| What
happens to used people? Do they get left off in some kind of a human junkyard
like discarded cars, couches, and appliances, a place where they go on living,
bewildered, angry, and bitter, wondering what happened to them?
That, I'm afraid, is what will
happen to Marie Denney's survivors.
Marie Denney was shot and killed
by Racine police December 8. She was intoxicated (the autopsy report lists her
blood alcohol content as 0.29) and had asked a friend for a ride home from a
bar. They allegedly got into an argument, and Denney got out of the car, and
started to walk home. Her walk home became a death walk.
| Police got a call about a woman walking down
the street holding a gun. A squad car located her at about 10:25:53 p.m.
and followed her for about eight blocks. She was killed by a single shot
fired by officer Brad Spiegelhoff at 10:38:39 p.m. I am certain of the times
because the tragedy was recorded by a video camera mounted in the windshield
of the squad car. I've watched the tape twice. |
Marie Denney walks away from police, a gun in her
right hand, refusing their orders to stop and talk to them. This photo is
taken from a police videotape of the incident, made by a camera mounted
on the windshield of a squad car. The tape was provided Thursday January
27, 2000 by attorney Alan Eisenberg, who says he is investigating the shooting
for Denney's survivors |
| The police repeatedly ask her to put the gun down and let
them talk to her. Not once. Not twice, but over, and over, and over, and
over again. The first mention of police thinking they may have to shoot
her came at about 10:34:13, almost 10 minutes after the fatal encounter
started, after Denney raised her gun at the police officers. She lowered
the gun , and kept walking toward Lincoln Park, at the edge of a residential
area. |
Marie Denney points a gun at police after repeatedly
refusing their orders to stop and talk to them |
She entered the park, passed behind bushes, and started going toward a hill,
starting to disappear from sight. "This is where it sucks," says one of the
police officers in the car. She apparently dropped the gun, and then picked
it up again. That's the last time we see Denney on the tape.
| Denney had gone below the crest of the hill, and the camera's
view is blocked by bushes. We see a police officer's arms brandishing a
shotgun, and then there's a blast from the gun. Police say Denney had turned
toward them in a crouch, aiming the pistol at them again. Though Denney
had said the gun was loaded, and police on the tape say they heard her cocking
it earlier, the gun was not loaded. There was a single bullet found in her
pocket. |
Marie Denney is shot and killed with a single shot
fired by Racine police officer Brad Spiegelhoff. |
Police ruled the shooting justifiable, a case of what's come to be called "suicide
by cop."
There's a cover-up of the death, according to Milwaukee attorney Alan Eisenberg,
who often pops up in the news. Eisenberg even told one of our reporters that
our newspaper is part of the conspiracy.
| The Denney family (Marie's 17-year-old daughter,
Nicole; Marie's parents; and two close friends) was in the lobby of Eisenberg's
office at Noon, when he'd summoned a TV station and us to meet with them
and get copies of the "edited" videotape. Eisenberg strolled into the conference
room, looked around, and yelled, "Denneys! Come in here, Denneys!" (or words
to that effect), as if he were barking orders to anybody but a group of
sad people who are mourning their mother's death, their daughter's death,
their friend's death. He saw Nicole, and expressed disappointment that her
nine-year-old brother, Jordan, had gone to school rather than come to his
office. |
Nicole Denney, 17, is asked questions about how she
feels about the death of her mother who was shot by a Racine police officer.
Photo by Mark Hertzberg (c) 2000 Racine Journal Times |
| He says he's an investigator, and not the family's attorney,
determined to get the truth for the family. Eisenberg looked into a TV camera
and told viewers that he wants an inquest, because "inquests are extremely
commonplace in Racine County." Maybe he should read our paper more closely.
The last death inquest in Racine was in 1992, which, by my math, was eight
years ago. In fact, we've had stories about controversies over the district
attorney's refusal to have inquests into two other deaths that have made
front-page news in recent years. The tape is edited, he says, because we
don't see Denney at the time she's shot. The timer in the bottom right corner
of the tape would tend to disprove his allegation, as would the simple fact
that Denney had chosen to walk out of sight of the camera, below the crest
of the hill, a hill that the squad car could not drive down, when she was
shot. |
Seated in front of a presidential seal-like emblem,
said to be his preferred backdrop for TV interviews, Alan Eisenberg discusses
his allegations of a cover-up in Marie Denney's death. Photo by Mark Hertzberg
(c) 2000 Racine Journal Times |
The police "stalked" Denney, Eisenberg and the family say, because the encounter
went from a spot a block from her home to the park. The tape shows that Denney
clearly leads the way the whole time, with police following her at every turn.
She alone made the decision to walk to Lincoln Park, rather than head home.
Three peoples' cars passed near or by her, during her walk toward death, and,
according to a witness in the neighborhood, she made residents feel that she
could shoot into their homes at any time.
| Eisenberg says Denney was handcuffed after she was shot,
and dragged up the hill by police to where the ambulance would come, bleeding
to death. I don't know if that's true or not. If it is true, I don't know
whether any medical efforts could have saved her life, once that slug tore
into her body. I do know it was startling to hear Eisenberg equate the death
of Denney with that of a black man who was wilfully dragged to death over
several miles, attached by a chain to the back of a pickup truck in Japser,
Texas. |
Marie Denney had gone below the crest of this hill
in Lincoln Field when she was shot by a police officer. Photo by Mark Hertzberg
(c) 1999 Racine Journal Times |
Nicole Denney stared into a TV camera with a blank expression, trying to answer
questions in Alan Eisenberg's conference room. She wants this ordeal to end,
she said, she doesn't want it in the news anymore. Eisenberg's gotten two TV
stories out of this so far this week. I don't know what Denney's family has
gotten out of her death being dredged up again. They aren't any closer to finding
out answers that will never come. Her father says he has signed papers with
a colleague of Eisenberg's for a wrongful death suit, but he doesn't know the
attorney's name. Nicole Denney is presumably back in school today, as sad as
she was yesterday while Eisenberg will be presumably getting copies of our story
and planning his next move.
|
Marie Denney cannot come back to life. No one can take back the alcohol
she drank that night. No one can take back the single slug that pierced
her body.
Conspiracies and cover-ups make great headlines. In this case, it's time
to let Marie Denney rest in peace, and to let her family try to heal,
without dragging them in front of reporters and photographers. If we don't
report the allegations, well, then we really are part of a cover-up, censoring
the news. If we do report the allegations, we're accused of sensationalism.
No one wins in these cases.
|
This photo of Marie Denney was provided by her friend
Lorrie Gleason. |
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