November 20, 2014 — Michael McDonald, left, and DuPree Lytle hold photos of themselves that were taken shortly after a group of police officers allegedly beat them up while they were being arrested near the intersection of Dr. MLK Jr Ave and Second St in downtown Memphis on July 4th of 2011. Their arrests were nullified during an investigation that found six officers in violation of MPD’s excessive force policy. (Brad Vest/The Commercial Appeal)

SHARE October 26, 2015 — Robert Skelton shows a photo on his cellphone taken from outside the DoubleTree Hotel in downtown Memphis from July 3rd 2011 when Alexander Haydel shot and killed Arthur Warren, 49, and officer Timothy Warren, 39. (Brad Vest/The Commercial Appeal) October 27, 2015 — A section of the stairwell in the DoubleTree Hotel in downtown Memphis near where officer Timothy Warren was shot and killed. Robert Skelton, a now-retired lieutenant who oversaw the arrests of McDonald and Lytle, led a group of officers into the hotel earlier the same evening responding to a shots fired call on the radio. Within the hotel Skelton and his officers found Arthur Warren, 49, fatally wounded, before moving to the stairwell where they found officer Timothy Warren shot. (Brad Vest/The Commercial Appeal) October 28, 2015 — A now empty parking lot, bottom right, is seen where the entertainment district unit police station once stood inside of an unused MLGW credit union building. Officers consoled one another in the parking lot around the now torn down police station drinking beer and liquor as part of a time-honored tradition the MPD called “Choir Practice”. McDonald and Lytle were arrested by officers who ran from the lot and cuffed them on the east side of Second street. (Brad Vest/The Commercial Appeal) October 27, 2015 — Michael McDonald and DuPree Lytle stopped to rest near the police station on their way back to their car along with three women who were in their group on Beale Street that night. When they were approached by an out-of-uniform officer, an argument broke out, then a fight. McDonald and Lytle ended up in the small grassy section between the sidewalk at the corner of Dr. MLK Jr Avenue and Second Street behind the Gibson Guitar Factory. (Brad Vest/The Commercial Appeal) Related Coverage Appeals court refuses to dismiss police brutality claim

By Marc Perrusquia of The Commercial Appeal

The blows kept landing, one after another. Pain clouded DuPree Lytle's mind as he began blacking out, his thoughts drifting to his family, his church — his future.

Especially his future.

The more he reconsiders that day — July 4, 2011 — when a group of Memphis Police Department officers allegedly beat him and a friend as they lay handcuffed, his greatest fear wasn't pain or injury but what was ahead.

What future is there for a black man in Memphis with a police record?

"I could not believe I was in jail. I just couldn't believe it,'' says Lytle, now 25. "I wasn't scared, but I was scared for my future. You know what I'm saying? I have tried so hard to keep my record clean.''

As it turned out, his one arrest would be wiped clean by an internal police investigation that found six officers in violation of MPD's excessive force policy. The department's investigation painted an ugly picture:

Lytle was beaten so severely his face was swollen and bruised, a tooth broken.

His friend, Michael McDonald, suffered a broken nose, damaged eye socket, and an assortment of other disfiguring injuries.

Despite the findings of the internal investigation, prosecutors declined to charge the officers with crimes, finding too little evidence to support indictments. So the two men, both former University of Memphis football players, are pursuing monetary damages against MPD in a lawsuit still working its way through the federal courts years after that bloody encounter south of Beale Street.

Claims of police misconduct are hardly rare in Memphis. MPD internal affairs records and the federal courts are full of allegations of police wrongdoing and, like the growing national debate, raise questions about the line between aggressive policing and excessive force. But an investigation by The Commercial Appeal found this case unique because it forces into public view a long-standing but seldom discussed practice within MPD euphemistically known as 'choir practice' — a ritual where officers collect in precinct parking lots after their shifts to drink and dissect the day's events.

Hours earlier in a bloody hotel stairwell, several of the officers cradled officer Timothy Warren as he lay dying from a gunshot wound to the head.

Consoling one another, they huddled in a precinct lot at Second and Linden. Dressed in street clothes or partial uniforms, off-duty officers had access to beer, whiskey and vodka.

Attorneys differ sharply on whether the officers cited for excessive force drank alcohol before the incident. But it's clear the collision was fueled by a volatile mix of grief, anger and raw emotion.

"Do I wish it hadn't happened? Yes. But it did happen,'' says Robert Skelton, 49, the now-retired lieutenant who witnessed Warren's grisly death and oversaw the arrests of Lytle and McDonald hours later. Living on a disability pension, he struggles today with post-traumatic stress disorder he attributes to that horrific night.

Suspended for 20 days and demoted to sergeant after the incident, Skelton said he regrets there was alcohol on city property, but vehemently disagrees with the conclusions of MPD's Inspectional Services Bureau (ISB). His officers were attacked, he said; they acted in self-defense.

"If you're going to fight the police,'' he said, "we're going to fight you back.''



Collision Course

McDonald and Lytle spent that evening with friends at the Superior Bar on Beale Street, dancing and drinking into the early morning of Monday, July 4. It was the kind of carefree night the two hard-charging former teammates had come to relish since meeting two years earlier at U of M.

McDonald almost didn't make it to Memphis. Working a year-and-a-half at a gas station after high school in his hometown of Wilmington, North Carolina, he had brushes with the law, including a misdemeanor conviction for larceny after police stopped him in a friend's car with stolen auto parts he claims to have known nothing about. But when his high school coach pointed him to Lackawanna Community College in Scranton, Pennsylvania, he became a second-team junior college All-American at defensive end, later playing in 11 of 12 games during his single season at the U of M in 2009.

Lytle grew up here, one of eight children born to Carla and Quinton Lytle, a popular Memphis pastor at Downline Ministries who once played shooting guard for the Memphis Rockers of the short-lived World Basketball League.

DuPree Lytle was popular in his own right: A 2009 graduate of Evangelical Christian School, where he starred in football, basketball and track, he enrolled that fall at the U of M as an invited walk-on to the football team.

He was drawn to McDonald by more than football. They both majored in criminal justice studies. They wanted to be cops.

"I've wanted to be a police officer since I was a little boy,'' Lytle said. "My dad growing up taught us good versus bad. How in the end good always wins. And police officers were almost the closest thing to a superhero.''

But when the two friends finally walked off Beale around 4 a.m. that night with a circle of companions, their view of police and authority, and their own sense of security, would shatter. As they headed to their cars, they paused before MPD's Entertainment District Unit (EDU) precinct building at Linden Avenue and Second Street, where a circle of off-duty officers were congregated in a back lot.

Hours earlier, the EDU officers had witnessed the horrific death of Warren, their colleague, shot by gunman Alexander Haydel, 22, in the stairwell of the Doubletree Hotel. Haydel, now serving two life sentences, had killed another man earlier that night during a domestic dispute.

Skelton recalls the devastation: The suspect shooting at his men. His hand-held radio crackling, "We have an officer down!'' He and others tending to Warren as the fallen officer's life slipped away.

"I was the scene lieutenant and led the guys into the building. And I was responsible for every man that went in that building. Including Tim,'' Skelton says sullenly. "And of course Tim didn't come out.''



'Choir practice'

Later that night, merchants showered the EDU with condolences: Pizza, sandwiches, plate lunches — and booze. As Skelton recalls, several pickup trucks came onto the lot. Officers congregated, taking what they wanted: soda, beer, Jack Daniel's and other liquor.

"With the squad cars lined up and the trucks lined up nobody could see us,'' Skelton said.

This is "choir practice,'' a tradition at MPD, according to several officers and court records.

"It's been around as long as we've been around,'' said Skelton, who joined the force in 1991.

Testifying in a deposition, Officer Steven Breth laid it out like this: "A choir practice is just, you know, 'Hey, let's get back, and we need to talk.' A lot of times it's reflection on, you know, hey, you might have done this a little different.''

Choir practice sometimes involves drinking, sometimes not, Breth testified. He said he'd seen officers drinking in the past on the back lots at the Mount Moriah and Raines stations.

It's a practice that continues today, Skelton said.

"I've still got a lot of friends in the department. And I've been invited (recently) to a couple of them,'' the ex-lieutenant told a reporter, asserting some top officers at MPD have partaken in their share of choir practices. "And I've declined to go. But they still exist.''

Though Skelton confessed to police investigators to drinking a beer on the lot before the encounter, ISB records reviewed by The Commercial Appeal indicate the officers cited for excessive force contended they either didn't drink that night or only drank after the incident.

The matter is a central point of contention in the civil suit, alleging improper training of officers and the city's failure to rein in the practice that led to the encounter.

"It is obvious, or at least should have been, that MPD officers need training and policies to prevent them from using their police authority while under the influence of alcohol,'' the men's attorneys, Robert Spence and Bryan Meredith, wrote in a pleading before the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, pointing to witness statements indicating off-duty officers drank beforehand.

The city's attorneys disagree.

"ISB did not find ... officers had consumed alcohol before the encounter with Plaintiffs,'' wrote attorneys Richard Myers and Barbaralette Davis, pointing to evidence showing the city does train officers about alcohol and that it disciplined officers that night for drinking after the incident.

Asked if police administration was aware of the choir practice tradition or if it ever tried to rein it in, MPD spokeswoman Karen Rudolph released this email statement: "This incident is still involved in litigation. We are unable to make any comments at this point.''

The city appealed after U.S. District Court Judge Sheryl Lipman last year denied a portion of its motion to dismiss the case on summary judgment, keeping the suit alive.

Following the action in the stairwell at the Doubletree, ISB records show Breth changed out of his bloody uniform and returned in a T-shirt, shorts and sandals after his shift ended at 3 a.m., joining the glum circle of off-duty officers in the back lot dressed in street clothes, black T-shirts or partial uniforms.

"He's been kicking himself for not shooting the guy, but the guy was in a surrender position and we've explained to Breth he couldn't have shot him,'' Skelton later told investigators.

Others in the lot felt the sting, too.

Joshua Howard, a youthful looking four-year veteran with a military-style haircut who'd recently been nominated officer of the month, had to wash blood off, too. Cecil Fowler, 40, also an officer-of-the-month nominee, had delivered the news to the fallen officer's wife, Betsy.

As the men shared details of the tragedy, some heard a commotion coming from the front of the precinct building. Skelton heard it as he leaned against a patrol car, changing a pair of socks covered in Tim Warren's blood. Revelers leaving Beale often are loud but something about this group struck officer Marico Flake as odd. He heard yelling, then the sound of a bottle tossed onto the lot.

It was 3:56 a.m.

"I'm going to walk around and see about this,'' Flake, an eight-year veteran, told himself, according to his ISB statement.



The Encounter

Out front, Lytle and McDonald had stopped to rest. Three women in their group sat on a small concrete ledge separating the sidewalk from the precinct building, a renovated credit union that didn't resemble a police station.

It was dark, and when officer Flake approached the group he was out of uniform. A small man with wire-rimmed glasses who'd spent the night on patrol on a gyroscopic scooter, he had removed his police shirt and vest and was dressed in a black T-shirt, bike shorts and black shoes.

"We thought he was trying to get loose cigarettes off of us,'' Lytle told an investigator the day after the incident at ISB offices, where he'd gone to file a complaint.

Police and citizens later offered contradictory accounts of the night.

Though out of uniform, Flake said he kept his badge displayed and identified himself as an officer — contentions denied by Lytle and McDonald, as well as four other citizens who gave statements to Internal Affairs.

The smaller Flake said McDonald and Lytle — each about 6'4'' — stood "towering over me.'' One lunged at him, he said.

But records show when Flake gave accounts deemed unreliable about the drinking in the back lot and the injuries McDonald sustained, investigators sided with the two men and their friends. This is what they say happened:

Flake, who is black, allegedly told McDonald and Lytle to "take your snow bunnies and keep moving'' — a slur directed at the white women in the group. An argument ensued.

As Flake ran toward the back lot, Lytle and McDonald decided to walk away, heading east across Second Street. That's when the fight broke out. According to the two friends, Flake pursued them and jumped on McDonald's back in the middle of the street.

By then, officer Howard came from the back lot. He later said he saw Lytle and McDonald surrounding Flake with their chests puffed out "looking real aggressive.'' As he ran to help Flake subdue McDonald, Lytle, "began to swing on me.'' Then officer Fowler came out. He helped bring McDonald to the ground.

"All I can do is hold onto his legs,'' Fowler said. " ... He's kicking and he's twice my size. He plays football.''

Despite his many injuries, none of the officers admitted to hitting McDonald in the face, though one said he hit him repeatedly on his right arm in an attempt to pull it behind his back. Officers said he continued struggling despite identifying themselves as police and ordering him to stop resisting.

Lytle admits initially fighting the officers to help "my buddy.'' He says he quit fighting when they identified themselves as police officers.

"I thought we were just being jumped,'' he told investigators.

Though an ISB case summary indicates both men reported being beaten before and after they were cuffed, Lytle told a reporter police never hit him until he was cuffed. Then, he says, they delivered a barrage: Blows to the top and right side of his head as he laid on his stomach with his left cheek buried in the grass. He could feel an arm around his neck, choking off his air.

"This is how I'm going to die,'' Lytle recalls thinking. "I'm going to get killed by a cop on Beale Street.''

His mother, Carla Lytle, says her son still suffers from that night.

"It changed DuPree's life. He has lost focus. And he's trying to get it back.''

Lytle said he's given up on his dream of being a cop.

"I've applied for jobs I know I'm qualified for, police officer jobs all over,'' said Lytle, now a salesman and project manager for a construction firm. But when he discloses the incident and his lawsuit, it's over. "They don't call back.''

Though he and McDonald received a measure of vindication — charges of disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and public intoxication were dismissed — they were disappointed prosecutors declined to charge the officers, citing a lack of evidence for the higher standard of a criminal conviction.

The six officers suspended for excessive force have filed grievances that remain pending, an MPD spokesman said.

With a fiancee and two young daughters, McDonald isn't waiting around for his lawsuit to be resolved. He's weighing options, and one involves leaving Memphis. He works for a moving company but is looking at railroad jobs and possibly returning to his native North Carolina to get into the logging business.

"I still think they're some great officers out there,'' he said. "But there's also a lot of bad. And that goes along with any profession. There's going to be great athletes, bad athletes. There are going to be great movers and bad movers. So you can't just single out one officer. But I do get nervous like I said.''

Results of internal investigation:



Jonathan Barron: Suspended nine days without pay for excessive/unnecessary force and personal conduct violations. Filed a grievance, now pending, challenging the action. Barron, 33, a nine-year MPD veteran, is a patrolman assigned to the Entertainment District Unit (EDU).



Steven Breth: Suspended nine days without pay for excessive/unnecessary force and personal conduct violations. Grievance pending. Breth, 34, an eight-year MPD veteran, is a patrolman assigned to EDU.



Marico Flake: Suspended 15 days without pay for excessive/unnecessary force and personal conduct violations. Grievance pending. Flake, 31, a 12-year MPD veteran, is a patrolman assigned to the Ridgeway Station.



Cecil Fowler: Suspended nine days without pay for excessive/unnecessary force and personal conduct violations. Grievance pending. Fowler, 45, a 13-year MPD veteran, is a patrolman assigned to EDU.



Joshua Howard: Suspended nine days without pay for excessive/unnecessary force and personal conduct violations. Grievance pending. A seven-year MPD veteran, he resigned last year. He believes internal investigators got the case wrong. “There wasn’t a thing fair about it,’’ he said this month.



Eric Lee: Suspended five days for excessive/unnecessary force violation. Grievance pending. Lee, 47, a six-year veteran of MPD, is a patrolman assigned to the South Main Station. He was relieved of duty in September following his indictment on aggravated sexual battery and official oppression charges.



Gregory Quinn: Then-Major Quinn, who admitted to investigators to having “a few drinks’’ on the back lot of the precinct — apparently after the incident with DuPree Lytle and Michael McDonald — was charged with violating the department’s personal conduct regulation. He retired in December 2012 before his disciplinary hearing. He declined comment.



Robert Skelton: Suspended 20 days without pay and demoted from lieutenant to sergeant for supervisory and personal conduct violations. Filed an appeal with the Civil Service Commission. Skelton, 49, says the appeal was abandoned when he retired last year, taking a disability pension. He said his men acted in self-defense and believes he was unfairly blamed for the incident.



Source: Memphis Police Department; interviews