By Derrick Nunnally
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
MILWAUKEE, Wisc. — A year after Milwaukee police overran a Sunday night church service in pursuit of a fleeing suspect, the pastor told a jury Monday that he watched police officers beat the handcuffed man before turning on parishioners.
“Officers was all over this church,” Rev. Willie Lewis said.
It was the first day of trial for Officer Shawn M. Humitz on two counts of misdemeanor battery while on duty for allegedly punching and kicking churchgoers.
Humitz’s attorney, Michael John Steinle, said Humitz used legitimate force, including a “focused strike” on one man and extending a foot at another to keep them from interfering with an arrest during a tumultuous scene at the N. 27th St. church.
At least 24 police officers chased a man into the Family Worship Center Pentecostal Church of Holiness on Dec. 10, 2006. Lewis said two officers handcuffed the suspect in the church’s pulpit and stood him up when two more officers ran into the church.
One leaped onto the man and knocked him to the floor, where the officers began punching him, Lewis testified. He recalled churchgoer Jimmy Turnage loudly protesting the beating as excessive.
“ ‘The man is handcuffed, take him out,’ ” Lewis recalled Turnage saying. “They paid him no mind. They kept beating him.”
After the officers were asked for their names and badge numbers, Turnage was punched to the ground, Lewis said.
The pastor was the first witness of what Assistant District Attorney Douglas J. Simpson said would likely be three days of prosecution testimony. Lewis faces cross-examination by Steinle this morning.
In March, Humitz became the first Milwaukee police officer charged by District Attorney John T. Chisholm’s public integrity unit, and Chisholm announced the charges as the beginning of a focus on the issue of police brutality. Humitz was suspended the week charges were filed.
Simpson told jurors his witnesses would include other officers from the scene, whom he did not expect to be as forthcoming as parishioners about what happened.
“Just because a citizen is wearing a uniform doesn’t make any use of force OK,” Simpson told jurors.
Copyright 2007 The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel