The traffic stop began as a routine seat belt violation.
It would lead, however, to a cascade of actions that included Hammond police officers smashing a car window and then tasing and arresting the front passenger after he failed to produce identification.
Now a civil rights lawsuit, a public rebuttal released by police and two videos — one taken by a back-seat passenger in the car and one taken by officers — have presented opposing versions of events and sparked discussion about excessive use of force as well as appropriate civilian behavior.
Hammond police have said they resorted to force during the Sept. 24 stop only after the front passenger repeatedly refused to leave the car and kept reaching toward the back seat, prompting fears he may have had a weapon.
The passenger said in a federal lawsuit that he tried to explain why he did not have identification and accused police of excessive force and battery.
Statement from the Hammond Police DepartmentRead the story
Both sides reached for their cameras: The police called for a squad car that had video equipment installed. A back-seat passenger in the stopped vehicle recorded cellphone video, which lawyers released to the public. The police have refused to release their video.
Legal experts said both recordings may be pivotal to piecing together the facts of the situation. But the simple action of recording does not validate either side, said Douglas Godfrey, a former prosecutor and a professor at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law.
"It's the fallacy of video," Godfrey said. "Does video make it much more emotional? Yes. Does it change the legal or evidentiary standards? No."
Hammond police pulled over Lisa Mahone around 3:30 p.m. because she and Jamal Jones, who was riding in the front passenger seat, were not wearing seat belts as required by state law, the department said in its rebuttal released Tuesday after the lawsuit was filed.
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Mahone's two children, 7 and 14, were in the back seat, according to the lawsuit filed Monday.
Hammond police Lt. Patrick Vicari and Sgt. Charles Turner, who are named as defendants in the lawsuit, asked Mahone, 47, for her driver's license. They also asked to see Jones' identification.
The police statement does not say why police asked to see Jones' identification. The department referred all questions to the Eichhorn & Eichhorn law firm, which declined to comment. Vicari and Turner could not immediately be reached for comment.
In the lawsuit, Mahone conceded she had not been wearing her seat belt and said she asked the officers to issue her a ticket because she was on her way to see her mother, who was in the hospital and dying.
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Jones told the officers he had been ticketed for not paying his insurance and did not have his license, offering to write his information down, according to the suit. "In full view of the officers, Jamal retrieved the ticket from his backpack and offered the ticket to the officers," the lawsuit states.
But the police statement alleges Jones refused to provide his identification on a piece of paper and told officers "'he was not going to do (the officer's) job' and for him to get a piece of paper."
An officer "saw the passenger inside the vehicle drop his left hand behind the center console," according to the police statement. "Fearing for officer safety, the first officer ordered the passenger to show his hands and then repeatedly asked him to exit the vehicle."
Jones, in the suit, said he refused to leave the car "because he feared that the officers would harm him."
Under Indiana law, police can ask a passenger of a car for identification, but the passenger can refuse, said Indianapolis lawyer Jack Crawford.
cComments
@Larry0555 Yes, let 'em violate our civil rights. Who needs rights anyway? Just go along with whatever the authorities tell you and give up personal freedom. I mean, it's not like this is a free country. Oh wait...
shellie3177
at 7:09 PM October 08, 2014
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"He had no obligation to do anything, but if he starts reaching around, they can restrict his reach," said Crawford, who noted the case could hinge on whether the officers are able to prove they reasonably could have been in fear for their safety.
"If he was not obeying their commands, that gets real interesting," Crawford said.
Godfrey said that courts, in general, have given great leeway to officers when it comes to handling passengers in vehicles.
"Officer safety is paramount," he said.
At some point during the stop, Mahone shifted the car into gear and began moving until officers warned her that a "stop strip" had been placed in front of her car and would puncture her tires, police said.
In the video recorded by Mahone's 14-year-old son, she can be heard calling the Hammond Police Department to explain the situation.
GRAPHIC LANGUAGE: Hammond police break vehicle window, use Taser on passenger
Family cellphone video shows Hammond police officers breaking the car window and using a Taser on Jamal Jones during a traffic stop. (Video courtesy Kurtz Law Offices, Ltd.)
One officer told Jones that if he did not step out of the car, they would "have to open the door for (him)," the video showed. Jones nodded, and after a few moments one officer broke the window with a club and used a Taser on Jones.
Officers pulled Jones out of the car as Mahone's 7-year-old daughter could be heard crying. The lawsuit said shards of glass hit the girl and the boy in the back seat.
Police said the officers took the action "fearing the occupants of the vehicle may have possessed a weapon, and seeing the passenger repeatedly reach toward the rear seats of the vehicle." Neither the police statement nor the lawsuit said a gun was found in the car.
Jones was arrested and issued citations for resisting law enforcement, failure to aid an officer and not wearing a seat belt, police said. Mahone was cited for not wearing her seat belt and was allowed to leave.
The lawsuit accused Hammond police of excessive force, battery and false arrest, saying the officers' actions "were undertaken intentionally with malice, willfulness, and reckless indifference to the rights and safety of plaintiffs."
The lawsuit also alleges Vicari and Turner "have a history of using objectively unreasonable force against citizens and arrested citizens without probable cause." The suit lists three cases filed against the department and Vicari and another filed against Turner and the department.
Vicari and other officers have been accused in lawsuits of unnecessarily tasing a man and kicking and hitting him in the head, leading to permanent brain damage; violently tackling a woman during a traffic stop; and arresting a photographer at a party at the Hammond Civic Center, deleting 1,000 of his digital pictures and ripping out his earring. Turner was also accused of injuring a person at the Civic Center.
Officers and the department denied wrongdoing in the cases, which all settled.
Craig Futterman, a University of Chicago law professor who has studied police brutality, called the video shot by Mahone's child "shocking" and "horrible."
He said it is unclear from the video why police would have been in fear for their safety.
"It raises serious constitutional issues about the reasonableness of the amount of force used," Futterman said.
Police in their statement said officers are generally allowed to ask passengers for identification and to ask them to exit a vehicle for officer safety.
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