Police killing suspect’s jail death ruled homicide
Hat Tip: Associated Press
The death of a 19-year-old found slumped in his cell a day after he was jailed on charges of running over and killing a police officer has been ruled a homicide, authorities said Monday.
The Maryland Medical Examiner ruled Monday that Ronnie White’s death in Prince George’s County Correctional Center the previous day was from asphyxiation and strangulation.
Maryland State Police and the FBI are investigating the death. The FBI is focusing on possible civil rights violations.
Prince George’s County Executive Jack Johnson said at a news conference Monday, “If we have vigilante justice, our society will fall apart.”
Officials said seven guards had access to White at the time of his death, as did an unspecified number of supervisors. Authorities are also investigating whether anyone from the outside had access to the inmate.
Johnson said that he believes the death was “unrelated to any act by the Prince George’s County Police Department.”
Curtis Knowles, president of the corrections officers’ union, said he was working that day but not in the unit. Officers involved in monitoring the inmate told Knowles that they came to feed White, tapped on the window and yelled through a slot in the door, but White didn’t reply. They went in and shook White, but he didn’t respond, Knowles said.
Knowles also cautioned that the investigation needs to take its course before any conclusions are reached.
“We’re not going to speculate. We’re going to depend on the FBI and the state police,” Knowles said.
June White-Dillard, head of the Prince George’s branch of the NAACP, said that she was pleased the FBI was investigating the case but disturbed by the nature of the death of the inmate.
“No one should have had access to him that could have caused him harm,” she said.
White was found on the floor of his cell at the Prince George’s County jail at 10:30 a.m. Sunday with no pulse, according to officials. Jail medical staff who treated him reported no visible signs of trauma on his body, and he was declared dead an hour later at a hospital.
White had been held by himself in maximum security since he arrived at the jail around 12:30 a.m. Saturday morning.
He was charged with first-degree murder in the death Friday of 39-year-old Prince George’s County Cpl. Richard Findley during a traffic stop in Laurel. Findley, who was part of a team investigating car thefts, was killed after he got out of his cruiser and was dragged by a truck, which had been reported stolen. Authorities said White was driving the truck.
Prince George’s County State’s Attorney Glenn Ivey said Monday that his office would review the circumstances of White’s death.
White was one of four people taken into custody by police after the truck was found at a nearby apartment complex shortly after Findley was killed. The three others were questioned and released, according to Officer Henry Tippett, a county police spokesman.
White received medical and psychological assessments that jail officials said did not uncover any problems. He was placed in a maximum security cell because he was considered a “high profile offender.”
Guards checked him every half hour. At 10:15 a.m. he was sitting on the side of his bunk and was alert, according to a timeline provided by jail officials. But fifteen minutes later, he was found unresponsive.
There have been several problems recently at the county jail, including a former police corporal convicted of murdering a man who was found with a handcuffs key. The county’s director of corrections was fired in early June when four handguns went missing from the jail armory.
According to court records, White pleaded guilty to illegal possession of a firearm last year, and in another case, to drug possession. In 2006, he was charged with first-degree assault and armed robbery, but the case was dropped, records show. Last November, he was sentenced to more than six months in prison, but it’s not clear when he was released.
Findley was a 10-year veteran of the county police and was also a volunteer firefighter in the county, according to Vince Canales, president of the police union. A viewing was scheduled for Wednesday, followed by a funeral Thursday in Beltsville. Findley is survived by a wife and two young daughters.
“He was a wonderful person,” said Al Schwartz, chief of the Beltsville Volunteer Fire Department where Findley served for 20 years. “He could make you smile in a heartbeat.”
July 1st, 2008 at 12:01 pm
First and formost, I wish to give my condolences to the family of the slain Police Office Cpl. Finley. What this young man was accussed of was despicable and horrific. However, under our current justice system (which is in no way shape or form perfect) a potential suspect is always innocent until proven guilty. The suspect should be arrested and incarcerated pending the suspects day in court.
What is not understood is how this young man ended up with a broken neck while alledgedly alone in his cell where no one other than the correctional staff was supposed to have access to the young man. I understand how the officers feel having one of their bretheren of the police force injured, then pass away; but taking the law into their own hands is unacceptable as Police and Corrections officials are supposed to uphold the law.
July 1st, 2008 at 4:18 pm
Good! Just the kind of justice we need around here! You cant run over a cop and expect to live longer than 48 hours. Cmon now!
July 1st, 2008 at 5:16 pm
That’s for O.J. !!!!!
July 1st, 2008 at 5:45 pm
I believe in justice and justice was served. Not once in the article did they say how injustice it was for him to kill the police officer. No justice for the victim but too much for the villian. Would justice have been served like so many found guilty that they sit in jail for years and years??? While the victim lays in his grave and the family mourns his demise. The victum is dead but not thr killer. Were has justice gone?????
July 1st, 2008 at 5:52 pm
The family said that they cannot believe that something as cold and callous could happen to their loved one… LMAO… The kids was a criminal, and would not have been rehabilitated. His death is probably the best for all involved and the world. Just one more criminal that won’t be on the streets with a chance for parole…
July 1st, 2008 at 5:56 pm
I cannot believe the picture of this criminal is posted and he will be looked at like a Martyr. We should be sending condolences to the police officers family, but since this criminal was black, the NAACP, Jesse Jackson and his Rainbow Coalition, and all the Black-Americans will cry foul because you stole another crimina brotha… Is that all you are good for?? Felonies?
July 1st, 2008 at 6:02 pm
Like all the people said above, anytime a police officer is killed, the first person they arrest should be locked up and end up with a broken neck. Who cares if he is innocent and guilty.
That’s Justice according to all the smart people above!
July 1st, 2008 at 6:09 pm
Once again, a suspect is turned into a victim. Like what was said earlier, not one mention of the slain policeman’s life. How about how his civil rights were violated? I am sick to death of the pandering to criminals in this country. And by the way, I did time in prison. I have not been in trouble since. I bet the policeman was white…….so this must be a hate crime. C’mon someone flame the hell oughta me for telling it like it is. I feel bad for everyone involved. But PLEASE do not forget the REAL victim and his family.
July 1st, 2008 at 6:10 pm
I have nothing to say concerning Ronnie White’s guilt or inocence. What I am interested to see playout, is the main stream media’s trial of the gaurds and staff of the correctional facility that was holding Mr. White. I’m sure that the staff working at this facility are about to be tried and convicted in the news before anyone actually gets charged with Mr. White’s murder.
July 1st, 2008 at 6:12 pm
Great comment Dave!
July 1st, 2008 at 6:17 pm
After his family file their lawsuit for wrongful death, the famly of the slain cop needs to file suit against his family and recover all the money. I am a black male in washington dc and I am sick of our people making excuses for the bullshit. I am tired of black young males robbing and killing anybody who they feel are in their way. he is a gangbanger who murdered a cop. No one has disputed that because he is guilty of that. So his family can go to hell just like him
July 1st, 2008 at 6:42 pm
Hmm, if he looks guilty then he must be guilty right?
Bottom line is this kid needed to have his day in court and now the officers should be charged as criminals themselves. NO WAY should law enforcement officer or correctional officer EXECUTE anyone in custody, NO EXCUSES!!! This is OK until it happens to one of your loved ones who by the way are always innocent, then you will cry foul. Mike, hes a ganbanger?? LOL…..and you know this how??
July 1st, 2008 at 6:47 pm
I don’t like the tone that if you kill a cop… whatever happens happens. If you kill anyone who does not warrant it then whatever happens happens. That is more rational. Just as the outrage for killing a cop, have the same outrage for the elderly who are being mugged, for the young children who are being killed every day. For the innocent cab driver in Harford County with several children who was gunned down. I am a law abiding black citizen who values everybody’s life if you are doing the correct things in life. But don’t put cops lives above anyone elses. That is some old racist talk there. The thin blue line. Or whatever they call it. Everybody’s life is valuble if you are doing positive things in your life but happen to be a victim of a bad crime. Black on black crime is at pandemic levels because of the apathy, misery and treachery that goes on in our communities without barely a peep. I also don’t wany to see this individual made into a martyr but at the same time the law cannot use swift, fatal justice to avenge one of their own. If that is the case, let everbody have the chance to avenge their own.
July 1st, 2008 at 6:52 pm
In our system a person presumed is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, this was a barbaric act on the part of idiots who believe they are above the law.
July 1st, 2008 at 7:45 pm
This is from the employment section of the Prince George’s County web page:
Job Title: CORRECTIONAL OFFICER PRIVATE - 08-004-56-LV
Closing Date/Time: Continuous
Salary: $34,712.00 - $58,716.00 annually
Job Type: Fulltime/Permanent/Classified
Location: DOC - Upper Marlboro, Maryland
The Prison’s web page:
http://www.princegeorgescountymd.gov/Government/PublicSafety/Corrections/index.asp
These aren’t really police running this place. These folks are county employees. How do we know it wasn’t an inmate that killed him? If it was one of the gaurds, how do we know it was revenge for Officer Finley’s death? Does anyone here know Ronnie White well enough to say for certain, he is a gangbanger?
July 1st, 2008 at 8:54 pm
In my opinion this matter is symptomatic of what can happen when the source of a problem is not dealt with from the onset. Or as it in written in Ecclesiastes 8:11: Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil Eccl. 8:11. Who is guilty of committing the evil deed? It would appear that the more things change in America, the more they remain the same.
The government and its enforcement arm have been inviolate with regard to the protections of blacks dating all the way back to the pre-colonial period and right up to today. Even Doctor Martin Luther King’s civil rights were violated by the enforcement arm of the government. Not many blacks trust the police department in the manner that their white counterparts do, and for good reason I might add (which happens to be unfair to those men and women who are trying to do their jobs in the proper manner).
But what is also so sad is that in a nation that purports to be an overwhelmingly religious nation, the unrepentant and ongoing ‘internal war on terror’ that has persisted between the government and its minority citizenry for centuries now continues until this day. At times it is difficult to tell who the real terrorists happen to be; the police aren’t always guilty, and the so-called criminals aren’t always guilty.
Who can argue that the government did not draw first blood when it cooperated with the pre-colonial and colonial forces, in anti-black America, and had it codified into law and in their psyches that simply being black was a crime! And from time to time throughout history, police violence/terrorism has been repudiated in the courts.
However, who can argue that the government hasn’t learned a thing from its past mistakes, given its ongoing rejection of International Law, just consider its actions in Iraq?
Who was right or wrong in this particular scenario I don’t know, however, this incident is endemic and symptomatic again of a nation with a much deeper societal pathology. If America wins the so-called war on terror abroad, and I personally believe like Dr. King did that America is the number one purveyor of violence in the world, then who is going to keep this nation from imploding within?
What you sow you reap, no matter which side you’re on!
July 1st, 2008 at 9:13 pm
Something else to consider in light of Dave’s point, a number of states are outsourcing their criminal justice responsibilities (particularly the warehousing of inmates to independent IPO orensics organizations). Does PG County outsource any of its criminal services?
July 1st, 2008 at 10:02 pm
I would also submit that there is a deep, deep divide between older blacks and the younger black generation. A high level of disrespect on both sides. A lot of kids have no respect at all for anyone that is older. Basic respect for an elder that has to have been taught or instilled. Respect for your history and sense of self that has to have been taught. A lot of older people who were not always on the right path but have had someone to tell them that the way that you are acting is not the right way or that you are valued and I believe in you. For the most part these days if we are true to ourselves and our community, for every Algebra Project or New Black Panther Party there are 20 Stop Snitchin DVD’s or Bloods and Crips gangs.
I hate what our race has become as far as the relationship between elders and the youth. I dare you to go anywhere in the world to find this lack of respect for elders and authority. I also dare you to find a group of not yet elders who had wholesale abandoned their children in the pursuit of partying, sexing, drugging, do what ya like, instead of teaching, building, loving and living right for your kids, with your kids.
See those of us who were born 1952-1972 or 73 don’t want to admit that we were the 1st generation that did not give back to our race. We were the first generation who left our kids at home while we were out at the clubs, getting super high, stealing from our parents and grandparents to score drugs(especially that evil, evil crack) who just gave up on life so much that our parents(the grandparents of today who are the rock of the black community) had to step in out of love, out of dignity, out of a sense of right to raise OUR kids. They raised us and now they have to raise the grandkids too?? That is not right. No, that is not right. They deserve rest and they deserve our respect for carrying the ball WE dropped. So before us older ones say hey the kid in this case got what he deserved, think back of an older person who treated you like a diamond in the rough, who wiped the dirt off you and gave you a chance or sparked an interest in you that sent you down the right path. That is the only difference between the youth of old and the youth of today. Our generation has fumbled the ball and you see that all hell has broken loose.
July 1st, 2008 at 11:37 pm
A sad commentary again on the police dept. but I’m not surprised. When we had some police shootings last year in South Florida, there was one particular case which involved a massive man hunt from the lunch hour to the evening hours. A friend of mine called me to tell me the guy on the run (who shot at two police officers-one dead and one in critical condition) was as good as dead. There was no way he was going to make it out alive. You know what? She was right. The shooter was killed though he was in hiding at a couple of friends’ apartment.
July 2nd, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Profound Commons Sense!
The social-liberal American experiment of the 20th century failed miserably. I used to be a part of a group named ‘The Amen Group’, we would meet once a month at the University (all black staff and faculty). The name of course was taken from the writings of James Baldwin.
While my colleagues were criticizing the university for its failures, I reminded them that our kids were going to be looking at us one day asking, and what have you folks done and why not? One of my colleagues proferred that we ought to consider whether we were better as a people when we were negroes, in comparison to what we have become since we’ve become an affluent an educated class of Afro-Americans.
His point was based upon a sermon that he heard, i.e., when we were negroes at the end of the 19th and through the mid-20th century we built schools like Tuskegee, we worked, we purcheased homes, we respected each other…, and we did it with limited resources. He added that since the time that we became black and Afro-Americans (with an educated class and plenty of dollars about a 600B economy at the time), that we seemed to have lost our way, i.e, our kids are wearing their pants down on their butts, disrespect between young and old not to mentionthat we’re abandoing our communities for the suburbs…! The latter is really problematic when we criticize whites for removing the intelligentsia from Africa, and now the black inteliggentsia seems to be running without being forced to do so. Harold Cruse’s book: The Crises of the Negro Intellectual speaks to that point!
Mr. Former colleague’s query was most thought-provoking. I am of the opinion that we need to call our ambassdors home and get into our communities and our own heads and, figure out the problem for once and fix it. Don’t get mad at me for saying this CS, for at times my assessment of my own community sounds like I’m criticizing when I am trying to analyze, but one has to wonder why even in African black nations, why our people cannot seem to get up? I told you about my fight with the Congolese on that topic!
Certainly there were colonial factors that contributed to the problem, however, outside of that reality, something is amiss and not even I, this Solomon, can figure out what it happens to be! In America, what is the problem - we ought to talk about it and figure it out. I am tired of seeing other kids grow up and go to college, when too many of our kids grow up and go to jail.
A black comedian once said that when I die, I expect to die of natural causes and be shot by the Los Angeles Police Department!
July 2nd, 2008 at 8:57 pm
In # 17 Rev. C. Solomon asks “Does PG County outsource any of its criminal services?” Consider the following- The people with experience working in a corrections department are probably in very high demand. Per US Dept of Justice statistics- The incarceration rate was 737 per 100,000 at the end of 2005. The average annual increase from 12/31/95 from 12/31/05 was 3.3%. This count includes all inmates held in public and private adult correctional facilities.
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/p05.pdf
Prisons are becoming big business. There is probably a staffing requirement setting a percentage of gaurds to inmates. Private security companies would be more than willing to fill any shortages. Maybe the shortages don’t get filled. We may learn some of these details as time goes on.
Obviously something is broken in their process to allow Mr. White to be murdered in maximum security and I’ll bet it wasn’t a lack of tax paid funds.
July 4th, 2008 at 9:07 am
Most of you guys sound like idiots. The law is the law weather you like it or not. ‘ you are innocent until proven guilty’. How do you fool know is wasn’t the other officer kill his partner. First of all, common scense tell you, if you pull a guy over and he speed off, how can he drag anybody he speed off right. so he leave the officer behind, right? the other police was chasing the so call suspect when he cut across and he officer made a unpredictable move and the officer end up hittint him and drag him. The poor officer didn’t know theirs was a camera, so he kill the suspect with the intention of pinning his partner death on the suspect. But god don’t like ugly. All the fools thats think they perfect, wait till you get your jugdement you will see that we are all criminal. Criminal is someone that do a crime, and all of us had stole something in our whole life time, if is even a cookie. So use ya’all head and stop turning everything into a black and white thing. I work in one of the biggest hospital in the world and i see white people dieing and begging god to see another day and i also see black people dead.
July 4th, 2008 at 7:11 pm
@ Rev. Solomon,
Rev., all day on the 4th I have been listening online to Wpfw.org and I swear that I was reading your posts. I wish there was a way to get information out about some things that we can access from the computer. Today, all day until about 4 or 5, they had speeches continuous by Angela Davis, James Baldwin, Malcolm X and even a great one by Sam Cooke(yes that Sam Cooke) and a French woman that I did not catch her name. Tremendous day of radio. I don’t know where you are located but if you have Pacifica radio in your area then this show was on today.
July 5th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
Thanks for sharing, CS. I actually went to WPFW’s site and found their archive page, however, it doesn’t appear that they’ve uploaded the July 4th show yet. Perhaps it will be up by next week. Here’s the link:
http://www.wpfw.org/?db=content/Programming&tbl=Programming&id=2.2
It says you can call and order the shows as well.
July 8th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Thank you Common Sense, I will have to try to locate wpfw.org, with regard to radio and Pacifica radio, I’m not sure what that is but I will find out. I used to live in Pacifica California before moving further down the peninsula, I don’t know if one thing has anything to do with the other.
With Regard to Ms. Smart, clearly, ‘you need to get in the real world’ and come up to speed with respect to what is and what is not a crime. Each and everyday laws are being reviewed in District, Federal courts and all the way to the Supreme Court, and many of them are being tossed out, often too late. Some of Ofari Hutchinson’s books on crime, particularly as it relates to our young people, might be a good starting place for you. Our criminal justice system as well as the laws in this nation are not uniform, and they never have been.
Have you ever heard of Jim Crowe? Have you ever heard of miscegenation laws? Where have you been? As much as I have been a fan of OJ, clearly the OJ case was a perfect example of the inequities in the American system of jurisprudence. Many young people who were accused of commiting less heinous crimes, who could not afford good counsel, have languished in prisions and some have since been executed only to discover later that they had not commited a crime.
And before you say it, just think about it, as a result of DNA testing it has been proven over and over again that many individuals were locked up and some almost executed that never should have been! The best example of unjust law is found in John chapter 8. A woman brought to Jesus was found guilty in the court of world opinion given that she had been taken in the act of adultery (where was the man?), which was one of at least 8 capitol crimes under Jewish Law at the time. Jesus excused the woman, whereby infuriating those who accused her - the same men came back later to stone him.
It is still against the law in America to be black (there is a venal and basic assumption among some that you have done something wrong just because you happen to be black). Have you ever sat in court and watched 8 to ten of our young people being brought into court with leg irons and handcuffs, to be tried by a wealthy elite (judges, prosecutors…) when mostly what these kids really need is a education and a job.
I tend to be very radical, the last time I was called to Jury duty, I stunned the court by asking the judge to excuse me from a process that I did not have any respect for!
Do your homework for you are way off base in my opinion! Is it real justice or is it just us?
July 8th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
Dave,
I am shocked at the number of private prisons and services, IPO, that are on the rise in America. It is not secret that Americans will make a profit off of anything that they can, even burying people - however, this thing is getting out of hand. I would rather see our dollars being invested in humans, rather than in warehousing them.
Way off topic, but was Mayor Schmoke right years ago? As I recall he was more interested in rehabilitating drug offenders than in incarcertaing them.
August 13th, 2008 at 6:42 pm
Rev. C. Solomon,
I hope you still check this discussion occasionally. I agree with Mayor Schmoke. I have trouble believing the intent of the “War on Drugs” is to stop the drug problem. Power politics (Looking like we’re doing the right thing to get your vote), raising the price of illegal drugs (Remember how Joseph Kennedy built his fortune), and justifying building of a police state seem to the reasons. My question is “Why isn’t there more video surveillance in jails?”. Is it a budget constraint or a liabilty?
November 2nd, 2008 at 2:15 am
Many of us have been on numerous jury duty cases and if we’ve found out nothing else its that Police Officers will lie their assess off. Only God above knows what really happened. To the Blogger above who hinted that people didn’t know what really happened, whether or not you were one of the young men at the scene of the crime, many of us believe you and think it was as you hinted, that the accompanying police officer unintentionally dragged his partner to his death and because the young man in prison knew the truth, he had to die otherwise, the rest of the world would have known the truth also. We think of how many of our black youth have died innocently at the hands of the police, how many have died being shot in the back or in police custody or been riddled with bullets while standing in their vestibules, its enough to make one puke! knowing what you have done to so many young black men. It makes one sick to the stomach. It increasingly becomes very hard for most Blacks not to hate Whites and only, only because most Blacks believe in their lord and savior do they continue to strive every day not to hate Whites people.
For those who sit so high in judgement of this young man, not one of you should ever open your mouth about this man being a criminal, because the crimes you have committed against Blacks throughout your entire white history is more barbaric, sadistic and heinous than any crime Blacks could ever commit in their lifetime. If some of these young black men today are stupid enough to use drugs, rob, or steal, they are hurting no one but theirselves in the interim, but in no lifetime can their crimes ever amount anywhere near to the barbaric sadistic, hedonistic crimes that whites have committed on Blacks since the time of slavery when you strung up innocent Black men and children by their necks, cut off their privates, gouged out their eyes, cut off their fingers and toes, gouged their insides. Yet you people in your vainness and hypocrisy continue to sit in judgement of Blacks, yet those you judge is none other than what you created!
You sit on your white thrones, portraying superiority to the world, yet was it not you and yours who had Blacks work like dogs to feed your faces and farm your lands thereby making you rich while insuring Blacks had nothing to pass down throughout their generations. Did you not pack them on top of each other into ghetto’s without resources or jobs, did you not put liquor stores on every corner and funnel your drugs and guns into their communities thereby promoting drug use, abuse, hoping those same weapons they’d use to kill each other, thereby spearing you the trouble. Was it not you that put Blacks in the front line of fire in your unholy wars to die for a country that’s treated them like dirt. Who do you have to blame but yourselves, for when you treat people like animals, they become as animals. Yet you sit on your high and mighty white pedestals and judge these young black criminals, albeit they are no more than what you helped to create. Yet let one of yours be treated as you have treated blacks, and you would be screaming to the high heavens for massive death penalties. No one has the right to take another’s life, that is for God alone, yet you have taken more lives than any other race of people on the face of the earth. Its been written “Judge Not less ye be Judged” Yet you have been judge, jury and executioner of Blacks for well over 300 years. One can only imagine the time when your judgement day comes for all of the crimes you have committed against God’s first born people.
November 2nd, 2008 at 2:35 am
As for a few other bloggers who posted here, one can only comment that your lack of wisdom is pitifully apparent. Pray for wisdom and you might just be given a small amount of insight. What’s happened to many of these young Black men, they are a lost generation. Without knowledge of the history of most Blacks (you obviously being the exception) in this country, without wisdom to understand the dynamics of the destruction perpetrated in Black communities nor the wisdom from God to understand what’s been written of their history which is in the bible for all and any to see has to come to fruition in the last days since its already been foretold.