How Manny Ellis’ death in police custody galvanized changes to policing in Tacoma

The case of Manuel Ellis’ death in the custody of Tacoma police has closed. A jury has spoken, acquitting three officers charged in his death of criminal wrongdoing.

In the nearly four years since Ellis died on a city street while repeatedly telling police, “I can’t breathe,” his name has become a local rallying cry for changes in policing, like many Black men who have died in custody of law enforcement. Ellis’ death also sparked police reform in Tacoma and in the state of Washington.

Ellis’ case led the Tacoma Police Department to explicitly ban neck restraints, pushed it to create a policy on the use of spit hoods and compelled local leaders to prioritize the implementation of body-worn cameras for police officers.

The Tacoma Police Department’s policy manual had no mention of lateral vascular neck restraints, a type of neck restraint that cuts off blood flow, before Ellis died in police custody. The issue of neck restraints gained national attention following George Floyd’s murder by a police officer in Minneapolis, but Ellis’ death made the conversation a local one.

Tacoma police weren’t trained on use of the restraint, according to previous reporting from The News Tribune, but officer Matthew Collins, one of three officers charged in Ellis’ death, testified at trial that officers are allowed to use tactics that come from outside of their police training when the use of force is necessary and reasonable.

Collins briefly used the neck restraint on Ellis before Christopher Burbank shocked the man with a Taser, but prosecutors and defense attorneys offered conflicting testimony as to whether it actually rendered Ellis unconscious.

In summer 2020, amid a national reckoning over police violence and accountability, then-Tacoma police chief Don Ramsdell announced he wanted to clarify department policy to outright ban all neck restraints. Washington lawmakers banned police from using chokeholds when they passed House Bill 1054 in 2021, and the Tacoma Police Department’s policy now explicitly states neck restraints can’t be used.

Some law enforcement leaders lamented the loss of neck restraints, defending the tactic as a sometimes useful way to de-escalate a situation.

The Police Department also did not have a policy on when or how officers could use spit hoods when Ellis died. Spit hoods, also known as spit masks or transport hoods, are made of breathable material and are meant to be used to keep people from spitting and potentially exposing officers and others to disease.

A spit hood was placed on Ellis by an officer not tried for his death, and the former Pierce County medical examiner, Dr. Thomas Clark, wrote in Ellis’ autopsy report that the use of a spit hood was a significant factor, if not the most important factor in the man’s death. He testified at trial that he saw blood and other sticky secretions inside the spit hood, and if that material got on Ellis’ face, it had the potential to completely cut off his breathing.

Tacoma police developed a detailed procedure for what situations might require officers to use the masks, and it was added to department policy in January 2021. A police spokesperson previously told The News Tribune it was created for “standardization.” The policy also explains what monitoring or medical treatment must be offered if a mask is used and what information pertaining to the spit hoods must be included in officers’ written reports.

After Ellis’ death, local leaders also pushed harder for Tacoma cops to wear body cameras. Mayor Victoria Woodards demanded funding be allocated for them in the same press conference in which she called for the officers charged in Ellis’ death to be fired. And then-president of the Tacoma Ministerial Alliance, Gregory Christopher, said cameras would be a win for everyone.

The Police Department began testing equipment in 2019, and the first of the cameras were rolled out in December 2020, so no police footage exists of Ellis’ deadly encounter with law enforcement. Instead, eyewitness cell phone videos took center stage in the trial.

Prosecutors said the videos showed that Collins and Burbank weren’t truthful in their statements to investigators looking into Ellis’ death. But the videos start while officers were trying to subdue Ellis, which meant to the defense that those who took them didn’t see what started the incident.

The attorney for Ellis’ family, James Bible, said in 2020 that he thought the officers involved in Ellis’ death would have behaved differently if they had body cameras.