Washington, D.C. – On July 20, community organizations gathered for an emergency press conference at the United States Attorney’s Office (USAO) with the legal team and family of Nolberto Sanabria Meza, a father and husband killed during a U.S. Park Police chase. The press conference discussed massive developments in the case and their struggle for justice.

The event was held by the DC Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (DCAARPR), partner organizations and attorneys E. Paige White and Bernadette Armand to discuss the enormous implications of USAO’s refusal to prosecute for the killing of Meza, which happened 30 days earlier, when Park Police initiated a reckless police chase under the pretext of stopping a stolen vehicle.

During the course of the chase which caused two crashes, Meza, a moped delivery driver, was struck and killed, and several diplomats were hospitalized. The driver and passengers of the allegedly stolen vehicle were arrested and charged with stealing the car and killing Meza. Shockingly, all charges against them were quickly dropped by the USAO, including the theft and the murder, citing insufficient probable cause. The family has still not received answers from the USAO, Park Police, or Metropolitan Police Department (MPD).

“There are cameras everywhere. And yet the USAO says that they don’t have enough evidence to charge the individuals in the case with murder,” said attorney E. Paige White. She continued, “And so the question then becomes, who killed Mr. Meza? Was it the stolen car? Was it the police? Why did this chase begin? Release the videotapes and the surveillance footage, showing the chase, showing the murder of my client!”

This particular chase happened due to rollbacks by the Trump administration of protections against federal police chases. Federal and local police chases were previously banned in DC except for in the most extreme cases, due to an incident in 2020, when Karon Hylton Brown was killed after being chased by MPD for ten blocks while he was riding a scooter. Trump signed an executive order which expanded policy to allow federal chases last summer around the time he declared a bogus “crime emergency” as pretext for his federal takeover of DC.

Discussing Park Police’s previous no-chase policy at the White House, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, an official from the Trump administration said, “We got that rule changed in 24 hours because of President Trump’s leadership. The next night, they had so much fun. They pulled people over, they started to take off, they chased ‘em, they stopped ‘em.”

Merawi Gerima of DCAARPR said, “Trump signed this EO with the express intent of unleashing federal agents in DC last summer, telling them to ‘chase until the wheels fall off.’ In the first six weeks of that executive order, Park Police themselves had 22 chases. 18 resulted in crashes.” Gerima continued, “The people dying and being hospitalized by these chases are not the police and are often not the drivers of the cars they are chasing. They are bystanders like Nolberto Meza.”

“What happened to Mr. Meza is not only foreseeable but is a predictable outcome of this dangerous executive order, and we stand together with the community to say ‘shame!’” White said.

The fact that charges were dropped on the owners of the vehicle is extremely suspicious, given that it's coming from the same Trump Department of Justice which has been aggressively targeting Black youth for exactly these types of cases for the last year. The implications of Park Police being unable to clear the very low bar of probable cause in this case are enormous.

DCAARPR and its partner organizations continue to call for Justice for Nolberto Meza, and demand the identification and charging of the Park Police agents, the release of all information and footage, financial reparations to the family, and policy changes so an incident like this never happens again.

Those policy changes include the ban of federal and local police chases, the abolition of the Safe and Beautiful Task Force, and critically, community control of the police.

Nolberto’s nieces need to repatriate his body to Venezuela, where the rest of his family is currently living. This process has been made even more difficult and expensive with the devastating earthquakes in Venezuela.

To donate and keep up with the case, follow @dcaarpr and @dcagainsttrump on Instagram.

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