A Black Prince George’s County police officer is afraid for his safety after he reported a fellow officer for a use-of-force violation against a suspect who turned out to be misidentified.
In October 2020, Officer Michael Brown had been on duty in the Maryland county with fellow officer Cpl. Darryl Wormuth. Together, they tracked down an armed 17-year-old suspect named Kayvon Hines. After successfully restraining him, Wormuth struck the teen in the throat.
Authorities soon found that Hines was wrongly identified as the suspect the officers were meant to be after.
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Brown told NBC4 Washington he was alarmed because their department was never trained to put their hands on anyone’s neck.
Brown, with the assistance of his partner, PGPD officer Thomas Lester, reported Wormuth, resulting in Wormuth getting charged with misconduct in office and second-degree assault.
Wormuth was originally sentenced to 45 days in jail and had his police powers suspended for the assault and misconduct charges. But the sentence was put on hold when new evidence came to light.
During the investigation, officials found a long series of racist exchanges on Wormuth’s phone between him and other officers working within the department. One text exchange showed Wormuth calling African-Americans “f*cking animals” and referring to Black police officers as “Black people in a white man’s job.”
Yet despite stepping up to do the right thing, Brown was quite discouraged during Wormuth’s trial when he saw how many of his fellow mostly white officers supported Wormuth. Brown openly admitted to the fact that he felt that his department was doing little to protect him from his co-workers throughout the process of the investigation.
According to Brown, he and the officers that stood with him have now…
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