Amid a growing crisis over the Chicago Police Department’s use of force, the city late Monday released a video that shows officers in a Far South Side police lockup repeatedly using a Taser on a University of Chicago graduate and dragging him out of his cell in handcuffs.
The release of the video was accompanied by a prepared statement from embattled Mayor Rahm Emanuel saying that the treatment of Philip Coleman while he was in custody in December 2012 was unacceptable. Coleman died following a reaction to an antipsychotic drug, but an autopsy showed that Coleman had experienced severe trauma, including more than 50 bruises and scrapes on his body from the top of his head to his lower legs.
“I do not see how the manner in which Mr. Coleman was physically treated could possibly be acceptable,” Emanuel said. “While the Medical Examiner ruled that Mr. Coleman died accidentally as a result of treatment he received in the hospital, it does not excuse the way he was treated when he was in custody. Something is wrong here — either the actions of the officers who dragged Mr. Coleman, or the policies of the department.”
In spite of the mayor’s condemnation, police oversight officials last year ruled the officers’ actions with Coleman were justified.
The Coleman video comes after a cascade of events that have left Emanuel in the worst crisis of his tenure at City Hall. It began with a murder charge against Officer Jason Van Dyke in connection with the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald in October 2014. The city then made public the video of Van Dyke shooting the teen 16 times after resisting its release for months. That sparked protests and calls for the mayor to step down.
Emanuel fired police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, saying he had lost the trust of residents. He initially resisted calls for a federal civil rights inquiry, then backtracked and said he would welcome such an investigation. The mayor then pushed out Scott Ando, chief administrator of the Independent Police Review Authority, or IPRA, the beleaguered civilian agency that investigates excessive force allegations against police.
Finally, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch on Monday announced a wide-ranging federal civil rights investigation into the force, a suggestion that the city, in spite of repeated claims that it would reform itself, had been unable to deliver lasting changes to the department.
Emanuel, as well as interim police Superintendent John Escalante, said they consider the investigation into how Coleman was handled at the lockup an open case, although a spokesman for IPRA said the agency had closed its investigation and found the officers’ actions were justified.
Coleman’s father, in a lengthy interview Monday evening, said that trying to find out what happened to his son while he was in custody had been a painful process. A career law enforcement officer in the south suburbs, Percy Coleman said his bright, talented son deserved to be taken care of better by police, even after his son assaulted his mother in what appeared to be a significant mental health crisis.
“That was just not Philip,” his father said. “He wasn’t in his right mind or body.”
Coleman’s mother had called police on her son because, Percy Coleman said, she trusted them to do the right thing.
“She didn’t call Chicago police to kill her son,” Coleman said. “She called them for some help.”
Percy Coleman said he overheard an officer brush off pleas from the family to take his son to a hospital for treatment.
“We don’t do hospitals, we do jail,” Coleman recalled the officer saying.
The video shows officers at the Calumet District lockup on East 111th Street barking orders at Coleman, who had been asleep on his jail cot. Coleman stands up and then a Taser is used on him before officers wrestle him to the ground and handcuff him. His family’s attorney, Ed Fox, said Coleman was shocked three times; police have said in depositions and reports that they shocked him because he was uncooperative.
In the video, a handcuffed Coleman is wearing boxer shorts and a long-sleeve T-shirt as officers are seen dragging him down a hall. Officers following behind him can be seen on the video smiling. He then was taken to Roseland Community Hospital, where the police reports say he again became combative. Officers used a Taser 13 times and a baton on Coleman, according to a family lawyer; the officers said in reports they feared for their safety and the safety of the medical staff.
A University of Chicago political science graduate with a master’s degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago, Coleman, 38, was taken into custody Dec. 12, 2012. He had gone to his parents’ home in the West Pullman neighborhood to speak with his 69-year-old mother, Lena. Upset about losing out on a job opportunity and mounting financial pressure, the two talked and prayed together for hours before Philip Coleman suddenly snapped, according to police records.
“You’re not my mother,” he reportedly shouted at Lena.
He threw furniture, kicked his mother and punched her in the face. His mother ran to the bathroom, where she climbed out a window and ran to a neighbor’s house for help. When police arrived, she had a swollen left eye, a cut to the forehead and a scraped knee.
She told officers at the scene her son had experienced a mental breakdown and that she did not want to press charges against him.
Coleman ran away from the scene, only to run into his father, who was returning from work. Coleman accused him of not being his father before fleeing again, according to police reports released by the city. The reports do not detail how officers got Philip Coleman in a police vehicle, though Percy Coleman maintains he helped authorities subdue his son.
A police report said Coleman spit bloody saliva on two officers and, as a consequence, he was charged with aggravated battery.
Percy Coleman, who has filed a civil rights lawsuit against police and the city over his son’s treatment, said he believed that the officers retaliated against his son because he spit on them. He said the officers knew that his son needed psychiatric assistance.
According to the lawsuit, the police were going to get Philip Coleman ready for bond court. Fox said investigators from IPRA waited two years before interviewing the officers who were involved in the handling of Coleman.
When Fox questioned them in depositions, officers offered conflicting accounts about why Coleman was repeatedly shocked in his cell. One officer, Fox said, testified that Coleman lunged at them, while another said Coleman went into a boxing stance. Sgt. Tommy Walker, in his sworn statement, testified that he ordered Coleman to be shocked with the Taser because he was “being uncooperative.”
“None of this happened,” Fox said. “These officers were just having a good time. They were laughing and joking, and you can see that in the video.”
Emanuel and Escalante said the investigation into how officers treated Coleman was continuing. Fox, though, said that conflicted with what city lawyers recently told him — that IPRA had closed its investigation in November 2014 and had found the officers’ actions justified. Larry Merritt, the IPRA spokesman, confirmed Monday night that the investigation had been closed.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who knew Coleman from his work at the Rainbow/PUSH coalition and gave a eulogy at his funeral, said Emanuel needs to do more than just issue sympathetic statements to regain the public’s trust. The six officers in the video — which Jackson called “horrendous” after viewing it for the first time this week — need to be held accountable for their treatment of a mentally ill man and department policies cannot protect such behavior, he said.
“All words ring hollow until there is action,” Jackson said.
Fox said that while the city has offered a seven-figure payment to settle the family’s lawsuit, it has so far rejected the offer.
Percy Coleman, who as a career law enforcer said he understands police culture, wants the department to adopt new policies on how it deals with mental-health crises. What’s more, he would like to be part of any discussion about reforms to the Police Department.
“We want something to show Philip just didn’t die in vain,” he said.
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