Why Didn’t They Believe Him?

That’s all he wanted/needed.

When I was growing up with Type 1 diabetes (we called it “juvenile diabetes” back then) my mom, Flo, made me carry a medical card with me whenever I left the house. “I AM NOT DRUNK,” the card declared in all capital letters. “I AM A DIABETIC.” It went on to explain that if I was acting woozy, unable to speak clearly, or unresponsive, it was due to low blood sugar and I should be given a glass of orange juice. Only seven years old at the time, I thought the card was silly. “Mom, everyone knows I never get drunk!” She insisted I have that card with me, though, and you don’t mess with Flo.

I hadn’t thought about that little card in years, but a disturbing story RadioLab aired last week brought it back to mind:

On a fall afternoon in 1984, Dethorne Graham ran into a convenience store for a bottle of orange juice. Minutes later he was unconscious, injured, and in police handcuffs. In this episode, we explore a case that sent two Charlotte lawyers on a quest for true objectivity, and changed the face of policing in the US.

Dethorne Graham worked for Charlotte’s Department of Transportation back then. He had Type 1 diabetes, and he was Black. On that day in 1984 he felt the onset of an insulin reaction and asked a friend to drive him to a nearby convenient store for a bottle of orange juice. While his friend waited in the car, Mr. Graham ran inside and grabbed a bottle of OJ. The waiting line at the cashier was so long, that Mr. Graham gave up, set the orange juice back down, ran back to the waiting car and they took off.

A squad car was nearby, and after seeing Mr. Graham run in and out of the store like that, the police officer pulled them over and talked to the driver. Just as the officer was radioing in to get a hold of the convenience store to see if anything had happened there, Mr. Graham got out of the passenger door, stumbled along the car, sat down on the curb, went into convulsions and eventually passed out. Four more officers arrived, and you can probably guess what happened next. One officer rolled Mr. Graham over and handcuffed him. Another grabbed him by the handcuffs, lifted him off the curb from behind, and shoved his face into the hood of the car. In and out of consciousness at this point, Mr. Graham tried to tell the officers he was a diabetic and had a medical card in his wallet. They didn’t believe him. From an AP story:

Then four officers grabbed Graham and threw him head-first into the police car. Once police confirmed no crime had been committed inside the convenience store, they dropped Graham off at his home and left him lying in the yard with his handcuffs still on.

Mr. Graham recovered from his insulin reaction with a glass of orange juice at home, but this encounter with police left him with a broken foot, cuts on his wrists, a bruised forehead and an injured shoulder. Stories on RadioLab are an hour long, so I can’t give you all the details here. What I can say is that Mr. Graham sued the Charlotte Police Department in 1985, and the local jurisdiction ruled against him claming the officers did not use excessive force.

When RadioLab asked his son, Dethorne Graham, Jr. whether his dad talked about all of this much. He said no. “I mean, I don’t know his, his way of trying to deal with that…I don’t know. You know, when you are dehumanized like that, when another individual… when someone who has authority just, it’s like they take something away from you. When someone does something like that to you, it strikes at your core. It strikes at your very being. And I think you lose a part of yourself that you can’t get back.”

Mr. Graham did not give up. His case ended up in the Supreme Court, Graham v. Connor, and the highest court in the land ruled in his favor, emphasizing the overriding function of the Fourth Amendment is to protect an individual’s personal privacy and dignity against unwarranted intrusion by the government. The Court decision requires careful attention to the facts and circumstance of each case, including the severity of the crime at issue, whether the suspect posed an immediate threat to the safety of the officers or others, and whether the suspect was actively resisting arrest or attempting to evade arrest by flight.

Mr. Graham was 38 years old when he was beaten by cops for needing a glass of orange Juice. He died in 2000, at age 54.

I strongly urge you to listen to the RadioLab story in its entirety – you can tell they put a lot of work into researching court cases for the story and I couldn’t do it justice here in 800 words.