White man imprisoned for attack on Black trooper who danced with White woman

Jet, April 15, 2002

A White man who beat a Black Michigan State trooper for dancing with a White woman at a bar was recently ordered to spend 16 to 24 months in prison.

Jasen Barker was convicted of ethnic intimidation and aggravated assault.

Livingston County Judge Stanley Latreille said the sentence, which exceeds state guidelines, is based on Barker's "history of racist conduct."

Court documents show that Barker, 23, passed out racist literature when he was in high school and was "a very outspoken racist who spent a lot of time drawing Confederate flags and other racist graffiti," the Detroit Free Press reported.

"We as a country have made substantial progress in combating this disease" of racism, Latreille said. But there are "pockets of infection ... Mr. Barker, you're a pocket of infection," he said.

Authorities said Barker, of Howell Township, and cousin Travis Sales became angry at seeing off-duty trooper Arthur Williams III, 33, dancing with Paulina Muzzin, a former county assistant prosecutor, at a bar in Brighton.

The cousins shouted racial slurs, punched Williams and smashed his face with a bottle, authorities said. Williams underwent surgery to rebuild an eye socket.

Sales pleaded no contest in February to charges of assault with a dangerous weapon and ethnic intimidation. He was sentenced in March to one year in jail and five years of probation, plus fines and other conditions.

Williams addressed Barker in court: "I have to fall back to an old African proverb, simply stated, `It takes a village to raise a child,"' Williams said. "If what your attorney said ... is true, then we failed you miserably."

"We somehow allowed you to drift like a feather in the wind," Williams told Barker. "But, rather than pull that feather from the air for society's benefit, we simply allowed you to drift wherever.

"So why should any of us be shocked that you fell in the mud of racism?" Williams said, according to The Ann Arbor News. "We have left you to the almost impossible task of turning your life around on your own."