The 14-year-old boy who filmed Hammond, Indiana police breaking his mother’s car window to stun her passenger with a Taser is speaking out about the “scary” police brutality he witnessed.
Joseph Ivy was sitting in the backseat with his 7-year-old sister, JaNiya, when police pulled his mother over for a seatbelt violation.
Lisa Mahone was driving the vehicle, but police zoned in on friend and passenger Jamal Jones, demanding he exit the vehicle after asking for identification. Jones did not have a license, but offered other forms of identification. Jones, wary of the police, also refused to step out of the vehicle, saying he “never had to get out of a vehicle from the passenger side,” in the past.
That’s when police smashed the window with an ax, used a Taser on Jones and put him in handcuffs. In a lawsuit Mahone filed, she says shards of glass from the broken window hit her children.
Joseph, who witnessed the entire exchange, knew he couldn’t stop filming.
“I was scared, but that’s what really gave me the courage to keep videotaping, because I was scared — and I knew if we took this to court, we had something to fight against them, because police have more power than us,” said the 14-year-old, who used his cellphone to record the incident.
Police maintain they did no use excessive force, although Mahone’s lawsuit states the men were highly aggressive.
“Fearing for officer safety, the first officer ordered the passenger to show his hands and then repeatedly asked him to exit the vehicle. The passenger continued to refuse to exit the vehicle after approximately thirteen minutes had elapsed and upon request by at least three different officers present at the scene of the stop,” it said in an official statement. “Fearing the occupants of the vehicle may have possessed a weapon, and seeing the passenger repeatedly reach towards the rear seats of the vehicle, the first officer then broke the passenger side window of the vehicle and the passenger was removed from the vehicle and was placed under arrest.”
According to Think Progress, both officers involved — Lt. Patrick Vicari and Sgt. Charles Turner — were involved in excessive force cases in the past. In fact, Vicari was tied to three different lawsuits.
You can watch the disturbing video below:
SOURCE: Think Progress | PHOTO CREDIT: Screengrab | VIDEO SOURCE: YouTube
