Who is Malice Green?
That question is the very first thing you see in the 70-minute documentary, Malice Green, Portrait inJustice.
It is the question photojournalist, Justin DePrekel asked me January 30th, 2023. We were on assignment in one of those giant, oversized news vans and were just shooting the breeze. I don’t even remember how it came up, but somehow we started talking about the killings of unarmed black people. I said the name, Malice Green. Justin said, “Who is Malice Green”?
I looked at him as if he’d grown a third eye. Justin is not just a news photographer, but he is a true journalist. He is always up on current affairs. He contributes to data gathering of stories, and often can correct and/or corroborate facts when his reporters are scripting. The fact that he didn’t know who Malice Green was or is was mind boggling to me. But he didn’t. And I realized that an entire generation of people may not know this important history of Detroit and, indeed, our Nation by not knowing the name.
I know the date we had the conversation because as soon as my colleague asked that question, I sent a text message to Wayne County Prosecutor, Kym Worthy asking if she could chat with me about Malice Green. She said she could.
I then called Chief James White of the Detroit Police Department and asked him if he would chat with me about Malice Green. He said he would.
I then called my news managers and said, “Hey, I’ve got a story I wanna work on.” And thus started a 16-month trek to re-introduce Malice Green and his story to our audience and Justin, and to find answers on what, if anything, has changed in the three decades since the murder of Malice Green and the subsequent convictions of the police officers who killed him.
Here are the basics. Malice Green was an unemployed steelworker who was beaten and killed by two Detroit police officers, November 5th, 1992.
Here is how the Police Lab (abbreviated) at the University of Michigan describes the incident:
On the night of November 5th, 1992 at approximately 10:30 pm, Malice Green drove his friend Ralph Fletcher home from a party store at a known location for drug activity. After Green dropped Fletcher off, an unmarked police car that had been following Green since they left the party store pulled in front of his car. Plainclothes officers Walter Buzdyn and Larry Nevers got out of their unmarked “booster car” and went on either side of Green’s vehicle. Then, Officer Nevers asked for his driver’s license and Green reportedly did not respond. Green reached for his glove box, with a “balled fist”. In response to this, Officer Nevers yelled to drop what was in his fist as he suspected that Green had crack cocaine in his hand. When Green did not comply, the officers then jumped into the car and began to beat his hand with their metal flashlights.
I arrived at Channel 4 in October of 1992. The Malice Green killing was the first BIG story I participated in covering.
Back in those days Detroit Police carried oversized black metal flashlights as standard issued gear. Walter Budzyn and Larry Nevers, two of seven officers who encountered Green at the corner of 23nd and Warren on Detroit’s West side, beat Malice Green as many as 14 times in the head with those flashlights. Witnesses heard the officers yelling, “open your hand”.
This was seven months after police officers were acquitted of the brutal beating of motorist, Rodney King in Los Angeles.
Kym Worthy, who was an assistant prosecutor at the time, made the decision to charge the officers with second degree murder. Of the seven, Budzyn and Nevers were convicted of second-degree murder. It would be the very first time in the history of the United States that police officers were charged, tried and CONVICTED for the killing of an unarmed black person. The key word being: Convicted.
I could go on and on in detail about what happened next. It will go faster if you watch the documentary, which I will admit will be tough to watch for many. What I want to talk about is the human toll it took to get the documentary done and to get hard questions asked and answered.
In short, it was brutal. It was agonizing. It was depressing. For 16 months I immersed myself in the killings of unarmed black people at the hands of police.
I can tell you that there has been a long parade of high profile, low profile and no profile killings of unarmed blacks at the hands of police throughout our Nation’s history—and particularly in the last thirty-two years. And as I dug deep into the cases to try to figure out what happened, I was plunged into sadness.
As I looked at many differences in how white motorists are treated when stopped by some police verses how minorities are treated under similar circumstances when the encounter turns fatal, I was outraged.
My understanding is that the presence of a weapon or something that can be used as a weapon does not mean someone is armed and dangerous—it is simply the presence of a weapon or an implement that can be used as such. Unless it is brandished, until it is brandished and only if it is brandished, only then does it become an implement in which deadly force is warranted—and that supposition also posed a painful lesson when it came to matters of race.
This is particularly important in a State like Michigan which has open carry laws. It begs the question if a black man and a white man walked into a department store and both had guns visibly holstered—if they would be treated the same. The answer, based on my research, is absolutely not—which sets up another scenario of different rules and different tools for different races.
It also begs the question of why the simple color of skin seems to weigh so heavily in fatal encounters with police when there is no weapon or apparent threat.
Enter artist, Sydney G. James. She is a talented mural artist from Detroit. I had photographed her work on various structures for my collection of building art before I knew who she was. But when I became aware that she had painted a mural of Malice Green—one of three—and the only one still standing, I tracked her down through social media and gave her a call. I wanted to know why she had painted his portrait. I wanted to know her story. And it is in the telling the story of Malice Green and the last thirty years through her words, her voice, her art and her tears that is so dynamic and compelling to me.
Often, I worked well into the night after my dayshift on pulling data, looking for resources, contacting experts. My husband would come to my office door and ask me to knock-off for the night, which by then was usually morning. Even when I did, I couldn’t sleep. It was hard to function, at times. I was swimming in a pool of the killings of my own people and the only thing that seemed to be the common contributing factor to their fatal encounters with police appeared to be the color of their skin. I watched incident video after incident video and dissected each carefully—sometimes with stopwatch in hand. I read report after report. I checked my facts and checked them again. And with each page of a script I wrote, I suffered from what I had been learning.
The script for the documentary is a total of forty-one pages. From my count it took five photographers, at least three editors, two producers and an intern to pull this off with me. The documentary was edited and then re-edited and then re-edited. There were a total 16 different versions of the script. Each one more in-depth than the next as I continued to work and uncover new information throughout the months… and yes, Justin was both a photographer and editor on the project and so by the time it was completed, he knew exactly who Malice Green was.
My Executive Producer, Ro Coppola and I had—welllllll, let’s just call them substantive conversations when we viewed the documentary together for the first time. I fought hard to keep the language in as we heard it and the video as we saw it without softening the visuals or editing segments to make people feel more comfortable with what they were seeing. Between the two of us, we got to a place where the documentary is fair and delivers information as it is. I can say that what you will see is the ‘director’s cut’ so to speak. I am happy in terms of quality and relevant journalism with the final product. It’s a story we need to know if we are to become better.
So, what do I want to get accomplished with this documentary? I want people to be educated, enlightened and enraged. I want it to start new conversations about why this keeps happening. A Harvard study revealed that black people and minorities are three times more likely to die in encounters with police than white people. WHY? Why is anyone who is unarmed being killed by police? WHY?
I want you to pay particular attention to two case studies in the documentary. Philando Castile, a black motorist who was killed by Minneapolis police in 2016 with a side-by-side incident dissection of Merak Burr, a white motorist who was stopped by police in Ohio in 2020, threatened to kill them twice… and drove off without any law enforcement seriously looking for him. I want you to watch that segment and ask yourself—why did one man die and the other man drive away without so much as a scuffle?
You’ll see in the documentary how, with the help of an intern, I created a basic database that shows how many unarmed black people have been killed by police—and how many police officers have NOT faced any consequences.
I also put the media under the microscope. Oh yeah, I do. Because it is HOW WE the media cover stories that often sets the narrative.
In this documentary we dissect peaceful and lawful Black Lives Matter protests—and yes, Chief White answers questions about his own department’s response after the killing of George Floyd. And we juxtapose those incidents with the January 6th riots and insurrection against the U.S. Capitol. There was nothing peaceful about that protest. There was serious and royal butt-kicking of police officers outnumbered by a mostly white crowd of rioters—yet only one single shot was fired, and that was inside the Capitol as rioters breached the Halls of Congress.
We talk to educators, researchers, and yes, everyday people and try to gain an understanding of not just what happened thirty years ago, but what’s still happening today.
We also address changes in police departments and policing policies. No questions were off the table when I interviewed Prosecutor Worthy and Chief White. Every question I asked was answered and the beauty of having plenty of time to tell this story is that I didn’t have to edit soundbites to satisfy a timeslot. Everyone got to finish their sentences and we hear their whole, unedited thoughts.
I want the audience to have the courage to watch the entire 70 minutes. It will be hard for many. But I want people to watch and talk about it amongst themselves. Discuss it with their local police chiefs. Talk about it in schools and with friends and with strangers. And maybe, just maybe start the thread of a conversation that will lead to serious self-examination.
And on a final note, I think it is so incredibly and hauntingly poetic that the death of Malice Green was the very first big story I participated in covering when I arrived at Channel 4—and it will be the last big story I cover on my way out the door to early retirement.
All the best,
P.