NAACP Wants Hammond Officers Fired Or Retrained Over Stun Gun Incident
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Members of the NAACP were urging officials in Hammond to stop what the civil rights group calls aggressive treatment by police officers, concerned the northwest Indiana town might become the next Ferguson, Missouri.
CBS 2's Mike Puccinelli reports he Hammond branch of the NCAACP held a news conference Friday morning outside the Hammond police station, calling for change inside the department, after a videotape surfaced of officers using a stun gun on a man who refused to get out of the passenger's seat of a car that had been pulled over for a seatbelt violation last month.
"What happened to click it or ticket? This type of behavior should not be tolerated, or acceptable, to any human being. It makes you wonder if they are checking on the safety of those in the vehicle, simply trying to serve and protect; or was this just another case of racial profiling?" said Rev. Orville Sanders, of the Hammond Ministers Alliance. "We find their conduct utterly appalling and despicable."
Some activists said the traffic stop should cost at least two Hammond police officers their jobs.
The officers had pulled over Lisa Mahone on Sept. 24 for a seatbelt violation, and when they asked her boyfriend, Jamal Jones, to get out of the car, he refused. Police said Jones also was not wearing a seat belt.
When Jones refused repeated requests from police to get out of the car, an officer broke the passenger's side window with a club, used a stun gun on Jones, and dragged him out of the car. Mahone's two children were in the back seat, and her teenage son recorded part of the traffic stop with his cell phone camera.
"This policing thing only works when there is mutual trust," Barbara Bolling Williams, president of the Indiana NAACP.
She called for an independent investigation, and said the officers should be placed on desk duty.
Activists said Jones is not the only Hammond resident to recently suffer abuse at the hands of police officers.
Rev. Homer Cobb, president of the Hammond branch of the NAACP, claimed a 17-year-old honor student was thrown to the ground after police saw her jaywalking.
"This child was thrown to the ground, and handcuffed, and arrested, as a result of a simple matter of jaywalking," Cobb said. "Immediately after that is when this other incident surfaced; and it was at that time that we realized that this was not an isolated incidence, but it was one of a series of incidences."
Jones, as it turned out, was wanted on an outstanding arrest warrant, but activists said police did not know that at the time, and should have complied with Jones' request to speak to a supervisor.
They also said Mahone was trying to get to the hospital in Chicago to visit her dying mother – which she told the officers – and police should have escorted her there, and then dealt with the seatbelt violation. Mahone's mother has since died.
The NAACP said the officers in the traffic stop should be fired, or at the very least retrained.
"We'll march, protest, file lawsuits, and make demands," Cobb said.
Hammond police and a law firm representing the city in a lawsuit stemming from the traffic stop declined to comment on the NAACP's demands.