Mother: images document police brutality
Updated: Tuesday, 18 May 2010, 5:02 PM EDT
Published : Tuesday, 18 May 2010, 5:01 PM EDT
- Reporter: Rick Dawson
- Editor: Andrew Bonner
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) – The chief of the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police is opening an internal affairs probe of an alleged police brutality also under investigation by I-Team 8.
The accounts of the family involved and the police vary widely, but police are promising a full investigation.
The I-Team 8 investigation began with the opening line of an e-mail that reads, “This is a picture of my 15-year-old brother Brandon Johnson.”
“They attacked him,” claims Brandon’s mother Chantay Chandler. “His teeth is broke, his nose is broke. His face is messed up.”
When several police officers were called to a neighborhood near English Avenue and I-465 early Sunday evening, a witness told police he saw Johnson’s 14-year-old brother trying to kick the door in on a vacant home.
When police questioned the boy, they say Johnson came outside from his home nearby, became belligerent and incited others into what police called a “riotous situation.”
According to the police report, Johnson refused the officers’ orders to stop resisting. Johnson insists he wasn’t resisting, instead turning his back on officers to be handcuffed.
“I turned around,” Johnson said. “And then I looked back and one of them hit me and I fell to the ground and I looked up and he punched me two more times.”
Johnson’s family took a number of pictures to document his injuries.
“They got everything in that police report wrong,” claims the boy’s mother. “All the way down to his birthday.”
Police are once again looking at all the evidence in the case. An internal affairs investigation is under way but it’s too early to tell if the actions of the officers were justified.
“In any given situation it’s very imperative that officers maintain control of the area so it doesn’t get out of hand,” says IMPD Lt. Jeff Duhamell. “And, according to the report, the officers felt it had the potential to get extremely out of hand by interference with other family members. So I can assure you it’s going to be looked in to.”
But police were not able to comment on the mother’s claim that police seized a cell phone from a bystander trying to take video of the incident and broke the phone in half.
Police say that they have dealt with both brothers in previous burglaries, a charge the mother denies.
In this case, the younger brother was arrested on a charge of criminal mischief. Brandon Johnson was arrested on two charges: resisting law enforcement and disorderly conduct.
