This Indiana sheriff's department likes to share pursuit videos. Why won't they show what happened to Malik Ali Malik?

Malik Ali Malik was a wanted man when he drove his Kia Sportage to the Crew Carwash in Bloomington, Indiana, on a cool Saturday evening in April. A lieutenant from the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department spotted him vacuuming the inside of the white SUV and reported him for suspicious activity, according to the sheriff and records.

Malik, 39, saw his bond revoked after he failed to appear in court on drug and armed robbery charges. He also faced charges of fleeing a police officer in another county. 

Deputies tried to pull him over, and soon a pursuit began; as many as six cars joined as the April 17 chase reached speeds of 105 mph before a lieutenant terminated it. 

“Discontinue, discontinue,” Lt. Troy Thomas commanded over radio scanner traffic. “We know who it is, so we’re not going to get somebody killed.” 

Yet two deputies re-initiated the pursuit, and somebody did die: Malik, who crashed into a tree near Bloomington. A private video reviewed by Paste BN showed the car exploding upon impact. Deputies pointed guns at the car and ordered Malik out of the flaming vehicle, but he did not respond. A sheriff’s office report said deputies did not help Malik because of safety concerns – about the fire and about the suspect inside the burning car. A witness told Paste BN that she believes the deputies could have saved Malik.

Now, the sheriff’s department faces questions from the community and Malik’s family. In the wake of the May 2020 murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer and ensuing global protests for racial justice, Malik's family want to know whether the department’s actions were another example of a disproportionate response by police to a Black suspect.

The sheriff’s department, which has a history of posting footage from pursuits on its Facebook page, has not released body and dashcam video from the nearly 3-month-old incident, despite numerous requests from Paste BN and local media.

That lack of transparency can only weaken the department's credibility, especially as  law enforcement agencies across America are under increased scrutiny over issues surrounding police misconduct and accountability, said Dennis Kenney, a professor from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

“The sheriff’s department is leaving a void for allegations of improper behavior,” said Kenney, a former police officer. “If you've got a video that would support the idea that they did everything possible to save him, concealing that video makes no sense.

“They should release that video so the public is aware they didn’t callously let a man burn to death.”

Malik died of “hypoxia due to flash fire,” which occurs when an intense explosion or fire sucks the oxygen out of the human body, according to Monroe County Coroner Joani Stalcup. She said in an email that Malik also suffered severe burns all over his body, which likely occurred after he was dead. Malik, a father of four, had to be identified using dental records, according to Barbara Dorman, the mother of Malik's  children.

“They want to portray him as some type of monster, but he wasn’t,” Dorman told Paste BN. “He was a good man and he was good to his kids.”

Monroe County Sheriff Brad Swain said the two deputies who re-initiated the pursuit, Deandre Moxley and Jason Miller, have been reprimanded. Department policy has been updated to require deputies to stop their cars, exit the vehicle and decompress when a pursuit has been terminated. Paste BN requested personnel files for both deputies, but the department is not legally required to release them. 

“It was determined that Deputy Moxley continued using his red lights to try and locate the fleeing vehicle on a road out of sight and sound of the road where Malik was traveling,” Swain told Paste BN. “He was not within those bounds of when our deputies can use red lights to get through the traffic.”

Swain did not respond to questions about whether the second pursuit was authorized. 

“It was a high-risk felon with criminal history,” said Swain, who added that deputies attempted to approach the car with a crowbar but had to back away because the vehicle was engulfed in flames.

Rhiannon Flynn, who witnessed the crash and its aftermath, told Paste BN that she believes deputies could have helped Malik. 

“There's no reason why they could not have gone to that car, opened that door real fast and dragged him out,” she said. “If the cops were not there and the guns were not drawn, I absolutely would have tried to get him out.”

Malik’s twin sister, Jemila Malik, said she planned to file a wrongful death lawsuit.

“You knew who he was, you could have easily gotten him at any time,” she said of deputies as she stood next to her brother’s crash site in June. “You chose to chase a man to his death.”

Malik’s family maintains he was not a violent person. 

“They weren’t chasing Malik because he had shot someone or robbed a bank; they were chasing him because he didn’t show up in court,” said Roger Simmons, his older brother. “I’m not trying to paint him as an angel, but that was not his nature.”

Malik helped raise Dorman’s daughter Beyoncé Smiley, 18, and wanted to see her off to her senior prom at Eastern Greene High School before turning himself in to law enforcement, Dorman said.

“He and my mom weren’t together for a really long time, but he still took care of us,” Smiley said. “He always made sure our grades were good in school, and he showed up to every one of my brother’s basketball games. He was our No. 1 supporter.” 

Smiley said she thought of Malik when she was crowned prom queen weeks after his death, trying not to cry as she wore the emerald green gown they’d picked out together.

“I just want to know the truth. I want the bodycam footage,” she said, her voice cracking. “I want to know if they did everything they could possibly do to help.”

Smiley was among the protesters who took to the streets of Bloomington on June 26 to demand transparency from law enforcement about Malik’s case. They carried signs that said “RELEASE THE FOOTAGE” and chanted “Black Lives Matter” as they marched past the sheriff’s department.

In a Facebook post, Bloomington activist and Monroe County Human Rights Commission member Vauhxx Booker implored community members to demand the release of body and dash cam footage.

“There is a propensity in our society that when Black folks are victimized by the system, to look for some sort of criminality to justify the victimization,” Booker told Paste BN. “The reality is that Black people should neither have to be exceptional, saintly or even innocent to be afforded justice in this nation.” 

Under Indiana law, agencies are required to release law enforcement recordings unless they can prove releasing them is not in the public interest or would interfere with an investigation or a fair trial.

In response to Paste BN requests for the videos, officials first said they would have to edit them to obscure depictions of death. When pressed for footage, a clerk for the department said fees could add up to hundreds or even thousands of dollars for 36 videos from the incident. Paste BN is waiting for an invoice from the county attorney, who has not disclosed when the footage will be released.

The department’s reluctance and selectivity about what footage it releases to the public creates transparency issues for the community, said Frank LoMonte, a professor and the director of the University of Florida’s Brechner Center for Freedom of Information.

“When they make people drag footage out of them in selective cases, that’s not transparent,” LoMonte told Paste BN. “We have increasingly sophisticated tools to oversee the police, but those tools are only useful if we can see footage promptly, affordably and without undue editing.”