The city of Boston has paid $1.3 million in restitution to a Black man who was arrested by the police as he was having a stroke.
Officers came across Al Copeland, 62, who was slumped in his car and nearly unconscious on the side of Massachusetts Avenue. Instead of calling for medical assistance, they arrested him, claiming to have smelled alcohol on him. Officers assumed that he was drunk.
Copeland told WBUR that he had not had a drink since 1995. He was unaware that he was having a stroke, but frightened, he pulled his vehicle over, hoping that somebody would find him.
“I was afraid,” he told the news station. “I say, well, at least if anything happens to me, somebody will find me.”
Officers took Copeland to the station. He could barely stand. According to police records, they left him to use the bathroom in a holding cell, where he fell to the ground and struck his head on the wall. Officers left him in the cell to “sleep it off.”
He said even when he was transported to Tufts Medical Center, medical providers also assumed he was drunk and left him in the emergency room for seven more hours. It wasn’t until they ran tests which proved that his system was free of drugs and alcohol that they realized that he’d suffered a stroke.
Two months later, Copeland says he woke up in rehab.
“I heard … they treated you like you was a drunk on the street,” he told WBUR. “That’s what I heard … and it pissed me off. Immediately, I went to: all these white addicts all over nodding all over the place, they treat me like I’m a drunk on the street.”
An investigation found two officers and a sergeant neglected their duties. None of the officers involved faced disciplinary action. The hospital which treated Copeland apologized and said it has since brought in social workers to help patients who cannot communicate. Tufts says it has also launched a center for diversity, equity, and inclusion to help address disparities in care.
