{"id":53229,"date":"2020-06-19T18:55:01","date_gmt":"2020-06-20T00:55:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/amid-black-lives-matter-protests-charges-dropped-against-durango-woman\/"},"modified":"2020-06-20T00:55:01","modified_gmt":"2020-06-20T00:55:01","slug":"amid-black-lives-matter-protests-charges-dropped-against-durango-woman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/amid-black-lives-matter-protests-charges-dropped-against-durango-woman\/","title":{"rendered":"Amid Black Lives Matter protests, charges dropped against Durango woman"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Angelia
Angelia Liggins was charged with a felony for giving the La Plata County Sheriff\u2019s Office an incorrect name. But this week, the District Attorney\u2019s Office in Durango dismissed the charge, saying any inkling of \u201csubconscious racism\u201d deserves serious consideration. However, the district attorney said the Sheriff\u2019s Office did nothing wrong in its handling of Liggins.<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The 6th Judicial District attorney announced this week that he is dropping felony charges against a Durango resident on Juneteenth, as protests across the country and in downtown Durango denounce racial disparities in the criminal justice system.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a huge relief,\u201d Angelia Liggins, the 22-year-old defendant, told The Durango Herald<\/em>. \u201cIt would have had a huge impact on school, work, every aspect of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Liggins said she believes she was racially stereotyped as a Black woman by the La Plata County Sheriff\u2019s deputy involved in her arrest, even though she made mistakes.<\/p>\n

District Attorney Christian Champagne said it is the role of law enforcement to redouble their efforts to erase racial disparities in the criminal justice system.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we take race out of the equation entirely, we are ignoring the historical trauma Black people have faced for years,\u201d Champagne said in a phone interview. \u201cIt\u2019s not fair.\u201d<\/p>\n

Liggins went to Walmart in Durango to buy popcorn and Kool-Aid for a movie night with her roommates on a cold evening in November 2019.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, local law enforcement agencies received a report that a man driving a black Mazda sedan was throwing shopping carts and harassing employees at the same Walmart. As the employee made the call, the man had left the store and driven north on South Camino del Rio, away from the scene, the employee told dispatchers.<\/p>\n

Liggins exited the Walmart with her purchased items and got into a gold sedan to leave. As she pulled away, she noticed a La Plata County Sheriff\u2019s vehicle following her out of the parking lot.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew he was going to stop me,\u201d Liggins said. \u201cI had a bad feeling it would be worst-case scenario.\u201d<\/p>\n

Liggins\u2019 previous experiences living in Durango and dealing with the Sheriff\u2019s Office made her think she would be stopped, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey drive by, shine a light in my house to see if I\u2019m doing something,\u201d Liggins said in an interview.<\/p>\n

In anticipation of what she thought was to come, Liggins pulled into the closest parking space on the side of the building and got out of the car, she said.<\/p>\n

The sheriff\u2019s deputy thought this was suspicious behavior, and got out of his vehicle with a flashlight to speak with Liggins.<\/p>\n

An incident report from the Sheriff\u2019s Office says the deputy \u201csaw a Black, what I thought at the time to be male, subject running out of the front door and get into a gold sedan.\u201d<\/p>\n

The deputy also wrote that as the \u201csubject was getting into the vehicle, I saw several small white bags fall onto the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n

The deputy asked a Durango police officer to search near where Liggins parked for the small white bags.<\/p>\n

But no bags were ever found.<\/p>\n

Liggins said she did not drop small white bags, and she doesn\u2019t remember dropping anything else in the parking lot. She said it\u2019s possible the deputy used that as justification to follow her out of the parking lot.<\/p>\n

The deputy followed Liggins to \u201csee if it was possibly the vehicle or subject from the harassment call,\u201d the report reads.<\/p>\n

After approaching Liggins, the deputy realized she was a woman and not the subject of the harassment call but asked for her identification information.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wasn\u2019t completely innocent,\u201d Liggins said.<\/p>\n

She had been driving without a valid driver\u2019s license, and had a $500 warrant for a previous encounter with police, for which she didn\u2019t show up for court. But she said the initial contact from the deputy, who was unaware of her warrant, felt like racial profiling.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was scared,\u201d Liggins said.<\/p>\n

So she gave the deputy a fake name, Angelia White. Giving law enforcement a false name is a Class 6 felony.<\/p>\n

\"Smith\"
Smith<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

La Plata County Sheriff Sean Smith said he asked the district attorney to dismiss the charge against Liggins, because \u201csomeone too scared to go to jail\u201d shouldn\u2019t be charged with a felony.<\/p>\n

\u201cHave I seen racial bias in policing? Absolutely, but that is not the case here,\u201d Smith said in an interview with the Herald<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In his previous role at a youth outreach program with the U.S. Department of Justice in Oklahoma City, Smith set up after-school safe havens and tutoring for kids to help them avoid falling into gangs in the area.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw racial bias in policing in my two years there, but I haven\u2019t seen racial bias in policing in my 20 years here,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n

Smith showed the Herald<\/em> the full, 51-minute video of the interaction with Liggins taken from the deputy\u2019s body camera.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have nothing to hide,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

But some of the comments documented on video felt racist to Liggins, she said.<\/p>\n

At one point, the deputy calls for backup. The deputy tells Liggins, \u201cI have a feeling he will probably know who you are,\u201d suggesting the responding officer will know who Liggins is, presumably from previous run-ins.<\/p>\n

Smith said the deputy made the remark because the sergeant who was responding has a \u201crobotic memory\u201d for cars, people and addresses in the area.<\/p>\n

Another officer on scene can be heard on the video saying, \u201cI\u2019ve been watching this car for a while. It doesn\u2019t have anything on it,\u201d suggesting it wasn\u2019t suspected of being involved in illegal activities. It is unexplained why law enforcement had been \u201cwatching\u201d the car in the first place.<\/p>\n

At least four law enforcement officers and vehicles had surrounded Liggins during the course of the incident, which Smith said he would discuss with Durango Police Chief Bob Brammer about modifying in the future.<\/p>\n

Given the protests and backlash against law enforcement after the death of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis, Smith said the Sheriff\u2019s Office will adapt if need be.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know how it feels to be Angelia,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

But Smith said the deputies and police officers who arrived were lenient with Liggins. They let her keep music playing from her phone and offered to let her sit in one of the patrol cars while they waited for the fingerprint scanner, because it was cold out.<\/p>\n

After obtaining Liggins\u2019 correct identity through the fingerprint scanner, the deputy arrested Liggins and took her to the county jail, where she spent the next two days.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a record of her, she has been in our jail before,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n

The bond for a Class 6 felony is $3,000, but Liggins was released on $1,500 bail.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe tradition in law enforcement is trying to get it right,\u201d Smith said, \u201cbut we don\u2019t always.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Champagne\"
Champagne<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

After closely reviewing the case, Champagne, the district attorney, said dismissing it was the right thing to do.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything the sheriff did was justifiable,\u201d Champagne said. \u201cHe was just checking in \u2013 what if she had been the victim of the disturbance?\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the past two or three weeks, negotiations between prosecutors and Liggins\u2019 attorney ramped up, Champagne said.<\/p>\n

The District Attorney\u2019s Office offered a plea agreement that would have allowed Liggins to plead guilty to a misdemeanor, but Liggins and her attorney refused.<\/p>\n

Champagne decided to dismiss the charges, saying in today\u2019s day in age, if there is any inkling that \u201csubconscious racism\u201d was involved, it deserves serious consideration.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t expect it,\u201d Liggins said. \u201cI thought my wrong would outweigh (the sheriff\u2019s) stigma.\u201d<\/p>\n

O\u2019Shay Neil, a friend of Liggins\u2019 and an activist with the Black Lives Matter chapter in Los Angeles, said the deputy\u2019s decision to follow Liggins is \u201canother example of officers abusing their power.\u201d<\/p>\n

He joined Black Lives Matter to speak out against police brutality after watching Liggins\u2019 younger sister get \u201croughed up\u201d by police officers in North Dakota.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt starts a cycle, and it\u2019s hard for the person to get out,\u201d Neil said.<\/p>\n

ehayes@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Angelia Liggins, 22, says she felt stereotyped by local law enforcement<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":53230,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1078,28,1901,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-53229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-6th-judicial-district","tag-headlines","tag-la-plata-county-sheriff","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53229\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53229"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=53229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}