Thomas MacMillan Photo
Isis Hargrove said she was sitting in a car on Hurlburt Street when police pulled her out of the vehicle, threw her to the ground, cursed at her, dumped out her pocketbook, then arrested her and took her to police headquarters, where she threw up after police ignored her complaints that she was feeling sick.
Police said they feared the 20-year-old woman (pictured) may have had a weapon. She was arrested for interfering with an officer during a drug bust on a house near where the car was parked.
The case is the one of several highlighted recently by local criminal defense attorney Mike Jefferson. Jefferson said the cases exemplify a trend of routine police interactions turning into an angry and sometimes violent encounters between cops and African-Americans. It’s part of an ongoing problem of over-aggressive police officers operating without checks, Jefferson said.
In another case, a woman named Doreen Hobson called police to report that her car had been vandalized — and ended up in handcuffs. She said police tried to antagonize and intimidate her and wouldn’t explain their actions.
Police said she had an outstanding warrant and fought with them when they arrested her.
Hargrove’s case was nolled last week. Hobson is due in court on June 24.
Both cases raise the question of how civilians should deal with police they feel are overreacting or mistreating them. Should they run? Cooperate? Curse back?
One local black cop has advice for African-Americans about dealing with routine police encounters. In a recent book, entitled “Driving While Black: A Black Man’s Guide to Law Enforcement in America,” Shafiq Abdussabur advises people to be polite and cooperative when dealing with police no matter what the circumstances. That’s the way to avoid escalating a situation into an arrest or conflict.
Jefferson said he agrees with that advice. But police should be held to that same standard, he said. They are the ones trained to diffuse tense situations, and should keep their cool even when confronted by anxious or uncooperative citizens, Jefferson said.
Activist Barbara Fair had a slightly different take on it. Despite their training, police act unnecessarily aggressive, she said. It’s therefore up to civilians to be cool and defuse tense situations.
Hargrove said she cooperated. Hobson said she cooperated, then struggled with police. Both incidents turned out badly.
Option 1: Ask For Badge Number, Throw Up
In a recent interview in Jefferson’s Dixwell Avenue law office, Hargrove, who lives in West Haven, told her side of the story. Here’s what she said happened:
It was the evening of Friday, April 9. Hargrove was sitting in the passenger seat of a car on Hurlburt Street, sending text messages. Her cousin had just run into a house to use the bathroom. She noticed some police activity three or four houses away. “I guess the cops were doing a bust or something.”
Suddenly a cop appeared at the driver’s side window. “Put down the fucking phone!” he shouted, according to Hargrove. “Get the fuck out of the car!”
“What did I do?” Hargrove said she asked. The cop continued to yell at her.
Then a female officer came up to her side of the car. “Ma’am, can you step out of the car please?” the officer said, according to Hargrove.
Hargrove said OK, then asked if the cop needed to see ID. “It’s in my pocketbook,” she recalled saying. “Do you want to get it or me?”
Hargrove said she knows police don’t like sudden movements or seeing people reach into bags, so she made sure to clarify what the cop wanted her to do. She said she was taking off her seat belt and reaching for the door when suddenly the male cop grabbed her and pulled her out of the car. “He takes me and slams me on the ground,” Hargrove recalled.
“Shut the fuck up!” the cop reportedly shouted when Hargrove tried to ask why she was being arrested. She said she asked for his name and badge number and he did not give it to her.
The officer grabbed her purse, dumped it out, and tossed it on the ground.
“Shut up before I take you to jail,” the cop said, according to Hargrove. He told her she was being arrested for interfering.
“Why?” Hargrove said. “You guys came and harassed me.” She said she wasn’t near the scene of the bust on Hurlburt Street.
“You’re at the wrong place at the wrong time,” an officer told her, according to Hargrove. She was handcuffed and put in the back of a cruiser.
Another officer saw her and started laughing at her.
“That’s Cody’s girlfriend,” the cop said according to Hargrove.
“Ex-girlfriend,” Hargove replied. “And what’s so funny?”
Hargrove started to feel sick. Her head was pounding and her whole back hurt. She was still recovering from a minor car accident she’d been in the night before. She asked the police to switch the handcuffs to the front. They did so.
She was moved to a police wagon. Before she got in, she asked several more times for the name and badge number of the cop who had cursed at her and thrown her on the ground. Police assured her it would be on the incident report, she said.
The police told her to “have fun in Union Station [police headquarters] for the weekend,” Hargrove said.
When she arrived at police headquarters, she started feeling worse, Hargrove said. She said she could “feel my brain pulsating” and she almost passed out. She told police she wanted to go to the hospital. They told her she was fine and should just take some Advil when she got home, Hargrove said.
“I start getting queasy,” she said. “I started throwing up everywhere.”
Police still told her there was nothing wrong with her, Hargrove said.
She was released on a promise to appear in court. She went to the hospital, where she was told she had received a concussion. It must have happened when she was thrown to the ground, she said. “My whole body was like in shambles.”
Hargrove said she still doesn’t know the name of the officer that pulled her out of the car.
“I just want to choke that guy,” she said. She said she wants her case to be thrown out and “justice to be served.”
On April 9, police were executing a search and seizure warrant at 68 Hurlburt St., where they arrested an alleged member of the Hill South Bloods on drug charges. On the sixth page of the report of that arrest, a paragraph describes the police interaction with Hargrove. Here’s what police say happened, according to the report, prepared by Det. Jodi Novella:
As the police were executing the warrant, an Acura Vigor with someone in the passenger seat was running with its lights on in front of 68 Hurlburt. The passenger, later identified at Isis Hargrove, told Det. Novella and Lt. John Velleca that her driver of the car had gone into 68 Hurlburt St.
Hargrove then started yelling at Novella and Velleca. She began reaching for a bag on the floor of the car. Velleca told Hargrove to keep her hands visible. Hargrove refused.
When she reached down toward the bag, police ordered her out of the car. She refused. Velleca and Novella feared she might be reaching for a weapon, according to the report.
“Isis was then pulled out of the car and arrested for interfering with an officer,” the report states. “It should be noted that in the past month there has been an increase in gun violence in this area.”
A judge nolled Hargrove’s case on June 16. “It worked itself out,” Jefferson said. He declined to give further details about his discussions with the prosecutor.
Option 2: Sing, Ignore Police
When Doreen Hobson (pictured) called the police to report that her car was vandalized, she was the one who ended up handcuffed in the back of a cruiser.
She said she was mistreated, harassed, and wrongly arrested by police.
A police report states that she was uncooperative and fought with police officers. According to court records, she had an outstanding warrant from 2002 for driving with a suspended license.
Hobson said she didn’t know about the warrant when she called the cops in April to report that a mirror had been broken off her car. Police ran her name before responding to the call, then arrested her when they showed up at her house. According to police, Hobson tried to escape from the police car. Now Hobson is due in court this week to answer to charges the old charges from 2002 and new ones from April.
Hobson said she took care of the charges from 2002 and didn’t have any warrants out on her. The police tried to antagonize and intimidate her when they showed up at her house, she said.
Hobson, who’s 32, spoke about the incident in an interview in the office of attorney Jefferson. Although he’s not representing her, Jefferson said Hobson’s case is typical of a ongoing police harassment and misconduct directed at African-Americans.
Here’s what happened, according to Hobson:
On Apr. 21 at 9 p.m., Hobson called the police to report that her Dodge Intrepid had been vandalized. The police showed up to her home, at 32 Read St. in the Newhallville neighborhood. They asked her about her car. Then one told her that she had an active warrant out against her. Hobson said she had been arrested in 2002 for driving with a suspended license. But she took care of that, she said. She paid a fine and other fees and had since gotten a new license in Connecticut and one in New Jersey, after she moved there for several years. She wouldn’t have been able to do that if there was a warrant out on her, Hobson said.
The police officer, Officer Ronald Pressley, was very rude to her, she said. She said he was trying to intimidate her. But he didn’t immediately arrest her. Instead he and another officer asked to see the car.
Hobson took two police officers across the street to look at her car. Since the car is registered out of state, Hobson said, she hasn’t been driving it. She had parked it in an empty lot across from her house, next to another car, whose owner had told her it was OK to park there.
She showed them the damage to the car. The mirror on the passenger side was hanging off. The police looked at the car. Then Officer Pressley said again, “You have two warrants.”
Hobson said she didn’t. Pressley asked for ID. Hobson asked why he wanted ID. Pressley asked again. Hobson asked why. Pressley got angry, Hobson said.
Pressley grabbed her arm, Hobson said. “He really tries to bend my arm,” she said. Hobson said she wasn’t resisting arrest or trying to run.
The police handcuffed her and put her in the back of a car. “Remember, you called us,” Hobson recalled Pressley saying.
Hobson said Pressley rolled down the window of the car and stood outside asking her questions. She said he was trying to antagonize her.
Hobson told him that her uncle works for the police department. “My uncle will get word of this,” she said.
Since her arm was hurting her, she tried moving around and managed to pull one of her hands out of the cuffs. She continued to sit in the back of the car, half out of the handcuffs, for 20 minutes.
When Pressley realized she was un-cuffed, he opened the door and tried to grab her. “I kicked him because of how he came at me,” Hobson said.
Pressley pulled her out of the car by her leg while she tried to hold onto the seats. Then six officers jumped on her and threatened to tase her, Hobson said. Her daughter came out of her house and asked why her mother was on the ground. The police told her to go back in the house.
After she was brought to her feet and re-handcuffed, Hobson said, she started to sing loudly. Pressley was trying to threaten her and she was was ignoring him, she said.
Eventually, Hobson was taken away and spent the night in jail.
An incident report prepared by Officer K. Malloy tells a different story:
According to the report, Hobson struggled and swore at police when they tried to arrest her. “Get the fuck off of me,” she said, reportedly.
When Pressley tried to ask her questions as she sat in the back of the cruiser, Hobson refused to cooperate. “I know my rights I don’t have to tell you nothing,” she reportedly said.
Officer Pressley allowed Hobson’s daughter and another woman to approach the car and speak with Hobson, according to Malloy’s report. He told them that it would take a few hours to process the arrest and they’d have to go to the station to bail her out.
When Pressley noticed she was uncuffed, Hobson reached for a door handle and tried to get out of the car. Pressley tried to grab Hobson’s legs. She kicked his hands. She began to struggle and resisted attempts to handcuff her. Three other officers helped Pressley subdue Hobson. Each one took a limb as Hobson flailed and screamed. Her sunglasses and an earring fell off and she cut herself while reaching for her glasses.
Hobson began to curse at the officers. She screamed that she would be out in an hour because she knows the police union president.
“This shit ain’t nothing to me. This ain’t my first time,” she reportedly said. “I got a fucking lawsuit right now. I got a lawsuit,” she reportedly yelled to people standing nearby.
Hobson said she started screaming when she was put on the ground, but prior to that she hadn’t raised her voice. She said the matter could have been easily resolved if the police had simply explained why they wanted her ID.
“It just doesn’t make sense,” she said. “Why are you going so hard for an eight-year-old warrant.”
Attorney Jefferson said that even if Hobson was screaming and swearing, it doesn’t excuse the threatening behavior of the police. They are trained to handle difficult situations, he said.
Jefferson said that if he were in a situation where he thought police were acting improperly, “I would request a supervisor to come to the scene.” Jefferson said he recognized that such a request could escalate the situation.
“I would keep my doors locked and my windows partially rolled up” and request a supervisor, he said.
Asked if he thought Hobson and Hargrove had mishandled the situation by not asking for a supervisor, Jefferson said, “I don’t think they did anything wrong.
“Could they have been anxious? That’s possible. But that’s not doing anything wrong,” he said.
It’s only natural to become anxious or uncomfortable when approached by a police officer with a badge and gun and handcuffs, Jefferson said. “Police should be sensitive to that.”
Jefferson said he agrees with Abdussabur that civilians should be calm and cooperative with police. “But the people we’re paying should also adhere to those guidelines.”
“For me, my first response is to chill things out,” Fair said. She said police often enter situations with very aggressive attitudes. A few minutes of level-headedness by civilians can help calm officers down, she said.
If things don’t improve, Fair recommended asking for a supervisor and a badge number and filing a complaint. Even if police don’t respond to the complaint, at least it’s on record, she said.
“The reality is that all the training they’re getting is not making them come into the community with respect,” Fair said. “We have to learn the realities of how to handle the police.”
Police have a hard job, but it doesn't excuse their behavior. For too long the Mayor's office has tolerated poor behavior--a shining example being their telling the new Chief how to handle Bandy. That's a shame.