Warning: This story includes quotations with racist and vulgar language as well as descriptions of violent attacks. Kathryn Wade marched up to the microphone in the City Council chambers before the meeting had even started with something to say. Wade is no stranger to the City Council in Antioch. Some of the issues being investigated include violent and excessive use of police dogs and eliciting false confessions. According to McDonnell, 45 officers β almost half of the entire department β had received the texts and did nothing.
Her words were directed at the council members, Mayor Lamar Thorpe, and Police Chief Steven Ford, who joined the department last year, after most of the text messages were sent. In the complaint, Wade said she came out of the house to see them striking her son, and that they beat him until he lost consciousness. The suit claims that police slammed Baldwin into the sidewalk, spread his legs and repeatedly struck him there. Antioch police claim Baldwin was drunk and combative.
He was charged with resisting arrest, but those charges were dropped. The lawsuit was settled out of court, with officers admitting no wrongdoing. Wade says the beating changed her son. He was depressed, riddled with anxiety, unable to hold down a job. That was the first of several incidents between Baldwin and Antioch police.
Wade says it was as if they were stalking him, harassing him every where he went. In , Baldwin died by suicide. Antioch police have not yet responded to requests for comment regarding subsequent interactions with Baldwin. But all that has changed. The shift happened both gradually and quickly. At first, Black people and other people of color moved here for the reasons everyone else did: bigger houses, better schools, a shot at the suburban American dream.
In the past decade or so, gentrification and exploding housing costs in cities such as San Francisco and Oakland drove displaced poor people here β especially people of color.
