Beloved Community Center, in partnership with other activist groups and Marcus Smith’s lawyers, held a press conference in Greensboro today.
Veteran police official and expert on excessive force Scott Defoe, who has been retained by Smith’s legal team, released his report on the Smith case at the presser.
Defoe was an expert witness in the George Floyd civil case, which settled last month for $27 million. Defoe’s report on the Smith case was released at the press conference and summary handed out in hard copy.
The Defoe report determined that Greensboro police not only used excessive force in the homicide of Marcus Smith, but that they withheld details of the incident from the public, specifically that he had been hogtied.
By that deliberate with-holding, Defoe says, they “…perpetuated and endorsed” the behavior and “…This ratification is further evidenced by a police and government collective effort which without exception has continued from the date of Mr. Marcus Smith’s death until the present. Specifically, it is demonstrated by numerous public statements by Greensboro public officials and the GPD command personnel, as well as by all police and governmental testimony in this case, denying any wrongdoing by the officers who hogtied Mr. Marcus Smith, refusing to accept any responsibility for his death, and covering up the fact that he was hogtied.”
[Photos by Carolyn de Berry]
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