Laws designed to uphold us, honor and protect
Now kill us, dishonor us and give no respect
The Honorable Late Doctor Martin Luther King
Preached to the world "Today, I have a dream!"

But evil's determined to make it all a nightmare
Through dark, evil systems that do not care
So Earth's troubled:  water, air, land and skies
Yay, decades of corruption and deceitful lies

Tis' land of the free and home of the brave?
But not if evil systems refuse to behave
America's innocent, it's evil US, the Americans
The Father wants to heal us and heal our lands

Evil now has a foothold, so we must really fight
And not be deceived knowing wrong from right
Researching the lies, finding that that's true
Seeking and searching and following thru

Asking the Father to heal from all tunnel vision
And narrow-mindedness which affects decision
To see lies, corruption, things turned upside down
Concocted by evil systems to keep US all bound

Satan loves nobody, IT just wants to rule
IT's diabolical, manipulative and maliciously cruel!
IT is the father of lies, the true enemy of man
Please run from this seducer as fast as you can!!!

Norman told Facebook, "Things have to change."
He gave his final message calling on Jesus Name
Norman was a warrior - true, brave and free
Never underestimate Our Father, Lord of Eternity.

written by Aunt Dee Cooper-Durden 9/25/2018

NEWS

Family of San Antonio man who died after being shot by Taser sues city, police
Two cops fired in succession

ezavala@express-news.net

Twitter: @elizabeth2863

An African-American in Texas dies from electric shocks by policemen
Written by EFE

Norman Cooper, a 33-year-old African American, died early Sunday morning in San Antonio (Texas, USA) after receiving two shocks with electric pistols

Norman & Carly's baby boy.  He's so sweet!  

Norman was the best nephew I had.  He was the most compassionate, most accountable and most courteous young man in our family.  There are no words to describe this vicious atrocity committed against him and his beautiful wife and sons.  Justice should be swift, immediate and fair.  I welcome anyone to put their feet in the shoes of the victim and the victim's family.  The San Antonio Police Department has hurt a true child of God from a family who have worshipped and honored Father God all of their life.  Norman didn't claim to be perfect.  None of us are, but he had a heart like King David as he would remain humble and repented.  His parents are God-fearing, Spirit-led people of God.  Norman would call his grandmother, my mom, telling her that God had called him to preach.  He was happy and excited on the phone.  Is this Excited Delirium?  He has always stuttered since childhood but Norman sounds fine and very calm before the cops intentionally killed him viciously on his parents and his own grounds.  Everything about it is suspicious.  It wasn't that long ago that a young Black boy was accused of whistling and brutally murdered.  I don't know when or who orchestrated this "Black Lives Matter" event, but I pray that everyone will start standing up against all senseless murders against unarmed people for no reason.  Believe me, we know why they are committing these crimes against God's people. The Almighty is tired of all this corruption and wickedness in the world today and He is soon to come.   It would behoove the perpetrators to ask God for forgiveness rather than being thrown into the hands of The Almighty God, Our Father in Heaven.  I know that all lives do matter, yet when someone decides, for no justified reason, to break the law and viciously murder other human beings need to know that what goes around will certainly come back around.  It is the Law of Reciprocity!  If you kill by the sword, you are certain to die by the sword.

***

When Jennifer Cooper looked down at her phone at 2 a.m., she was surprised to see she had missed texts and calls from two of her sons. The phone had been on silent mode while Jennifer and her husband, Noble, finished up a church retreat in the East Texas woods, a four-hour drive from their home in northeast San Antonio. Why would the boys call so late?

Jennifer didn’t really understand the first message, from her middle son, Norman. Before his parents left town that week, Norman, 33, had argued with his wife, Carly — he came home too late one night, they fought, and he agreed to stay somewhere else for a couple of days to let things cool off, according to family. Now Norman was upset, texting his mother to say he’d been “locked out of the houses.”

The second text scared Jennifer. It was from her youngest son, Nate, who was visiting San Antonio for work and had agreed to watch the house for his parents while they were away. Norman had shown up and was acting so strange it made Nate nervous. Cell reception was bad at the hotel and Jennifer couldn’t get through to either of her sons. By the time her husband got Nate on the phone, he’d already called the cops.

Nate says Norman arrived at the house, the morning of April 19, 2015, yelling and pounding on the door. When Nate opened it to let him in, Norman pushed his way through before his brother could undo the chain lock, ripping off a chunk of wood from the doorframe. Nate says Norman paced and flipped the lights off and on. He figured his older brother was high, but didn’t know on what. (Authorities later found methamphetamine in Norman’s system.) There was something vacant about Norman’s eyes that made Nate nervous. “Like he was looking through me,” Nate says.

He’d seen his older brother like this once before, about a decade earlier, when Nate was in high school. Police arrived, talked Norman down and eventually took him to the hospital. Carly, who’d been with him since they were in high school, remembers the episode being “actually a positive thing for Norman. He got whatever help he needed.”

The family assumed something similar would happen when they called police for help that morning. Norman was sweaty, shirtless and standing in the hallway, half-shouting, half-preaching to his brother about Jesus and rambling about the evils of internet porn, when San Antonio police officer Oliver Flaig entered the house. Norman yelled at his brother to heed God’s word. His voice, captured by a police audio recording of the scene, delivers the words with rhythm, almost like he’s singing.

At first, Flaig tried to reason with Norman, but he quickly lost patience. Minutes later, the officer told Norman to “shut the fuck up.” Within five minutes of being on the scene, Flaig had heard enough and began shouting at Norman to get his ID. Norman said it was upstairs, so Flaig and another officer who’d arrived as backup, Arnoldo Sanchez, followed him to the second floor. When they ordered him to put his hands behind his back, Norman again called his mother, who this time picked up.

Jennifer winces when she describes the mechanical clicking sound of the Tasers that punctuated her son’s final words. Court records show that 11 minutes after police arrived, Sanchez was the first to shoot Norman with his stun gun. Over the course of three minutes, the officers shocked Norman a total of nine times, shooting a 50,000-volt current through his body for nearly a minute total. Autopsy records show Norman was hit by four pairs of barbed darts that, via insulated copper wires, connected him to the ubiquitous “less lethal” law enforcement tool. In other words, both officers fired their Tasers, loaded their backup cartridges and fired another set of darts during the encounter. Two of them hit Norman in the lower back.

Four minutes after the Tasers stopped, the officers discovered Norman’s heart wasn’t beating. Emergency responders couldn’t restart it and, an hour after his brother first called police for help, officials pronounced Norman dead. A minute later, another officer offered his theory: “excited delirium.” His tone made the explanation sound obvious.

Excited delirium syndrome, as it’s officially known, is an old theory with roots in the insane asylums of the mid-19th century. It was first used to explain why hospital staff weren’t to blame for crazed patients who died for sudden and unexplained reasons. It eventually morphed into a diagnosis with symptoms seemingly ripped from the pages of the era’s most famous split-personality tale, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Proponents of the diagnosis say that for people in the throes of excited delirium — nowadays usually those high on cocaine or meth — it’s like a switch has been flipped, producing someone agitated, combative and even impervious to pain, pepper spray or stun guns. They sweat profusely and sometimes start to shed their clothes. And then their heart stops, often stumping coroners who can’t find a distinct, anatomical cause of death.

Thanks in part to Vincent Di Maio, a former San Antonio medical examiner turned celebrity scientist, it’s a diagnosis police know well. Over the years, cops and their defenders have come to use excited delirium to explain why people have died after being choked, hog-tied, pepper sprayed or shocked by stun guns during police encounters.

An assistant medical examiner in Bexar County wrote that Norman Cooper’s heart stopped as a result of the meth in his system “complicated by a prolonged struggle” with police, ruling the death a homicide. For violating department rules on Taser use, the San Antonio Police Department (SAPD) gave both officers written reprimands, an official slap on the wrist that carries no other punishment. Two months later, the department changed its Taser policy so that other officers won’t be disciplined for the same actions.

After the Cooper family filed a federal lawsuit against the officers, claiming their negligence led to Norman’s death, a forensic expert hired by the city of San Antonio found a different cause: “an excited delirium due to methamphetamine intoxication occurring in the setting of a violent struggle with law enforcement.”

Excited delirium has long been a controversial diagnosis. While it’s recognized by the National Association of Medical Examiners and the American College of Emergency Physicians, it’s not listed in the American Psychiatric Association’s diagnostic bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Nor is it recognized by the American Medical Association, which has long stated it has “no official policy” on the disorder. Critics call it an official best guess and a convenient way to excuse police actions that led to someone’s death.

Brant Mittler, a cardiologist and medical expert hired by lawyers representing the Cooper family, says Norman’s death is a tragic example of how excited delirium can be used not only to shield cops from liability in someone’s death, but also to blind entire departments from the seriousness of officers’ mistakes. How often the diagnosis is invoked by police isn’t entirely clear. Only recently have states, including Texas, begun passing stricter reporting requirements for deaths in police custody. Sometimes, the diagnosis doesn’t officially appear until there’s a lawsuit.

Officers Flaig and Sanchez shocked Norman nine times, according to court records. At one point, both officers shocked him at the same time. In his report, Mittler writes that no one even started CPR on Norman until around 15 minutes after his heart stopped.

“I truly don’t think it exists,” Mittler says of excited delirium. “But it has been brilliantly used by police departments to explain why they’re not the ones killing people.”

Nate was still downstairs and on the phone with his father when he heard the police scuffling with Norman above him. Jennifer tried shouting at the officers through the receiver. She says that at one point she grabbed her husband’s phone and told Nate to deliver a message to the officers: “Tell them to please stop Tasing my baby.”

Nate says that when he walked upstairs, Norman was “on the floor gasping for air,” with his hands cuffed behind his back and an officer kneeling on top of him. He thinks he saw them shock his brother at least one more time before his body went limp.

By then, other officers were starting to arrive. Nate remembers one who walked into the room where Norman was lying on the floor, unresponsive, and shined a flashlight into his eyes. “He’ll be fine,” she said. The other officers made fun of her: “Oh, so you’re a doctor now, huh?”

“That bothered me for the longest time,” Nate says. “I was, like, shaking. And they were just in there joking.

***

Vincent Di Maio is to excited delirium what Galileo was to telescopes: He didn’t invent the thing, but he showed the world how to use it.

In 2006, Di Maio co-wrote a widely cited textbook on the syndrome with his wife, Theresa, a forensic nurse who worked in San Antonio’s mental health facilities. On the first page, they dedicate the book to “all law enforcement and medical personnel who have been wrongfully accused of misconduct in deaths due to excited delirium syndrome.”

Di Maio, a pathologist whose expertise is often deployed in sensational, headline-grabbing cases, is likely the syndrome’s most high-profile and influential evangelist. A decade after he penned the textbook, the former longtime chief medical examiner of Bexar County teamed up with a crime writer for an autobiography, Morgue, that highlights his greatest hits, including exhuming and studying the body of JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.

Di Maio sprinkles observations on race throughout the book. He writes how early in his career, a grisly case introduced him to the “full-fledged black power movement that promoted violence against racist white society.” During a fellowship with the Maryland medical examiner’s office in 1970, Di Maio examined the remains of two black activists with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee who were dismembered when a bomb exploded near the floorboard of their car. Di Maio’s work bolstered what would become the official theory: The men died when a bomb they were transporting detonated prematurely.

Others, including U.S. Representative John Conyers Jr., a Michigan Democrat, suspected officials were covering up an assassination attempt. Di Maio writes that his work debunking the theory helped quell racial unrest that would “make the riots in Watts and the nationwide anarchy after the King assassination look like prayer vigils.”

Di Maio has a knack for making young black men look worse in death. He was instrumental in George Zimmerman’s acquittal, offering testimony that was key to a defense theory that painted Trayvon Martin as the aggressor. According to Di Maio, a pattern burned into Martin’s clothing and skin by the bullet that killed him proved Martin was leaning over Zimmerman at the time he was shot. In his book, he accuses President Barack Obama of fueling outrage over the case and grouses that “Reverend Al Sharpton and the rest of the racial-grievance industrial complex showed up to stir the pot.”

He flatly rejects the idea that the killing raises larger questions about racial profiling. “It was a simple case,” Di Maio told the Observer. “The news media inflamed it and made it a racial thing when it was not.”

Di Maio similarly dismisses the criticism aimed at excited delirium, calling it a medical phenomenon documented for more than 150 years.

Di Maio traces the syndrome all the way back to 1849, when Luther Bell first described patients at his Massachusetts insane asylum dying in restraints during an episode of “exhaustive mania.” What was labeled “Bell’s Mania” eventually took on other names, such as “acute maniacal delirium” or “lethal catatonia.” In their book on excited delirium, the Di Maios contend that the syndrome all but disappeared for a while as mental hospitals in the mid-20th century embraced sedatives, such as Thorazine, that kept it at bay.

By the 1980s, however, medical examiners in Miami reintroduced the concept to the general medical community as cocaine flooded South Florida and crazed, coked-up people started dying for unclear reasons, often after a struggle with police. In an academic paper published last year, University of Miami neurology professor Deborah Mash writes that excited delirium is something people appear to be genetically predisposed to. Mash, who has become the leading brain researcher on the subject, argues that due to bad wiring, the brains of some people who get high on stimulants or suffer acute manic episodes basically flood with excess dopamine. The reaction triggers what she calls “cardiorespiratory collapse.”

“These people aren’t dying because of police,” Mash says. “It’s a brain disease. People don’t act out in these very bizarre manners that police describe without an underlying brain disorder. Plenty of people abuse cocaine and never develop excited delirium.”

Critics, however, call excited delirium a barely understood medical phenomenon that, even if real, has been stretched to cover police conduct that sometimes kills people.

Douglas Zipes, an Indiana University cardiology professor emeritus, learned of excited delirium when Taser International, the company now known as Axon, started to introduce it in court to defend how police use their stun guns. In the past, Taser has hosted seminars and sent out pamphlets on excited delirium to police and medical examiners’ groups across the country; sued medical examiners who listed their stun guns as a cause of death; and even gave law enforcement agencies a ready-made statement for when someone dies after police shock them with a stun gun: “We regret the unfortunate loss of life. There are many cases where excited delirium caused by various mental disorders or medical conditions, that may or may not include drug use, can lead to a fatal conclusion.”

Mash acknowledges that the company has paid her for expert testimony. On the other side is Zipes, who, after years of examining custodial deaths for grieving families that wanted to sue police departments, calls excited delirium a “last-ditch, wastebasket diagnosis” that only appears to be widely used in a law enforcement context.

Zipes says that about once a month he gets a call from a family or lawyer asking him to look into a death that police attributed to excited delirium. In some deaths, the medical examiner will actually list it as the cause. The Austin American-Statesmanrecently used custodial death reports from the Texas Attorney General’s Office to show that cops across Texas have cited excited delirium in at least 50 deaths over the past decade. Zipes suspects that’s a conservative estimate, since some, such as Norman Cooper, won’t officially get the diagnosis unless their deaths become court cases.

Zipes worries about how broadly police and medical examiners apply the diagnosis. He says some pathologists spin theories based on how officers at the scene described a dead person’s behavior. “We are talking about a cause that does not exactly leave footprints in the body when the organs are studied,” he said. “The medical examiner makes this diagnosis after they rule everything else out and read the history of what police said. That’s inappropriate from a scientific standpoint as far as I’m concerned.”

In their book, the Di Maios claim that they’re challenging the underlying assumption that police have done something wrong when someone dies after a struggle. They lament how deaths in police custody often lead to “hasty, inflammatory and unsupported accusations of wrongful death by families of the deceased, attorneys and the press.” They also explain why deaths attributed to choke holds, pepper spray and stun guns should be scrutinized for signs the suspect actually died from excited delirium.

Di Maio says he urges law enforcement agencies to respond to excited delirium like a medical emergency rather than a criminal matter, the idea being that immediate medical attention, such as sedation, can sometimes keep the brain from short-circuiting. But he also says excited delirium acts like a switch in the brain, and once you flip it, there’s no going back. “Once you go into excited delirium, you’re a goner,” he said. The rub, of course, is how to train officers to appropriately respond to a syndrome that they’re told is likely already fatal by the time they recognize its symptoms.

***

On the evening of April 12, 2013, as they drove around San Antonio’s west side, Dominique Martinez told Jesse Aguirre she wanted to break up. Aguirre had entered a tailspin when, not long after his brother died, his mother came back from the hospital one day with a diagnosis of terminal cancer. Martinez later told police that Aguirre had become suicidal and started binging on booze and cocaine.

Aguirre, according to court records, didn’t take the breakup well: He threatened to kill himself and take his girlfriend with him. Martinez tried to grab the steering wheel as Aguirre punched the gas pedal and the car jumped a curb, crashing into a chain-link fence. She told police Aguirre was “acting crazy” and said he bolted from the car, running south toward a busy highway. Officers who encountered him said he was “irrational” and shouting about being hunted by the Bandidos biker gang. Witnesses saw him hopping between lanes as cars whizzed by.

Police video shows Aguirre walking in the middle of the highway, near the concrete median, as officers approach him. When he stops, they yank him over the concrete barrier, his body almost folding in half, before flipping him onto the other side of the highway and placing him face-first on the hood of a cruiser. Police later claimed Aguirre resisted when they tried to move him to a car, which is why they pulled him off the hood and forced him to the ground on his belly. Video shows one officer bending Aguirre’s legs up and over his body while others pin him to the ground for more than five minutes. The only obvious resistance Aguirre shows on video is when he moves his head from side to side. Then his body goes limp.

Aguirre’s family argued in a lawsuit against the city and the officers that police treated him “as if they were tossing around a ragdoll instead of a human being.”

In an expert report filed in federal court last year, Di Maio called Aguirre’s death a textbook example of excited delirium triggered by cocaine. But did the cops’ rough handling of Aguirre contribute to his death? After all, they’re told to recognize excited delirium as a medical condition.

In his own report, Brant Mittler concluded that the SAPD officers made serious mistakes that led to Aguirre’s death, including the use of restraint techniques the U.S. Department of Justice has cautioned against for two decades due to the risk of asphyxiation. Mittler contends that, at least in part, a lack of oxygen from the prolonged struggle and the way police restrained Aguirre made his heart stop.

As part of their mandatory 40-hour education on responding to people in psychiatric crisis (so-called Crisis Intervention Training), the officers who restrained Aguirre were trained on excited delirium, including how to recognize the symptoms, de-escalate the situation and avoid a prolonged police struggle. Mittler says the case shows how police only seriously consider excited delirium a medical problem after someone’s already dead.

“I am not agreeing that [excited delirium] is a real syndrome,” Mittler wrote in his report on the Aguirre case, “but if it does exist, the SAPD officers involved appear to have violated all the warnings and admonitions advised to treat it and prevent death.”

In May, federal District Court Judge David Alan Ezra dismissed the lawsuit against the city and the officers involved in Aguirre’s death, saying there’s no evidence that police knowingly violated his constitutional rights or willfully disregarded his medical condition.

Ezra chastised the family’s claims as “lacking clarity and poorly organized.” He concluded the officers responded to a “tense, uncertain and rapidly-evolving” situation the best way they knew how and wrote that their split-second decisions “will not be second-guessed.” He also noted that the debate over excited delirium had effectively muddied the waters: “Additionally,” Ezra wrote, “where Dr. Mittler admittedly cannot even determine whether [excited delirium] is a ‘real syndrome,’ none of the officers can be charged with deliberate indifference to a medical condition that may or may not exist.”

Mittler worries there’s little reason for police to question how they restrain people like Aguirre if they can just pin their deaths on the modern-day version of Bell’s Mania: “Nobody’s going to look at deaths like Aguirre and Cooper and say, ‘Should we do things differently?’ That’s what I’m afraid of.”

***

Jennifer Cooper says that when Norman was young, people at church told him he would one day preach the gospel. He’d come home beaming with pride whenever someone delivered the prophecy. She suspects that’s why he knew the Bible so well. Jennifer would recite verses when she scolded her boys. “Norman would throw them right back at me,” she says. “Sometimes he’d finish my scriptures for me.”

When she thinks of Norman’s final words — Thank you, Jesus — certain verses come to mind. She lingers on Proverbs 18:10: The name of the Lord is a strong tower. The righteous run into it and are safe. She thinks Norman was calling out for protection, just like they taught him at church.

Lawyers for the Cooper family, Ed Piña and Matt Gossen, argue that police had no reason to shock Norman with Tasers that morning — especially not nine times. In the audio recording of the encounter, he never threatens the officers, who start to lose patience as Norman ignores them and keeps yelling and preaching. In a low, stern voice, like he’s saying it through his teeth, one officer repeats “Get on the ground” moments before the first Taser blast. Norman keeps calling them “sir” and “officer,” even after the stun guns start.

“Sure he was acting funny, but that shows me he was still trying to be respectful to the police,” his father, Noble, says.

“They should have de-escalated the situation,” Piña says. “Norman had done nothing to warrant that kind of force.”

In his report on Norman’s death, Mittler says the Tasers paralyzed Norman’s muscles, including his diaphragm, in intermittent bursts. His body couldn’t replace the carbon dioxide building up in his blood with new oxygen. That, combined with an underlying heart condition, in turn led to a fatal heart attack, according to Mittler.

After Norman’s death, officers Flaig and Sanchez received written reprimands, the lightest punishment possible, for violating department policy that prohibits using stun guns on anyone “known to be under the influence of drugs.” In 2008, after a wide-ranging review of the department’s use-of-force policies, San Antonio Police Chief William McManus implemented it as a reform to prevent needless in-custody deaths. Piña thinks Norman’s case might be the only time in recent years that San Antonio cops were disciplined for force used during an in-custody death.

The department changed that policy two months after Norman died, tweaking the language from “shall not” to “should not.” In an email obtained by the Observer, SAPD Assistant Chief James Flavin tells an investigator at the Bexar County District Attorney’s Office the change was made “in order to allow officers the opportunity to evaluate all the information they received at the scene” before deciding whether to deploy a Taser. The reformed Taser policy heralded by the chief, he writes, was always in conflict with the department’s actual training practices. For emphasis, the captain underlined the part that says, “The SAPD Training Academy and its instructors have never taught officers that they shall not use an ECD (Taser) on persons known to be under the influence of drugs.” (He even bolded the word “never” in case the point wasn’t clear.)

SAPD didn’t respond to the Observer’s questions about its Taser policy or Norman Cooper’s death. Lawyers for the city say in court filings that it was caused by Cooper’s drug use and health problems, not by any action police took that morning. Piña argues that the department grudgingly disciplined two officers for violating a policy they’d never been trained on in the first place, only to turn around and change the policy so that other officers wouldn’t be punished for it in the future.

Jennifer thinks of another verse when she remembers the sound of her son’s last moments over the phone. It’s another one from Proverbs: Train a child up in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it. “No matter what situation he found himself in, no matter where his head was at, that faith was still in him,” she says. Her son’s final words, at least, were proof of that.

Michael Barajas is a staff writer covering civil rights for the Observer. You can reach him on Twitter or at barajas@texasobserver.org.

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San Antonio Current
Turns Out You Don't Really Have to Talk About Police Reform When You're Running for Mayor of San Antonio
Posted By Michael Barajas on Fri, Jun 2, 2017 at 4:50 pm JAMES HEIMER

Nathan Cooper was housesitting for his parents on April 19, 2015 when his older brother Norman showed up at the far northeast side home at around 2 a.m. acting strange, sweating profusely and shouting at his little brother. Nathan figured he was on something (he'd damaged the door trying to get into his house), so after texting his parents, he dialed 911 hoping police could calm the situation and get his brother some help.

San Antonio Police Department officer Oliver Flaig arrived first and saw Norman yelling and standing in the hallway. “I’m trying to save my brother,” Norman told the officer, according to court records. “He’s been sinning.” Flaig's response: "Shut the f**k up!"

When another SAPD officer, Arnoldo Sanchez, arrived as backup, the cops followed Norman upstairs so he could grab his ID. Nathan was still downstairs and had just called his father to tell him police had arrived when he heard loud scuffling coming from the second floor. Over the next three minutes, officers Flaig and Sanchez would use their Tasers on Norman at least nine times.

In statements to investigators after Norman’s death, which a medical examiner blamed on methamphetamine intoxication “complicated by a prolonged struggle,” the officers claimed Norman had grabbed a laptop computer and feared he might use it as a weapon. They said their attempts to de-escalate the situation “were not permanently successful,” and that Norman refused commands to get on the ground and put his hands behind his back. A medical expert's report filed in court last month in a federal lawsuit against SAPD and the officers involved that morning calls their actions “grossly negligent” and blames the death on their “deliberate indifference to the welfare and safety of Norman Cooper.” (City and SAPD officials wouldn't comment on the case this week.)

In late March, Norman’s parents spoke about their lawsuit to a small group of East Side community activists, lawyers and concerned citizens who had gathered at the Mount Zion First Baptist Church to talk about what the powers at City Hall have – and haven’t – done on the issue of police violence. Inside the small room were current and former members of Mayor Ivy Taylor’s task force to build trust between police and policed, a group Taylor formed after a bitter contract negotiation process with the police union that produced no disciplinary reforms at the department and angered local activists.

“This keeps happening,” Noble, Norman’s father, warned the group as he and others in the room pointed to what they consider dark spots in SAPD’s recent past. They talked about the case of Rogelio Carlos, who in 2014 was mistaken for a suspect and got beaten so badly by San Antonio cops that his doctors recommended spinal surgery that left him paralyzed. There was still anger over Antronie Scott, an unarmed man shot to death by an officer who mistook his cell phone for a gun last year. They spoke about the police shooting death of Marquise Jones, a case that many activists and civil rights lawyers who handle police violence cases say highlights problems with accountability at SAPD and calls into question how the department investigates its own. “We’re all at risk because it’s continuing to happen," Noble said.

What's even worse, according to Noble and others in that room, was that none of the major candidates for mayor or city council would even talk about any of this as election season came and went.

As Mayor Taylor and challenger City Councilman Ron Nirenberg enter the bitter end days of their June 10 runoff race, not much has changed on that front. That’s despite plenty of headlines that hint at larger problems Black Lives Matter activists have been struggling to highlight here for more than two years – like the federal trial over SAPD’s bizarre handling of a police shooting case, problem officers that SAPD Chief William McManus literally cannot fire because of protections embedded in the local union contract, or even a video that shows a San Antonio cop punching a 14-year-old girl in the face during a confrontation outside a quinceañera last month (in prepared statements, Taylor called the video "hard to watch," while Nirenberg said it was "unsettling"; both say they're waiting for police to investigate before commenting further).

To people like Johnathan-David Jones, a police reform activist who's helped lead marches at City Hall and sits on Taylor's community-police task force, these are specific examples of longstanding problems that will never be addressed if politicians aren't forced to discuss them when running for office. "It's as if we still haven't admitted there are any problems here," Jones told the Current. "It really trips me up. We've been patient. We've been trying to talk to them about this for, like, two years. Where have we gotten?"

Activist Johnathan-David Jones outside the San Antonio City Council chambers in September 2016 - MICHAEL BARAJAS
Michael Barajas
Activist Johnathan-David Jones outside the San Antonio City Council chambers in September 2016

It's not as if policing hasn't entered the mayoral race. Last week, the San Antonio Police Officers Association endorsed Taylor for her work on a contract deal that gave the union just about everything it wanted last summer — a 17 percent wage increase, no healthcare premium costs, and no new reforms to the department's disciplinary procedures. Nirenberg was one of two council members to vote against the contract, saying at the time that it carried none of the "benefits and accountability that our public safety and residents deserve."

Yet what Taylor and Nirenberg have successfully avoided talking about on the campaign trail are some of the issues that got 97 percent of police union members (roughly 2,000 San Antonio cops) to sign onto a report last year saying they had no confidence in Chief McManus' ability to lead his department. In that report, union members expressed outrage that McManus would fire an officer for shooting and killing an unarmed man (a decision the chief ultimately reversed) and, more generally, might consider reforms that union officials claim “endanger the lives of police officers.”

The approach by Mayor Taylor (whose campaign has refused to grant us an interview with her throughout the race) has largely angered and frustrated activists like Jones who want the city to take police accountability more seriously. Jones says that's because Taylor's task force has so far failed to even address the specific issues that brought activists like him to the table in the first place — like the fact that cops here are more likely to use force against people of color, might beat you into paralysis if they mistake you for a suspect or might shoot and kill you if they think your cell phone's a gun. Jones says the union contract has basically become an off-limits issue in those task force meetings.

Taylor told us earlier this year that she hoped the task force would in part help educate community members on the good work that is being done at SAPD, a sentiment that Chief McManus and other city officials have largely echoed. Union officials (who wouldn't respond to our calls for comment this week) have in the past said they want the task force to educate citizens on how to properly interact with cops. Among the task force's recent recommendations: a public education campaign with the catchphrase "Comply Now, Complain Later."

As Jones puts it, "They claim they're trying to solve problems they won't even admit exist."

Jones isn't particularly thrilled with Nirenberg when it comes to issues of police reform and accountability either. Jones says Nirenberg's campaign reached out to him not long after the councilman announced his candidacy for mayor, and says that he's even met with Nirenberg several times to discuss issues around policing. Nirenberg's campaign director Kelton Morgan said the candidate won't discuss the matter with us because the councilman "doesn't want to politicize the issue."

Here's how Jones characterized those meetings with Nirenberg: "While Ivy doesn’t think this stuff is politically beneficial to talk about, Ron, I’m afraid, still doesn’t really get it."

Matthew Gossen, one of the attorneys representing the Cooper family in their lawsuit against the city, says the recommendations from Taylor's task force that city council is supposed to consider later this year are underwhelming — particularly considering the kind of police misconduct that continues to generate headlines here. "Our local political leaders will require the
gumption to make tough, controversial decisions along with the will to
persevere through extreme criticism and backlash to make a true positive
change," Gossen told us.

Gossen argues Norman Cooper's death could have been avoided had officers simply followed SAPD's own policies and procedures that morning in 2015. He also says that if politics continues to snuff out discussion around police reform, there will be more cases like Cooper's in the future.

When he walked upstairs to check on the noise that morning, Norman's brother says he saw him “on the floor gasping for air” with his hands cuffed and an officer on top of him. When Norman became unresponsive, a female cop who’d arrived as backup came into the room, shined a flashlight on his pupils and said “he’ll be fine,” according to the brother's statement. He claims other cops in the room even joked with the woman – Oh, so you’re a doctor now? The brother told police he was upset the cops were laughing, “just standing there.”

Someone would pronounce Norman dead a half hour later.

From the first moment I saw u I knew you were Destiny. LIVE OUT LOUD PROUD HONEST TRUE SHOW LOVE TELL FOLKS ABOUT JESUS THATS ALL WE DID NORM I AM THE MAN I AM TODAY TOMORROW AND FOREVER MORE BECAUSE OF ALL THOSE TIMES YOU STOOD BY ME FOR ALL THE TRUTH THAT U MAKE ME SEE THE WRONG IN RIGHTS BETWEEN EACH WEAK VESSEL STILL WE SPEAK BOLD AND ELOQUENTLY BUT THEY DON'T LISTEN WHEN WE SPEAK IT IS TRUTH IN SILENCE REST GREAT KING SOON REUNITE WITH HIS BRIDE THE CHURCH BELLS RING SING...NORMAN NORMAN NORMAN SHALL THERE BE MOREMAN LIKE NORMAN LIKE NORMAN LIKE JESUS LIKE ME 

Words can't express the loss that continues to be felt due to your tragic death. I worked near you very briefly but in that time a shine you had about you to live on. The Sundays won't be the same with football season coming up. You were an amazing person to have known. You will forever live on. Though We may mourn you, God had plans for his best soldiers when it's time to go home for his purpose. For CARLY and his family may God give you strength and send God's angels to be there for comfort! Rather then mourn, celebrate the life he lived! I'm sure he wouldn't want anyone sad. God bless our dear warrior! Rest in peace till We meet again!

Tia Chauntrice Cooper shared US
4 hrs from facebook

This hits home for me..."No, the other one..." (Look in STORIES)

I haven't said much about my cousin, Norman Cooper, solely because it's a sensitive situation but we as a people need to get it together. The best way to handle these types of situations is not by violence but by praying.. The Bible clearly states what we need to do....

2 Chronicles 7:14
If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.
Love and miss you Norman!!!!

US Uncut

I just want to offer my condolences on the passing of your son, husband and father.  My oldest daughter went to High School with Noble.  Noble was at my home so many times.  He often talked about his "little brother".  And then one day, they were all grown up and out on their own.  How I miss those days with our kids.  My heart is sad and heavy for all of you, but especially for you, Mr. and Mrs. Cooper.  My heart aches for you as only another parent's heart can ache.  May God grant you peace.  May time help you to heal.  And may the Holy Spirit call to remembrance the good memories you shared while raising your family - and especially the good and blessed times you shared with your your son, Norman.  You are in my prayers.
 Patti Dillard-Devora, Lee, Lauren and Linn 

When I did this picture of Norm I had no idea we were going to lose him so soon. Here's a prayer for EVERYONE EVERYWHERE!

Lord, we come before you today as a disciple of Jesus. That through Him we have chosen to walk in covenant with You, O Lord; That by faith in Jesus we submit ourselves to You O Lord in unreserved obedience; That although the flesh is weak and we might sometimes falter, that our faith remains strong; That we continue to grow in Your ways O Lord and only in Your ways.--

Lord, on this basis we rebuke and repent in the name of Your son Jesus of anything said or done by me or anyone else that would prevent us from receiving Your blessings. If there are those who have been speaking or praying against us, or seeking harm or evil to us, or who have rejected us, we forgive them. And, having forgiven them, we bless them in Jesus name. Lord, we repent for all of our sins, those which we remember and those which we cannot. We ask that all unholy things be removed from us in the cleansing blood of Jesus. Lord we ask that you come upon this body right now in Jesus name, that you fill each and everyone one of us with Your Holy Spirit in Jesus name, that it overflows from us and surrounds us, as we are gathered before you now.--

Then, being strong in You, Lord, and in the power of Your might, we put on the whole armor of God, that we may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places; Therefore we take up the whole armor of God, that we may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having girded our waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod our feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith with which we will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God; praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints—and for us, that utterance may be given to us, that we may open our mouths boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel, for which we are ambassadors in chains; that in them we may speak boldly, as we ought to speak.--

Father, we ask for a hedge of protection, a covering of the blood of Jesus and Your warrior Angels - That this protection be afforded over us, our families, our homes, and our churches "ecclesia" - That by Your word, "No weapon formed against us shall prosper, And every tongue which rises against us in judgment, we shall condemn. This is our heritage as servants of the Lord, and our righteousness is from you."--

In the name of Jesus Christ we bind all demonic spirits that are coming against us, our families, our friends, our homes, our possessions, our churches "ecclesia", and our neighborhoods.  We pray the protection of the blood of Jesus over these things and we declare in Jesus name that demonic forces may not touch them.--

In the name of Jesus we bind and block all forms of demonic activity. Every command handed down from Satan to his Angels, to his demons, to the human beings doing his bidding on earth - we bind and block all forms of their communications in Jesus name. Any satanic rituals, sacrifices, spells, curses, and possessions, we bind them and render them powerless in Jesus name. Every camp and stronghold of the enemy, we bind and confuse and render powerless in Jesus name - That whatever we bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and so in Jesus name we bind all demonic activity across this entire earth!!!--

Oh father, we come before you now to intercede first, for the nations. We ask that you direct the hearts and minds of the nation’s leaders to make decisions that will lead their countries in the direction of Your ways and according to Your Word. We ask you to send laborers filled with the spirit of wisdom and might to surround the leaders of every nation with Godly counsel and insight. We also ask you to remove from positions of authority those who stubbornly oppose righteousness and replace them with men and women who will follow You and Your appointed course for each nation.--

Lord we ask in Jesus’ name that Your will be done in the lives of every person on this earth, that none shall perish, but that all should come to repentance; That people find truth in you Lord; That as we enter the final hours of the last days, we ask for the spirit of faith, the workings of miracles, for signs, wonders, gifts and demonstrations of the Holy Spirit, Lord. In Jesus name, we plead to you Lord, let believers in every land be unified to stand strong by faith in Jesus, the Anointed One and His anointing, that Your glory may be revealed in all the earth. May the unbelievers see how we true believers gather and love one another, and may they want what they see, and may Your Holy Spirit draw them to You.

Lord, we pray for the churches "ecclesia". May there be an eruption of revival all across this earth. May Your Holy Spirit shine in the hearts and minds of Your ministers and Your congregations like never before. May You establish for churches "ecclesia" to be a light to shine in the darkness of the world. Lord, that the darker the world gets, the brighter Your churches "ecclesias" get - That all who are weary and burdened come to Your house to find rest.

As always Father, as we read this prayer before You, both aloud and in silence, we agree each with one another, in Jesus name we agree and bless one another. We come together as one body and we choose, in Jesus name, to follow You in faith, Father, and we humbly thank You that we are able to do so. Praise you, Lord. We thank you, Lord that these requests come to pass. We believe, and we receive, in Jesus name. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We love you so very much, Father.  In Jesus Christ's Name. BOOKERS, COOPERS, LOPEZ families ‪#‎VOICESFORNORMANCOOPER‬

Through Good Times or through bad times .Always remember you must Persevere no matter What.People may Say things ,No One Feels the WaY you do .Or its you just Cant Seem to Get on Point like u want to . Rise above only to become Stronger and more Appreciative of What you ALREADY Have. ‪#‎PERSEVERANCE‬