By accepting it, he'd be conceding that his arrest had been lawful, that the police had been within their rights to take him into custody -- which could undermine his civil suit. Conceding it also meant that he could never show what he believed to be true: that he'd not deserved to have his leg broken by a scrum of cops. It was, in a way, perverse. It was clear to Sefolosha that if his leg had not wound up broken, if he'd been uninjured just as Antic was, his case too would have been fully dismissed.
As Spiro and Sefolosha were going over all this, some news hit the wires. Earlier that very day, Sept. Only it wasn't the criminal. It was James Blake, the retired black tennis pro.
His mother, Christine Sefolosha, a painter, was born in Vevey, an ancient and picturesque village of stone houses and cobbled lanes on the north shore of Lake Geneva. Her family has called it home for many generations. His father, Patrick Sefolosha, was born in South Africa, outside Pretoria, and raised mostly in a vast, plumbing-less shantytown called Mamelodi, one of the country's notorious black-people-only townships -- the apartheid-regime version of Indian reservations.
He grew up to become a musician, the frontman and saxophonist for an Afropop band called the Malopoets. He wore his hair in Rasta-length dreads. The band signed a record deal with Virgin.
The music was overtly political: anti-regime, pro-resistance. The Malopoets' songs, the article noted, were mostly sung in the Sotho language and "turned out to be prayers for families torn apart through South Africa's resettlement policies, or exhortations to 'fight for your rights.
Back home, Patrick was constantly harassed by police, detained, beaten up, released. He does not remember how many times he was arrested. Yes, I did. Those were not happy times. But I had to live them. You go through this kind of thing, you don't know anything else, you deal with it. You find a way not to be arrested. You are always trying to avoid trouble because trouble can be anything. Patrick met Christine in Johannesburg after a show one night.
She had moved to the country some years before with her then-husband, a white South African veterinarian she had met in Switzerland. After a time, she divorced the vet to be with Patrick. She was arrested and detained by police. She says she received threatening phone calls in the middle of the night. Whites weren't allowed in the townships, so she sneaked into Mamelodi to see Patrick.
She became pregnant with his child Thabo's older brother Kgomotso. The apartheid regime had so-called miscegenation laws: No romance or "interbreeding" between white and black.
For this transgression, he faced 10 years in prison. She faced an enforced abortion. In , they fled South Africa and apartheid. And then to see that Thabo has to go through this same kind of thing He has keenly followed the news of the killings of African-Americans by police in the U.
When he learned about what happened to Thabo in April, he says he felt enormous relief. They only broke his leg. She said, "What about all the people that cannot afford this type of lawyer and get squashed by the system? Budenholzer, in a one-on-one meeting with Sefolosha, said he thought he should fight.
Patrick Sefolosha told his son, "It is a matter of And looking at this, you think, 'Maybe this same type of thing happens to many more people. I am in a position where I can prove I'm innocent. Not many other people have that chance. When Spiro informed the DA's office that Sefolosha was refusing the deal, prosecutors came back with a sweetened offer: They would strike the community service.
But it wasn't enough. Sefolosha had made up his mind: It was either a full dismissal like the one Antic had received, or trial. He's a professional athlete, a member of the NBA. He can do what he wants to do. You are going to hear about how on April 8, , the defendant displayed a sense of entitlement and disdain. Entitlement, in that he shouldn't have to comply to the rules everybody else has to. A small bearded man, he was one of two ADAs assigned to prosecute Sefolosha.
When Sefolosha spurned the deal, the government seemed to go after him with the full weight of the office. According to a person with knowledge of the DA's office, investigators were temporarily pulled off a homicide case to assist in Sefolosha's prosecution. In the first minutes of the first day of the trial's proceedings, before jury selection had begun, one of the ADAs requested what's called a Parker warning.
In essence this meant the DA wanted the court to consider Sefolosha a flight risk. The DAs even tried to add a fourth count -- harassment of a police officer in the second degree -- to the crimes Sefolosha was already accused of. Harassment wasn't on the original criminal complaint. The judge dismissed it. During jury selection, the DAs asked a curious question of the pool of 25 Manhattanites, only three of whom were black. Would you be able to remain unbiased if the only witnesses produced by the prosecution were police officers?
Shield No. Giacona is a member of the 10th Precinct's "cabaret unit" or "cabaret squad," which oversees the bars and nightclubs of Manhattan's upscale nightlife-heavy neighborhoods. The cabaret units make sure the crowds are orderly. They routinely deal with mouthy drunks. This is what you're going to deal with. It becomes secondhand to us. I really believe the more you stick your neck out, the more you're a target. I am scared for him. A man was down, bleeding from a stab wound. It would later be determined that this was Chris Copeland of the Pacers, formerly of the Knicks.
Two women were also cut as they tried to hold back the perpetrator. Colleagues of Giacona had approached the perpetrator with their guns drawn. He still had a switchblade in his hand; Copeland's driver, the hero of the hour, had him in a bear hug; he dropped the switchblade.
There was blood on the pavement. The injured male, in that moment, was judged "likely," as in likely to die. The order from the supervisory sergeant: Shut down 1 Oak and Artichoke, the all-night pizza place at 17th and 10th, immediately. Clear the block! As Giacona did this, he said, everyone was "very compliant. He asked them "politely" to leave.
They were, he said, more interested in mingling and talking to girls. He was forced to approach the males a fourth, a fifth, a sixth time. Then one of the males said to him, "You're mad you're a midget. I would be mad too if I were a midget.
He was just trying to do his job. They called to the stand Daniel Dongvort, 28, from Smithtown on Long Island -- formerly an emergency medical service responder, with an associate's degree in liberal arts from Empire State College -- almost four years on the force.
He too responded to the stabbing. He rendered first aid to the victim, Copeland who would, in fact, go on to survive his injuries , and helped him into an ambulance. He was then assigned to crime-scene security. Dongvort first saw the defendant speaking to Officer Giacona near the corner of 17th Street and 10th Avenue. The defendant, Dongvort said, was being mouthy: "He was calling him a midget repeatedly. But just then "another unknown male" grabbed Dongvort's attention. He tried to escort this other male away from the area.
As he was doing so, he could see out of the corner of his eye another of his colleagues and the defendant involved in some kind of commotion. He went over to assist. Post Long Island University -- on the force for more than three years. He first noticed the defendant because he was "not complying with instructions from Officer Giacona.
He "stepped in" before the defendant could make contact with Officer Dongvort. He took the defendant by his right arm. He informed the defendant he was under arrest and told him to put his hands behind his back. But the defendant refused. He resisted. He was "straightening his arms. Officer Dongvort came to assist in the arrest. So did several others, including Officer Giacona, who swept Sefolosha's legs. It was a "proper takedown," Caster said.
Officer Giacona put the handcuffs on. The five officers involved in the arrest of Thabo Sefolosha -- Giacona, Dongvort and Caster, as well as others named Michael O'Sullivan and Jordan Rossi -- were not made available for this story.
Giacona and Caster were later found guilty of unlawful abuse of authority, with recommended punishments of up to 15 days of docked vacation time for Giacona and formalized training for Caster.
Their union, the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, also declined to comment or make the officers' union-provided attorneys available for comment. The DA's office declined to comment as well. The accounts above are based on trial testimony and statements made by the officers to CCRB investigators. His father is Richard C.
Caster, 67 years old, a former All-Pro tight end with the Jets, Oilers, Saints and Redskins, who grew up in Mobile, Alabama, and played football on scholarship at Jackson State, a historically all-black college in Mississippi. In May , his senior year, police opened fire with shotguns on a group of Jackson State student protesters, killing two and injuring Not many people have that chance. He got Giacona to say he didn't really know how many times he'd approached Sefolosha to tell him to leave the block -- that the six times Giacona had sworn to, a number that appeared in the original criminal complaint, was potentially false.
The line of questioning suggested it was a high-side estimate put into the report to strengthen the case against Sefolosha.
Spiro got the officers to agree that, yes, when Sefolosha was arrested, there were many other civilians closer to the crime scene, as captured by the CCTV cameras.
He asked Giacona, "You've never seen the video of you walking by the Caucasian individuals and walking right up to Mr. Using NYPD documents he'd obtained from a friendly source within the department, Spiro showed that the officers originally wanted to charge Antic with attempting to punch Dongvort -- an allegation clearly refuted by the CCTV footage and the TMZ videos. Spiro noted that in the TMZ videos you can hear many voices saying many things but never the words "Put your hands behind your back" or "You're under arrest," which the officers testified they'd uttered repeatedly while trying to corral Sefolosha.
Spiro got Caster to agree that, yes, it was possible that Sefolosha was trying to give money to a homeless person and that maybe Sefolosha hadn't been making an aggressive move toward Dongvort at all. Then Spiro produced the homeless man. He chewed gum as he testified. He said his name was Amos Canty.
He looked to be in his late 40s or 50s. He testified that he "works" for the bouncers at 1 Oak, performing whatever tasks -- setting up partitions, hailing cabs for clubgoers -- they ask him to. He testified he's not above asking the VIPs for money, including Sefolosha on the morning of April 8, at the corner of 17th Street and 10th Avenue. He testified that Sefolosha tried to give him money but that he never got it because an officer intervened.
He testified that he then saw several cops take Sefolosha down. When Canty saw the 10th Precinct cops in the courtroom, he got scared. I had ID made from another country, yes. Wait, wait, I'm on trial here or something? Under direct examination, he'd testified that his mother gave him the nickname everyone on the street knows him by. When Alex Spiro said, "The defense calls Thabo Sefolosha," the player rose from the defendant's table in his bespoke suit, folded his length into the witness stand and sat there, slightly hunched.
His testimony under direct examination was efficient. I refuse. With several early questions, she seemed to suggest, to little effect, that Sefolosha and Antic had intended to cheat on their wives that night. As she probed for details on Sefolosha's decision to give money to the homeless person, her line of inquiry grew muddled. At times the jury looked bored. The lone black juror studied his fingernails.
Bartolomey's questions grew repetitive, and the judge, with frustration in his voice, began sustaining objections -- asked and answered -- that Spiro never actually made. But the district attorneys had a surprise. After the defense rested -- Spiro's final witness was Budenholzer, whose role was to laud Sefolosha's character -- the prosecution recalled to the stand Officers Caster and Dongvort.
They testified that they both knew the homeless man, who went by the name True, very well from their nightly tours with the cabaret squad. True, Dongvort said, was "definitely not" the person he had escorted away from Sefolosha's livery cab.
Tasked for the second straight game with playing against a much bigger player, Sefolosha helped control Kelly Olynyk, who finished with 12 points and was 4 for 8 from the field.
On certain plays when big men appeared uncovered in the paint, Sefolosha helped play safety in a manner of speaking and forced turnovers as the Heat tried to feed inside.
Has he done enough to make a case to be a full-time starter as long as Rudy Gobert is out? Sefolosha deferred. Spoelstra said in November that he thought Waiters simply had been trying to go for a loose ball. Gobert missed the game with a knee injury suffered against the Boston Celtics in December — not the same injury he dealt with after playing the Heat.
My dad being arrested, and just everything you could think of about apartheid. They lived it. My dad being from a township in South Africa. A musician traveling, and then my mom got pregnant with my older brother. They moved back to Switzerland. What were some of the bigger nightmares that they faced being a mixed couple in South Africa at the time?
It was very different for both of them. Just the racism as a way of society. Just the separation and everything. After a while it really got to her that it was just too crazy, you know? It was too much. And for my dad really it was not being free to do what he wanted to. You want to date a white girl and not be a criminal for it. You went to jail for it. They both wanted that relationship to work and decided to go to Switzerland.
Anything you remember in particular about what your parents went through when you were young? I was born in Switzerland. I remember the time in Switzerland. For me growing up, my dad was one of the first black guys that was in Switzerland. You know, there are a lot of second-generation and mixed children, and everything. But back then it was a rarity. My dad was a black man with dreadlocks, a musician, bringing some people from South Africa to do the music.
He plays the drum, the saxophone, and he sings. He had a band back then in South Africa that was pretty popular. They did songs with Virgin Records, and they were touring. They came to the U. So, he was really into music and people looked at him like an alien. It was a tough time. It was tough for him, it was tough for my mom and stuff for the family for a lot of years.
She went back to the house that she grew up in when she came back to Switzerland. Everything that people go through as kids, as teenagers, everything shapes you in many different ways. The things that I went through, with school, being one of the first, or the only black guy, in my whole school and stuff like that, all of that shapes you. Yeah, just a little. Again, racism is stupidity. I was a little taller than a lot of them so, they did less right in front of my face.
You hear stuff. For a lot of years, I was getting into fights when I was young. What do you remember about your arrival to America, and what was your dream when you were drafted with the 13th overall pick during the NBA draft in New York City?
The very first time I came to the U. And the U. I traveled from place to place [for pre-draft workouts], and the first thing that struck me was the size of things, buildings, cars, people. Sefolosha was then traded to the Chicago Bulls.
And then when I moved to Chicago, the thing that I really found interesting is, how people live separate lives. Black people one side. The white people on one side. The Latinos on one side. And, they barely mixed. So, I thought that was something different. All the racism is a thing of the past. So, you start living here and understanding a little bit of dynamic of things, yeah, it was surprising.
How drastically different was it being in Oklahoma City with the Thunder? It is segregated there, too …. To me, it felt more segregated in Chicago than Oklahoma City. I had a very good friend of mine there that played in Europe. I knew a mixed couple also in Oklahoma City. You got different views of the world. But, other than that, people are really nice.
I have nothing bad to say about Oklahoma City. The people are really nice. We met some people that were great people, good-hearted people. And, you know till this day we have them as friends. But every place has their good parts and bad parts. I know the history there is pretty deep and not all good. But, when I was [in Oklahoma] it felt good. It felt good, a good place to raise a family in many ways.
Did you ever go to the Black Wall Street Museum? And, a lot of it is almost a lie to me.
0コメント