Mike Puccinelli
CHICAGO (CBS) – Members of the
NAACP were urging officials in Hammond to stop what the civil rights group
calls aggressive treatment by police officers, concerned the northwest Indiana
town might become the next Ferguson, Missouri.
CBS 2’s Mike Puccinelli reports
he Hammond branch of the NCAACP held a news conference Friday morning outside
the Hammond police station, calling for change inside the department, after a
videotape surfaced of officers using a stun gun on a man who refused to get out
of the passenger’s seat of a car that had been pulled over for a seatbelt
violation last month.
“What happened to click it or
ticket? This type of behavior should not be tolerated, or acceptable, to any
human being. It makes you wonder if they are checking on the safety of those in
the vehicle, simply trying to serve and protect; or was this just another case
of racial profiling?” said Rev. Orville Sanders, of the Hammond Ministers
Alliance. “We find their conduct utterly appalling and despicable.”
Some activists said the traffic
stop should cost at least two Hammond police officers their jobs.
The officers had pulled over
Lisa Mahone on Sept. 24 for a seatbelt violation, and when they asked her
boyfriend, Jamal Jones, to get out of the car, he refused. Police said Jones
also was not wearing a seat belt.
When Jones refused repeated
requests from police to get out of the car, an officer broke the passenger’s
side window with a club, used a stun gun on Jones, and dragged him out of the
car. Mahone’s two children were in the back seat, and her teenage son recorded
part of the traffic stop with his cell phone camera.
“This policing thing only works
when there is mutual trust,” Barbara Bolling Williams, president of the Indiana
NAACP.
She called for an independent
investigation, and said the officers should be placed on desk duty.
Activists said Jones is not the
only Hammond resident to recently suffer abuse at the hands of police officers.
Rev. Homer Cobb, president of
the Hammond branch of the NAACP, claimed a 17-year-old honor student was thrown
to the ground after police saw her jaywalking.
“This child was thrown to the
ground, and handcuffed, and arrested, as a result of a simple matter of
jaywalking,” Cobb said. “Immediately after that is when this other incident
surfaced; and it was at that time that we realized that this was not an
isolated incidence, but it was one of a series of incidences.”
Jones, as it turned out, was
wanted on an outstanding arrest warrant, but activists said police did not know
that at the time, and should have complied with Jones’ request to speak to a
supervisor.
They also said Mahone was
trying to get to the hospital in Chicago to visit her dying mother – which she
told the officers – and police should have escorted her there, and then dealt
with the seatbelt violation. Mahone’s mother has since died.
The NAACP said the officers in
the traffic stop should be fired, or at the very least retrained.
“We’ll march, protest, file
lawsuits, and make demands,” Cobb said.
Hammond police and a law firm
representing the city in a lawsuit stemming from the traffic stop declined to
comment on the NAACP’s demands.
