Maryland member dies after assault on the job

City Union of Baltimore (CUB) member Gregory Turnipseed died last month after trying to intercede in an argument over a downtown parking spot—and being brutally punched and kicked for his trouble.

Turnipseed, a 14-year veteran of the city’s department of transportation, died the day before Thanksgiving, more than a month after trying to intervene in an argument over a parking space. He had last served as a traffic investigator, a role that includes reviewing the flow of traffic on city streets.

The attack happened in the middle of the day Oct. 17, while Turnipseed was on the job. A woman and her teenage daughter attacked and beat him after he asked them whether they were leaving a parking spot as another vehicle waited.

His death has reignited calls for greater protections from violence for city workers. Years before Turnipseed died, CUB had been calling attention to workplace violence and demanding that state and local lawmakers do more about addressing it. An affiliate of AFT-Maryland and AFT Public Employees, CUB represents about 3,000 employees in Baltimore.

Violence against city workers happens “more than the public is aware,” CUB President Antoinette Ryan-Johnson told the Baltimore Banner. “People are going to work to do their jobs and serve the citizens of Baltimore City, and unfortunately, all too often they are assaulted, sworn at. It becomes problematic and very stressful when you go to work at the beginning of the day and you don’t know if you’re going to make it home at the end of the day.”

Adding to that stress is the fact that the city did not tell the public—or the union—about the assault until after Turnipseed died. Although violence in Baltimore has dropped precipitously in recent years, elected officials there sometimes seem overzealous in guarding the city’s reputation, which may further rattle both city workers and the public, according to an op-ed in the Baltimore Sun.

“The city has to ensure, as the employer, that their workers are safe when they come to work,” Ryan-Johnson told the local CBS television affiliate.

“It is extremely shocking. It’s shocking, disheartening, upsetting,” Ryan-Johnson added. “At the end of the day, he was my member. He belonged to this union. But he was somebody’s personal family member. They now don’t have a father to come home to. He should have been able to come home at the end of the day and spend Thanksgiving with them.”

His daughter, Gerri Turnipseed, said that her father had suffered slurred speech, issues with walking, and memory loss after the assault. She said she had hoped for many more years with her dad, who was 71, describing him as a sharp dresser and a smart, hard-working man who had attended Towson University near Baltimore.

The viewing and commemoration will take place Dec. 15-16 in Randallstown, Md., and Morgan State University in Baltimore.

A second tragedy

Turnipseed’s death is the second fatality of a CUB member on the job in recent years. It follows that of Trina Cunningham in June 2019, who fell to her death in a city wastewater treatment plant. Although the two causes of death are very different, they both center on safety.

Cunningham was a supervisor at the Patapsco Wastewater Treatment Plant in south Baltimore, where she fell through a catwalk into a vat of wastewater. As soon as she went missing that evening, her colleagues called emergency responders. Fire officials determined that she fell about 20 feet from a hole in the grating into the tank. Her body was recovered downstream.

[Annette Licitra and AFT staff]