Leroy Kennedy of Chicago said he was walking down the street “minding his own business” when two police officers violently arrested him, leaving bruises on his face.
Kennedy, a black man, is now suing the Chicago Police Department, claiming that the video from the police body shows that he was not breaking any laws when he was taken into custody last August.
“We are seeking justice for Mr. Kennedy. We will also highlight the corrosive ‘us against them’ mentality that the Chicago police bring to many black and Latino neighborhoods, “said his lawyer, Christopher Smith, in a statement.
The footage of the body camera was released by Smith and does not include audio in the first few minutes. The sound starts after Kennedy is arrested.
In the video, police officers Ridgner and Abramson run towards Kennedy and stop him as he walks down the sidewalk. It seems that Kennedy and the policemen exchange words and one of the policemen, a black man, throws Kennedy against a brick wall.
The officer is then seen in the video taking Kennedy to the ground while the second officer tries to control a crowd that has gathered.
Kennedy is handcuffed and placed in the back seat of a police car, the video shows. The two policemen then take him a short distance to another location and call an ambulance.
Smith said on Saturday that he does not know exactly what his client and the police said to each other, but the arrest was not guaranteed.
According to the lawsuit, opened on Wednesday in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, officers Ridgner and Abramson were patrolling the west side of the city at around 5:30 pm when they arrested Kennedy. The lawsuit says Kennedy was “minding his own business on the sidewalk” and “was not breaking any laws”.
He says Kennedy suffered head and wrist injuries and received treatment at the hospital.
After the arrest, the police “conspired with each other about what to do,” the suit said.
“In an illegal effort to justify their scary attack on Mr. Kennedy, the defendant police officers created false reports that alleged that Mr. Kennedy committed several criminal batteries against them,” says the document.
According to a police report provided to Smith by NBC News, police officers wrote that they stopped Kennedy because he looked directly at them, stiffened his body and his eyes widened.
“Kennedy adjusted his hands and manipulated the frontal neck area,” wrote the police, saying they believed Kennedy could be carrying a gun.
The police report states that Kennedy waved his arms at Ridgner and shouted at him not to touch him.
Kennedy was arrested on two counts of resisting arrest and one count of aggravated assault by a police officer. The charges were dropped in December.
The suit says the charges were dropped because “there was no case” against Kennedy.
The Chicago Police Department said in a statement on Saturday: “We cannot comment on pending or proposed litigation.” The agency did not answer questions about whether officers Ridgner and Abramson faced disciplinary action over the arrest.
The officers could not be reached at the telephone numbers listed for them.
Smith said on Saturday that his client has suffered trauma since the incident. He filed the lawsuit because he wants the police department to be held responsible for the arrest and to address how his officers treat people on the west and south sides of Chicago, which are predominantly minority areas.
“We want the city, be it the mayor or the police, to examine how they have police going to these neighborhoods with a plan to be ‘us against them’ beforehand,” said Smith. “We want it to stop at a general level.”
Kennedy is seeking compensatory damages because officials “have acted maliciously, rampant or oppressively.”
