Desmond Clark Was an Informant, Police Did Request Leniency

Two magistrates have confirmed that Desmond Clark was providing information to police and that police requested leniency because of it.  I’m just going to warn you right here that I’m pretty pissed off at the moment, so this post may not be the most well-organized, concise thing you’ll read today.

It’s not clear to me whether the mayor, the Chief of Police, and/or the head of the drug unit were lying when they said Clark wasn’t an informant.  They may not have known that Clark was providing information to some police officers.  But, if they were going to go out there and deny it so emphatically, they should have made sure.  When Danny Jones started giving his statement yesterday, at first it sounded like he was trying to parse his words:

Desmond Clark was not, was never a sanctioned, paid, continuous, . . .

At this point I was thinking Jones was choosing his words carefully so he could deny Clark was an informant.

. . . any kind of informant for the Charleston Police Department or any law enforcement agency that I am aware of in this area.

Then when he added “any kind of informant,” I gave him the benefit of the doubt.  Guess I was being naive.

True, Clark was apparently not a paid informant.

Paid informants are credible enough to be used in court cases, wear a wire or buy drugs for police. But there are others who give useful information to police who are not paid. They can give police good information, but they wouldn’t be used in a court case, often because of their long criminal histories.

But he was providing information to the police, and they cut him breaks because of it.  And it looks to me like what caused this situation was that trying to fight gun and drug crime was a higher priority for the police than pursuing abusers.

If you want to read something really depressing, scan through the Gazette’s compilation of Desmond Clark’s criminal record.  You read incident after incident of Clark abusing Na’lisha Gravely—punching her in the face, punching her in the face again, kicking her in the ribs, hitting her in the head with a handgun, choking her and slamming her to the ground, threatening to kill her, dragging her by the hair and shoving her into a car against her will, choking her, forcing her into a car again, firing a gun into the air, grabbing her by the neck, forcing her to the ground, stabbing her in the arm, punching her in the stomach, and finally, shooting her multiple times and killing her.

And in reading through all of that, you see that he was in jail a little bit here and there, but he always ended up being released on bail, until he was finally sentenced to probation.  Several of the charges against him (not all of them involving Gravely) were dismissed because either the police officer didn’t show up to testify or because of delay in issuing an indictment.

What’s depressing is that you know in reading what happened to Gravely how it was likely to end.  Reading through Clark’s record is like watching a horror movie—it’s just violence after violence and you know what’s coming at the end of it.  And you know that all of the abuse listed in Clark’s criminal record was only a part of what she went through.  She was surely punched, kicked, choked, and who knows what else far more than is reflected in Clark’s rap sheet.  And it fucking pisses me off and makes me feel sick.

And Danny Jones should fucking be ashamed of himself for implying that Desmond Clark could have been locked up if only Na’lisha Gravely hadn’t been a “reluctant witness.”  And whoever wrote this Gazette editorial yesterday should pull his or her head out of his or her ass as well:

The teenage mother evidently was part of the problem, because she had failed to prosecute Desmond Clark, 22, after previous attacks. In fact, she was riding quietly in his vehicle just before the murder and said nothing to a Dunbar officer who stopped them.

One of the magistrates who spoke to the Gazette stated the obvious, sad reality of Gravely’s situation:

One of the two magistrates who say police asked for leniency on Clark considered what might have been going through Gravely’s mind if she knew Clark was working with police.

“She’s probably thinking, ‘Hey, you know, if he’s working for the police, what happens?’ … If he ever said to her, ‘Look I work for police. You file what you want to. I’ll be out of jail.’ What could she do?” the magistrate asked.

Exactly.  She probably felt helpless.  She’s not going to testify against him knowing that the police are cutting him breaks, because if she does, she’ll just get beaten and abused even worse.  She was not “part of the problem,” and it’s pretty fucking insensitive to say that she was.  The Gazette editorial even asked that age-old question:

[W]hy did she keep returning to her barbaric boyfriend?

That question is always asked as if things are just that simple.  Your boyfriend or husband beats you up?  Just leave.  Apparently these two were not even living with each other (it’s unclear whether that was ever the case).  You have to be pretty clueless to think that Gravely could have simply broken up with Clark and ended the violence.  How can anyone read the things that he did to her and still think it was as simple as Gravely not “returning to her barbaric boyfriend?”

What would you—Danny Jones and Gazette editorialist—have suggested that Gravely do?  The most dangerous time for a woman who is being abused is when she tries to leave. Men like Clark don’t let the objects of their obsession and violence just walk away.  Men like Clark are manipulative and controlling.

This is a guy who tracked her down at her grandmother’s house and dragged her out to his car and forced her into it, firing a warning shot.  In another incident, he forced her into his car, shot at her, then drove around for hours until she managed to escape the vehicle.  During a traffic stop, do you think she’s going to lean over and say, “Excuse me officer, could you help me?”  She wouldn’t be paranoid to think that Clark might just drive off if she did that.  Based on Clark’s history of always getting released, why would she think that asking a police officer for help would make her any safer?

And do you think she knew at the time of that traffic stop that Clark might kill her later that day?  I’m guessing that given the amount and severity of the violence she faced, probably every day felt like a day that he might kill her.

I hate the term “domestic battery” or “domestic assault” or even “domestic violence.”  Why do we distinguish between a man punching his girlfriend in the face in her house and a man punching some guy in the face out on the street?  Why are there two separate crimes—battery and domestic battery?  They both carry the exact same sentence in West Virginia’s criminal code, as do assault and domestic assault.

Domestic violence is not just a personal problem.  It’s not just an isolated problem or a family problem. Someone else could easily have ended up injured or dead on Saturday as Clark was chasing after Gravely.  Luckily, that didn’t happen, but this guy was obviously a danger not just to Gravely, but to the whole community.

Remember what can happen when police think an incident is “just a domestic dispute.” I’m not trying to be sensational by suggesting that the West Side Taco Bell could have turned into a Virginia Tech situation.  I’m suggesting that police and the public need to understand that men who commit violence against their wives and girlfriends are also threats to society at large.  And in this situation, I feel like police didn’t prioritize all of those domestic incidents because they were more concerned with catching the really bad guys—the guys with the guns and drugs.  Nevermind the fact that their informant was one of those guys too.

Update:  Desmond Clark’s mother was arrested today for battery against Na’lisha Gravely that occurred on the same date and at the same location of Clark’s domestic battery charge in May of this year.  Jesus.