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Courtesy photo.
Yolanda Greene lost her job after being arrested.
A St. Louis County nurse was fired from her job after being arrested—even though the police report that provided the basis of the charges against her is clearly contradicted by bystander video.
The woman, 51-year-old Yolanda Greene, still faces three class-A misdemeanors—two for assault on a police officer and one for interfering with an arrest.
“I sent the tape over to [Wesley] Bell’s office and said, ‘You’re prosecuting the wrong people. You should be prosecuting the police for lying in these reports,’” says Mark Pedroli, the attorney for Greene.
The case shows the way that police narratives, which can be hastily written in the aftermath of an incident, can lead to serious repercussions for people involved, even when evidence later show themto be inaccurate. Bell, who was elected as a progressive reformer in the wake of Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, had pledged to reform the relationship between police and the prosecutor’s office, which he said was so close that it at times presented a conflict of interest. (After defeating U.S. Representative Cori Bush in the Democratic primary last week, Bell is now almost certainly headed to Congress.)
St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney spokesman Chris King tells SLM that despite Pedroli’s claims about the police reports, the charges are warranted.
“Despite any discrepancies between these documents and subsequent video evidence, we believe the evidence supports the three class-A misdemeanors with which we have charged Ms. Greene for physically interfering with a lawful arrest by police officers trying to effectuate that arrest,” says King.
St. Louis County Police arrested Greene on March 19 last year in Glasgow Village in North St. Louis County. Police say multiple juveniles were involved in an altercation outside a private residence and that Greene’s then-17 year-old son was trespassing. (Pedroli disputes that, saying that the woman who owns the house denies ever telling Greene’s son to leave.) The police report also states that Greene’s son said he had a gun and was going to shoot everyone. But Pedroli points out that, while a gun is referenced in the report, no gun was recovered from the teen, nor did an officer responding to the scene mention it in his immediate verbal report to his supervisor.
Whatever the circ*mstances, when Greene herself arrived at the house, her son was on the ground surrounded by four officers attempting to handcuff him.
Video shot by a bystander shows Greene run up to the scrum and make physical contact with one of the cops—however, the nature of that contact, which was later used as the basis for at least two of the charges against her, is much different in the video than the report written by police officers.
The police report says that Greene struck one of the officers “several times in the back near his neck, head, and shoulders with what appeared to be a closed fist.” The police report also states that Greene “actively assaulte[d]” a second officer by hitting him “in the face with her open hands and closed fists.” Even after the second officer did a leg sweep, and both fell down, Greene allegedly “continued to actively assault [the officer] using open hand and closed fist strikes to [his] face, neck, and body.”
In the video, Green does put her hands on the back of an officer. “When a mother shows up and sees her juvenile child surrounded by police officers, I think she's entitled to check on his health and safety,” says Pedroli. You can watch the video for yourself and decide if Greene threw closed-fist punches at two different officers, as the police report states.
Seconds after putting her hands on the officer’s back, the video shows Greene on the ground and an officer appears to strike her several times. The bystander shooting the video remarks, "Oh, he’s hitting her." A different video, captured by an officer’s body camera, records another officer exclaiming, “Don’t throw a strike”—even as the officer atop Greene does just that.
The police report says the officers only used force because Greene “violently assaulted” one officer and, even after being advised she was under arrest, “continued to physically attack” another. (The report also notes that one officer sustained an injury—broken bones in his hand.)
“My client believes this entire police report was engineered to tell a lie about her and so that it would justify the use of force,” says Pedroli.
Sergeant Tracy Panus of the St. Louis County Police Department rebuts Pedroli's assertion. “One video of an incident does not typically tell the entire story,” she says. She adds that the charges against Greene are based on more than just the police report, with evidence including body camera footage, witness interviews and medical records.
Greene, who has been a nurse for 25 years, was fired from her job in the wake of the charges. She was eventually able to get rehired in a different nursing position, only to lose that job in a matter of days because of the criminal case against her.
“This has ruined my life, my career, everything,” Greene says. She adds, “It's a slap in the face to be accused of something you know you didn't do.”In April, she filed a civil lawsuit against the officers who arrested her.
Defense attorney Terry Niehoff says the professional repercussions that Greene is facing are not uncommon in a state where court records are easily searchable online.
“Trying to get a job, especially if what you're charged with is serious, is almost impossible because everybody just runs your name on Casenet,” he says. “They're thinking, ‘Do I really want to take a risk on this person?’”
Making matters worse, Niehoff says, is that when there are problems in the underlying facts of a criminal charge, they seldom get corrected in a timely manner, if at all.
“The bond hearings and stuff are [handled by] low-level prosecutors who have no authority to do anything,” says Niehoff. “It's sort of like, ‘Well, I'll make a note of this.’ But until [the case] gets appointed a trial attorney for the prosecutor's office, nobody looks at it.”
Typically, says Niehoff, it takes about 90 days from a case getting charged until a trial attorney is assigned.
Defense attorney Steven Kratky says he has also seen police be incentivized not to change their initial version of events, even when new evidence comes to light. “As a case proceeds, the police will often be mulish in the face of conflicting facts that might tend to undercut what they have held out as the absolute truth, even if for no other reason than the very common human desire of wanting to save face,” he says.
He adds that to be critical of that tendency isn’t to be anti-police, but rather pro-good government.
“It's not hard to see how some who wrongfully get caught in the maw of the law can feel like they're going insane,” says Kratky. “It sometimes seems that once the police set the train in motion with an arrest, they jump off, and there's no one at the switch as it barrels towards its destination.”
