By Mara H. Gottfried
Pioneer Press
ST. PAUL — St. Paul police released skyway surveillance videos Wednesday related to the controversial arrest of Chris Lollie this year.
Lollie, 28, of St. Paul, recorded his encounter with police officers Jan. 31 and posted the cellphone video to YouTube on Aug. 26. The video, which Lollie titled “Black man taken to jail for sitting in public area,” has been viewed more than 1.2 million times. The video goes dark after about 2 minutes, when Lollie said an officer put his cellphone on a ledge, but the audio continued.
Police had obtained the skyway surveillance videos for their criminal investigation after Lollie’s arrest, and they released the videos in response to media requests. One is from the First National Bank Building before police were called; the other is from the Securian Center when an officer Tased Lollie. Neither system records audio.
The video from the First National Bank Building shows Lollie sitring in a skyway-level seating area at 9:34 a.m. A female was seen taking a seat in the same area at 9:39 a.m. A security guard came over twice and appeared to be talking to them. The female left at 9:41 a.m. Lollie and another male could still be seen sitting in the area.
A security guard had contacted police and reported an “uncooperative male refusing to leave,” a police report said.
A guard told police that Lollie had been sitting “for some time” in a skyway-level lounge area designated for building employees, and police have said they were responding to that information when they arrived.
At 9:50 a.m., Lollie was seen on the video getting up to leave. Officer Lori Hayne was arriving at about the same time. Lollie has said that he told the officer he would walk and talk with her because he was going to pick up his children.
In Lollie’s video, it starts with him asking, “So what’s your business with me right now?”
Hayne replies, “I want to find out who you are and what the problem was back there.” Lollie tells Hayne he knows his rights, “I don’t have to let you know who I am if I hadn’t broken any laws,” and he was sitting in an area that wasn’t marked as private.
The other video that police released Wednesday starts at 9:53 a.m. in the skyway level of the Securian Building. Lollie’s children attended daycare in the building at the time. Hayne was still with Lollie, and Officer Mike Johnson was next to arrive.
The video camera was controlled by Securian, and someone zoomed it in on Lollie and the officers.
Police wrote in a report that Lollie was “actively resisting by attempting to pull his arm away” and “began to forcefully try to shove past us as he was pulling away from us,” and an officer used a Taser on him.
Officer Bruce Schmidt pulled his Taser because of Lollie’s “noncompliance” and “he gives a warning” twice that he’ll use it, said Sgt. Paul Paulos, a St. Paul police spokesman. Schmidt put the Taser to Lollie’s thigh and used it to stun him; in the “drive stun” format, a Taser’s probes don’t go into the skin, Paulos said.
Chris Wachtler, St. Paul Police Federation attorney, said in a statement Wednesday that “whether or not the seating area (where Lollie had been) was public or private at this point was irrelevant. As the video shows, Mr. Lollie had walked almost two blocks from the area in question by the time he was arrested. Mr. Lollie had been given a lawful order and needed to comply. He refused to do so.”
Minnesota law “allows officers to use force to accomplish an arrest if: (1) the officer has informed the defendant of the intent to arrest; and (2) the defendant then flees or forcibly resists,” Wachtler continued in his statement. “Once an officer tells a person that he or she is under arrest, the individual no longer has any right to resist the arrest, even if it turns out to be unlawful,” though Wachtler said that was not the case with Lollie.
Lollie had been charged with three misdemeanors, including trespassing; the city attorney’s office dismissed the charges July 31. Police had been holding Lollie’s phone in evidence after his arrest; he got it back when the court case ended.
St. Paul’s mayor has called for a review of the case, and an internal affairs investigation is underway. It will be forwarded to the Police-Civilian Internal Affairs Review Commission, which will make a recommendation to the police chief about the case, including whether officers should be disciplined.
St. Paul’s skyways are public, similar to a public sidewalk, City Attorney Sara Grewing said last week. She said she has seen areas of the skyway marked “employees only,” but that “certainly was not what we had here,” Grewing said of the First National Bank Building seating area.
Richard Rossi, First National Bank Building senior property manager, said in a statement last week, “We have zero tolerance for discrimination of any kind at The First National Bank Building. Our first priority is to ensure the safety and security of all tenants and guests, and we will fully cooperate with any and all inquiries from the appropriate authorities.”
Copyright 2014 the Pioneer Press