of Greensboro settled a federal lawsuit with Smith’s family for $2.57 million earlier this year, according to WUNC.
In 2019, Strader, then a corporal, was one of four officers responding to a report of a shooting who then fire shots at a car fleeing the scene of the crime. That was the violation of the Greensboro Police Department’s use-of-force policy that got him fired. His termination was official in 2020 after the Greensboro City manager denied Strader’s appeal.
Citing that record, critics call Strader a “wandering officer,” or a police officer fired from or leaving one department under a cloud trying to get a fresh start in another jurisdiction.
“If Strader remains an officer,” Hicks told the council, “he will kill again as he did in the City of Greensboro, and that murder will be on your hands – fire Doug Strader and save lives.”
Amanda Perry told the council Police Chief Kristi Cole also “vilified a whole community” at the Pines Apartments when she described it as a high-crime area that police paid particular attention to because of residents’ complaints and that the council only represented a specific part of the community.
Isaac Groves is the Alamance County government watchdog reporter for the Times-News and the USA Today Network. Call or text 919-998-8039 with tips and comments or follow him on Twitter @TNIGroves.
This article originally appeared on Times-News: Protests against controversial Graha cop continue
