VIDEO of traffic stop with passenger tasered and dragged out of car with children in the back seat in Hammond, Indiana (Kurtz Law Office).
What began on September 24, 2014 as a traffic stop for a seat belt violation evolved into police officers shattering the front window and using a Taser on an adult male passenger. Now a lawsuit has been filed Monday, October 6, 2014.
Video of the traffic stop was recorded by a 14-year-old in the backseat of the car while the family was stopped en route to John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital of Cook County to visit the driver’s mother, who later died.
The driver, Lisa Mahone, said she became fearful of Hammond police and called 9-1-1, telling the dispatcher that a police officer pulled a gun on the family when they didn’t even have a gun.
Hammond police officers Patrick Vicari and Charles Turner had put spike strips in front of the vehicle after pulling her over in a manner that was “highly aggressive,” she said in her complaint file by Kurtz law office.
Mahone said her boyfriend, Jamal Jones, was ordered out of the passenger seat, but he didn’t get out of the car because he feared for his safety, according to the lawsuit.
Hammond Police Lt. Richard Hoyda stated that police officers feared for their own safety because one officer said he saw Jones drop his hands behind the center console of the vehicle. The officers removed Jamal Jones him after repeated requests to exit the vehicle and after Mahone “shifted her car into drive and moved her vehicle in a forward motion.”
Hammond police and legal experts contend that police are legally allowed to ask passengers for identification while they are inside a stopped vehicle, and are legally allowed to request that they exit a stopped vehicle for the officer’s safety without a requirement of reasonable suspicion.
The video, recorded by Joseph Ivy, age 14, shows one of the officers shattering the passenger window with a nightstick. Broken glass injured Ivy and his younger sister, Janiya Ivy, according to the lawsuit. Jones was tasered inside the car, was dragged from the car, pushed to the ground and tasered a second time.
The lawsuit alleges excessive force, false arrest and battery, and cites three other cases in which Patrick Vicari was named as a defendant in cases alleging excessive force. The lawsuit also cites that officer Charles Turner was named as a defendant in one other case involving excessive force.
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