As issues of race and diversity come to a head on campus, a disturbing account of a Public Safety assault on a student has emerged. As you may be aware, Paulie Lowther ’13 was found at the Freeman Athletic Center on Tuesday, October 30, and charged with criminal trespass and breach of peace. After being released from custody, Lowther, who is African-American, was diagnosed with a concussion.
Accounts of what transpired during the encounter vary.
According to the Hartford Courant, which sources its information from the police report, “Lowther tried to run away from public safety officers when found at 12:10 a.m.” Police say he appeared drunk when taken into custody. (Lowther says he was under the legal limit.) Public Safety claims he refused to identify himself and fled when found.
Wesleying Editor Zach Schonfeld ’13 visited Lowther’s house on Fountain earlier this week to get his side of the story.
According to Lowther, he was invited to a pool party in Freeman on the night of Tuesday, October 30th, which was during Hurricane Sandy. He entered through the side door, which had been propped open by the organizers of the party. When he arrived, other students were in the pool. Before joining them, he got in the sauna.
When in the sauna, “[he] heard a bunch of people yell ‘P-Safe’ and a lot of running.” He decided to not run. A female Public Safety officer arrived. Staying in the sauna, he told her his Wes ID number and that he was a student. The officer “said it didn’t match anything on file,” according to Lowther.
After male Public Safety officers arrived, he was told to get dressed in the locker room. The story continues in his own words from here:
I felt an officer grab me from behind and ask what I was doing here. I told him I was a student. I told him I was a student. Repeatedly said I was a member of the track team, where I live … He took the back of my neck and pushed me into the concrete wall. I was not resisting; my body was fairly limp at this point, so my head hit the wall fairly hard. I had cuts on the inside of my ear and a bruise on the side of my cheekbone, and cuts on my knuckles from bracing myself against the wall…
They kept asking me, “Who are you? What are you doing here?” I told the first officer that there was barely any relay of information between the officers. And I really just didn’t understand why I was being taken into a hold.
After my head hit the wall, it was a little shocking. I asked the officer why he thought that was necessary. He just kept telling me, “Get on the ground.” [At no point] did the Public Safety officer say I used any physicality towards them… Later on I found out I had in fact suffered a concussion. All I could say was, “I’m on the track team, on the track team, here are my keys, here’s my address.”
At that point another officer walked from around the corner. He again began questioning me about who I was and all these things. At this point I was very frantic. I was still in the wake of getting a concussion. A little frantic at this point, trying to rattle off anything I can tell them. Nothing seems to be getting through to the guy who came from around the corner. He struck me three times in the face, open palm, right in my temple. Two minutes later they get a call from the dispatch saying, “Oh, we found his name on file.” Meaning they found that I’m actually a student. They let me stand up, they let me go to the bathroom. I repeatedly asked about their protocol and they barely made any eye contact with me after they found out I’m a student.
The Middletown police showed up after all this happened and P-Safe was allowed to brief them on the story as they saw it before I was even able to talk to the MPD. And the MPD officers never asked me my side of the story—they only asked me how I got into the building.
I’m not sure what their thought process was. I really don’t know. After my head was smashed into the wall, I became so frantic that I didn’t know what happened next. You get me face down naked on the floor and then you smack me three more times… What do you want me to give you?
Never once did the officer state I used any sort of physicality towards them.
At an SJB hearing Thursday, November 8, Lowther was given a deferred suspension. According to the Argus, “additional violations during the probationary period will result in suspension or dismissal.” Director of Public Safety Dave Meyer declined to comment for this article, except to say that “the Courant account needs to be looked at.”
For more information, here’s the Argus’ coverage of the incident.
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why are we even going to collages like these,,,,when will people wake up and realized not a damn thing change,,you think because we can drive anywhere in the bus we are safe..hello this is just crazy,,hey ask me if am surprise hell no,,,welcome to the real world,,
The problem with P-Safe is NOT that accidents like this are mistakes, or aberrations from the norm, and that we need to make P-Safe “better.” NO. The PROBLEM with P-Safe is that they do EXACTLY WHAT THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO DO: i.e. make this campus safer for wealthier, usually white students, and less safe for students of color, poor students and non-students. With the end of need-blind, this elite population is going to grow, and P-Safe is going to need to continue making this campus safer by doing exactly things like this: harassing students (and often men) of color, dehumanizing us by equating us with Middletown residents, and assaulting us using BS justifications. Hate to say it, but in the long term, this incident fits in perfectly with Wesleyan’s future vision. THIS is Wesleyan 2020.
WHOA there– “dehumanizing us by equating us with Middletown residents”?
maybe you weren’t meaning to dehumanize Middletown residents in that statement or suggest that they are not, in fact human, but let me just point out that they is NOT in any way an okay statement to make.
What’s fucked up, I think, is that having our own security force means that it has inherently different priorities and values than that of the MPD. Implicitly, it’s almost always a force for protecting Wesleyan students against Middletown residents, and we wonder why town-gown relations are so strained…
What’s fucked up is the university being sued, on the one hand, by a young woman because she thinks it didn’t do enough to keep her away from a building it had no official affiliation with, while OTOH, a naked drunk guy is trying to build the opposite case, that the same university had no business trying to keep him out of a closed-building in the middle of a weather emergency – a situation even more inherently dangerous than a fraternity party. Seems like Wesleyan can’t catch a break from its supposedly “mature” and “independent” students.
What are you talking about? I interviewed Paul for this piece. He has never suggested that “the University had no business trying to keep him out of a closed-building in the middle of a weather emergency.” Quite the contrary—he opted to stay and cooperate with the officer instead of fleeing.
This is about the measure of needless force and physical violence that was used against him seemingly without due cause.
completely believe paulie over these chump mall cops we got on the force but he WOULD get arrested with no shirt on lol
This is NOT the first time P-Safe has been accused of racial profiling, excessive use of force or wanton attitudes toward Middletown residents. Indeed, every year I have known Wesleyan, incidents like this one, though less severe, have cropped up. Wesleyan has a RACISM problem, and ELITISM problem, an ENTITLEMENT problem. Until we fix these things, Wes will continue to have a parasitic relationship with Middletown, and will continue to be a space where students of color – often already tokenized by the administration and marginalized by the predominantly white student body – will never be safe. ATTN STUDENTS: time to blockade the fuck out of the Office of Public Safety until some accountability occurs. The administration cannot be allowed to continue hiding behind their crimes and staying silent on issues of injustice.
so, beating up a person is ok as long as they’re a middletown resident and not a student?
i wonder how many similar incidents between Psafe and middletown residents have occurred
If this is true its really messed up, but I find it hard to believe. You put yourself in a tough position right away by going into Freeman and getting drunk when you’re not allowed to be there…just saying.
read the argus article. there were other student witnesses!
“Witnesses” who didn’t see anything.
And, clearly, vision is the only sense capable of witnessing an event.
That’s why the testimony of a blind person is never acceptable in a
court of law. And why a blind person can’t enjoy music, or have a
conversation, or feel the shudder of a hard, heavy object striking a
nearby wall at high speed.
what a mess, his word against their word against witnesses words… clearly he shouldn’t have been in the sauna during the hurricane, but the violence is immediately unacceptable.
What the fuck
Wait…this is REALLY fucked up
I like the sauna. The sauna was nice.
Nicer when the building is open. It’s more relaxing without the handcuffs.