Butler County Couple Sues Pa. State Troopers, Claiming Excessive Force
PITTSBURGH (KDKA)--A couple from Slippery Rock is accusing the Pennsylvania State Police and three local state police troopers of an assault and excessive use of force during a marijuana arrest in 2017.
In a 22-page federal civil lawsuit, Danny and Sheri Pollock allege that Corporal Gregory Bogan, Trooper Nathan Spangler, and Trooper Matthew Kephart based in the Butler Barracks caused serious bodily injuries when they sought to arrest Pollock for growing two marijuana plants in his backyard.
The Pollocks spoke with KDKA's Jon Delano on Wednesday afternoon.
"I was in total tears. All I could do was cry," said Mr. Pollock.
Delano: "You did not resist arrest?"
Pollock: "I never raised a hand."
Delano: "Did they swear at you?"
Pollock: "Yes, sir. Swore at my wife."
Pollock admits he had two marijuana plants growing in their back yard to help alleviate Sheri's pain from a motorcycle injury.
"I just found these two seeds kicking around, and I thought I'll try this. Maybe this will alleviate her pain a little bit 'cause she's allergic to all narcotics. She can't take nothing for pain, and I know what it's like to be in pain and now I really know what it's like to be in pain."
WATCH: KDKA's Jon Delano reports
Sheri Pollock never got to use the cannabis because a National Guard helicopter spotted the plants, and in 2015 state troopers showed up to remove the plants.
"They were more or less reassuring, and told me there would probably be nothing happen," Pollock recalls.
But two years later, three state troopers showed up at his door, say the Pollocks, to arrest Dan Pollock, and that's when they assaulted him.
"I was doing nothing but standing there. They threw me around like a wet ragdoll," Pollock told KDKA's Jon Delano.
"They severely beat him," says attorney Al Lindsay.
"They jammed his head into a swing, damaged his teeth. They kicked him, kneed him in the groin. All the while, Mrs. Pollock is screaming, he just had a heart attack, please."
"What happens was, he started to bleed, he's on blood thinners."
WATCH: KDKA's Jon Delano reports
Lindsay says troopers ultimately took Pollock to Butler Memorial Hospital where doctors confirmed Pollock had just been treated for a heart attack and had a stent eleven days earlier.
"It was terrible," says Sheri Pollock.
"No one should have to go through that. No one deserves to be beat like Dan was."
She says it's shaken her strong support for law enforcement.
"I'll never trust them again. I will never have faith in police again, not after what they did to Dan," she says.
KDKA has reached out to the state police for a reaction to this civil rights lawsuit.
But so far no response.
This case filed in federal court here in Pittsburgh demands a jury trial.