Chicago Tribune
HAMMOND, Ind. — Saying the FBI has “cleared” them, Hammond’s mayor has returned two police officers to regular duty two months after they were accused of using excessive force during a traffic stop, smashing a window and using a Taser on a passenger.
But Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr. said he hopes to continue a “discussion” with community and church leaders that began after officers Patrick Vicari and Charles Turner stopped the car in September after spotting the driver and front passenger not wearing seat belts.
“Several issues have been brought to my attention that I am committed to continued discussion and finding solutions,” McDermott said in a statement. “Most importantly, this includes a review of the testing and hiring practices of the Hammond Police Department to ensure a more diversified workforce that better reflects our diverse city. Ideas such as a police advisory commission and additional sensitivity training are also being reviewed.”
The officers are white and the driver and passengers in the car were black.
Vicari and Turner pulled over Lisa Mahone around 3:30 p.m. Sept. 24 because she and Jamal Jones, in the front passenger seat, were not wearing seat belts as required by state law, the police department said at the time. Mahone’s two children, 7 and 14, were in the back seat.
Vicari and Turner asked Mahone, 47, for her driver’s license. They also asked to see Jones’ identification.
In a federal lawsuit the couple later filed, 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.
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.”
In a video recorded by Mahone’s 14-year-old son, one officer tells Jones that if he did not step out of the car, they would “have to open the door for (him).” 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.
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 couple’s lawsuit accuses 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.”
In his statement, McDermott said the FBI has “informed the Hammond Police Department that it has cleared the two officers involved in the Jones arrest to return to active duty. After this most recent communication from the FBI, the Hammond Police Department has placed them back on regular duty.”
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