Carlos Adrian Ingram-Lopez died after Tucson police detained him on April 21, 2020. He was 27 years old.
The in-custody death was just revealed yesterday, June 23, and has been met with outrage from the Tucson community. A medical examiner’s report determined Ingram-Lopez suffered cardiac arrest from a combination of physical restraint by the officers involved and acute cocaine intoxication.
During a Wednesday press conference discussing details of the event, Tucson Police Chief Chris Magnus offered his resignation to Mayor Regina Romero and called for “full accountability” within the department. Romero said she was not expecting Magnus’ offer to resign and would have to consider it before commenting further.
Magnus said the three officers involved in detaining Ingram-Lopez violated department policies for interacting with people who are in mental distress or under the influence of drugs. All three officers have resigned; Magnus added that they would have been fired otherwise for “multiple policy violations.”
Magnus said Ingram-Lopez’s grandmother called 911 at 1 a.m. on April 21 to report that her grandson was “drunk, yelling and running naked.”
Body camera footage shows officers arriving at the home and screaming at Ingram-Lopez to “get on the fucking ground.” Ingram-Lopez is shown running to the garage, where officers handcuff him behind his back and lay him face-down on the floor.
The audio captures Ingram-Lopez screaming in distress, saying repeatedly “no,” “please” and “I’m sorry.” Magnus said Ingram-Lopez was “highly erratic” at the beginning of the encounter, but became more compliant.
The officers in the video repeatedly tell Ingram-Lopez to “relax” as they restrain him, while he is heard breathing heavily, moaning and calling out for his nana (grandmother) asking for water.
Ingram-Lopez asked the officers repeatedly for water and they ignored his requests. At one point, he told the officers he couldn’t breathe. Magnus said the officers were not restricting his airways during the encounter, and made specific mention that a knee was not placed on his neck, referencing the highly publicized footage of George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis in May.
Magnus reported that Ingram-Lopez was Latino, while one officer who restained him was Black and the other two were white. They restrained him for 12 minutes before he died.
The officers covered Ingram-Lopez with a yellow emergency blanket while he was heard moaning and crying in the video. Shortly after, he began to make gagging sounds and became more distressed. The officer tells him again to relax. He calls out “Nana por favor” shortly before becoming silent.
After a few minutes of silence from Ingram-Lopez, officers can be heard asking “Is he breathing?” They rolled his unconscious body over and distributed NARCAN, a drug that is used to reverse overdoses.
When Ingram-Lopez didn’t respond to that, the officers began administering CPR and continued to do so until Tucson Fire Department paramedics showed up.
Ingram-Lopez was pronounced dead at the scene by paramedics, in front of his grandmother’s garage.
Magnus and Romero called this event a “terrible tragedy” and said they each met with Ingram-Lopez’s family to give their condolences. But they maintained that the actions of these three officers are “not reflective of the department.”
Romero, who was visibly upset after watching the video at the press conference, said the city must adopt measures in response to this incident.
“As mayor and as a mother, I am deeply troubled and outraged by what happened,” Romero said. “I am outraged that Carlos Adrian lost his life. I am outraged that his family lost their son.”
Romero said this incident is proof that even the most progressive police department can still fail.
She proposed the public be immediately notified of TPD’s in-custody deaths, the city establish a new “community safety pilot division” that would focus on support services for those dealing with homelessness and/or mental health needs, incorporate an independent police auditor to review these types of cases, and overhaul the Community Police Advisory Review board.
She also called for a “swift but thorough” investigation into the three officers’ actions by the Pima County Attorney’s Office. Magnus said the attorney’s office is currently reviewing the case, and have not yet determined any criminal charges at this time.
It is unlikely that County Attorney Barbara LaWall will take any legal action against the officers in this case. At the press conference, Magnus explained that in the last 10 years, there have been 12 in-custody deaths including this one. Seven were determined by the medical examiner to be suicides, while the remaining four were “carefully reviewed by the county attorney,” and none resulted in any criminal responsibility placed on the officers.
On Facebook, Black Lives Matter Tucson released a statement saying that TPD did not exhibit self accountability in the aftermath of Ingram-Lopez’s death. They pointed to the fact that the case was not made public until two months later after a “non-transparent” internal investigation was complete.
They added they have no confidence that County Attorney LaWall will prosecute the officers involved in the incident.
“She is the same woman who refused to indict a Pima County Deputy Sheriff who assaulted Immanuel Oloya (a disabled minor) on film,” they wrote. “The same woman who forced Louis Taylor to take an Alford plea that left him with nothing after being wrongly incarcerated for most of his adult life. Who has also refused to prosecute the deaths of two BIPOC men at the Pima County Jail in 2019.”
BLM Tucson repeated their call to defund the police and invest in community solutions that increase the quality of life for Tucson residents.
“The ugly truth is now starring everyone in the face, TPD chose to cover-up the violence its officers perpetrated months ago while smiling into the cameras stating that “Tucson isn’t Minneapolis.’” BLM stated.
Magnus said the public should have been immediately notified when Ingram-Lopez died, but the department failed to do so. The information about Ingram-Lopez’s death, which happened two months ago, is just now coming to light because the police department finished their internal investigation last Friday.
Romero and the other city council members were notified of Ingram-Lopez’s death last Wednesday.
Magnus said a report of the department’s criminal and administrative investigation into Ingram-Lopez’s death will be released publicly and show the exact policies that the three officers violated during the encounter.
He believes Ingram-Lopez’s death was not a result of any “malevolence” or attempt to hide information, but given the current national conversation about policing, any mistakes like these contribute to the lack of trust in the police.
This article appears in Jun 18-24, 2020.
“Romero said this incident is proof that even the most progressive police department can still fail.”
Excuse me. We are the most progressive police department? Fire the Mayor.
All of the police failings in the country are happening in the most progressive cities. Are the police officers reacting to frustration from the lack of leadership that they are trying to combat complacency and ignorance?
By the way you forgot to show the comment from BLM when informed that one of the officers was black. Systemic? Garbage.
Keep the Chief and fire the Mayor.
What are the short-term effects of cocaine?
Cocaine causes a short-lived, intense high that is immediately followed by the opposite—intense depression, edginess and a craving for more of the drug. People who use it often don’t eat or sleep properly. They can experience greatly increased heart rate, muscle spasms and convulsions. The drug can make people feel paranoid,1 angry, hostile and anxious—even when they aren’t high.
Regardless of how much of the drug is used or how frequently, cocaine increases the risk that the user will experience a heart attack, stroke, seizure or respiratory (breathing) failure, any of which can result in sudden death.
coke destroyed your mind. Conservatives run for mayor in progressive cities. NOBODY votes for them! Try putting frank rizzo back in phildelphia today and anti-gun democrats would be buying guns and passing them out to the black community if a rizzo type conservative would use the police as a gestapo. Snoflake tofu eating liberals would be forming people’s armed militias to combat police storm troopers.
Finish a focused well thought out position and run with it Captain. Otherwise we all just have to step over the piles.
So, let’s stipulate for a moment that Chris Magnus is indeed “the most progressive police chief in the country”. This merely proves that the problem with the cops is institutional, it’s a problem of police culture, and it’s NOT about the individuals involved in any given situation at any level.
There’s no such thing as “a good cop”, and the fact that one of the officers involved here was Black is utterly irrelevant. Here’s why:
1) ALL cops work in profoundly racist institutions that operate within a profoundly racist milieu of law enforcement as applied nationwide in the USA in 2020 (and since…forever). Precious few do anything to change it, not the least reason for which is if they do, they are quickly treated as pariahs by their peers, supervisors, et al.
2) ALL cops participate in the universal police culture of UN-accountability. The code of silence among cops is stronger than “omerta” in the mafia. They lie to cover up each other’s crimes and mistakes, create false narratives on police reports, plant evidence where none exists to justify their treatment of “suspects”, and engage in propaganda and coverups at the institutional level to hide the truth of their actions from the public. At the very least they keep their mouths shut even when they know what’s being done is wrong, violation of policy, or even criminal. Again, if they do swim against the tide, they will be treated as pariahs. This is standard operating procedure.
3) ALL cop institutions such as police unions and Fraternal Orders of Police reinforce the racism and lack of accountability that plague police departments and law enforcement in general. They actively work against initiatives to address systemic racism, they actively work to prevent systems of accountability from being implemented, they lobby to prevent police reform, they lobby to retain secrecy and prevent the public and politicians from weeding out the worst cops, they give money to politicians during electoral cycles to buy their favor, etc.
4) ALL cops participate in the increasing militarization of police forces. Over the past few decades, police forces all over the country have been given tens of billions of dollars of military equipment and training. This has had a predictable effect. It has corrupted policing and police officers, who now gear up in their military-grade equipment and point their fancy weapons at people they perceive to be the enemy. In many neighborhoods (mostly where people of color are the dominant demographic) they see themselves as an occupying force and every single community member as a suspect.
All things considered, it’s no wonder that even with “the most progressive police chief in the country”, we still can’t seem to get past the fundamental baby step of getting the cops to treat people, especially people of color, as human beings rather than dehumanized “suspects”.
Beam me up Scotty.