Bodycam footage of a 14-year-old being held to the ground by a South Bend police officer is drawing different reactions. And a warning, this story contains sound that might be upsetting to some listeners.
Just before 1:00 last Friday afternoon, an employee at the downtown McDonald's called 911 reporting a little kid trying to give workers a hard time. “So, there’s this little boy here – no parents with him,” the employee said in a recording released Wednesday. “He’s being very loud, aggressive, and he’s a little kid demanding us to give him money for an order that he already had.”
The employee tells the dispatcher that no weapons were involved and no one was in danger.
About 10 minutes later, an officer – later identified as Patrolman Samuel Chaput – arrives, sees someone matching the description and tries to speak with the juvenile.
“You can’t touch me, fool,” the child is heard saying in police bodycam footage released Wednesday.”
“Yes, I sure can,” Chaput responded.
About 20 seconds after that, the officer's hand can be seen pulling the juvenile down to the curb. Then after about another 10 seconds, the juvenile's arm can be seen reaching toward the officer as she yelled to call her mother.
“I didn’t do nothing!” she screamed repeatedly.
Once the juvenile was inside the car, Chaput went inside the restaurant to speak with the manager, who said the girl wanted extra sauce, refused to pay for it, then wanted a refund. The manager said the juvenile threatened to report employees to the health department for not wearing hair nets.
Employees said they'd asked the juvenile to leave, which the juvenile later denied.
“You're detained by a police officer,” Chaput is heard telling the girl minutes later in the bodycam footage.
“For what?” she replied. “What crime did I commit?”
“I already told you, trespass,” Chaput responded.
“Before you knew about that, what crime did I commit?” the girl continued.
“A guy called in,” Chaput explained.
“I asked for a refund,” the girl said.
McDonald's employees initially referred to the juvenile as a Black male. It wasn't until Chaput spoke to the individual's guardians that he learned she was actually a female.
In a statement, an attorney representing the family says the girl didn’t commit a crime or provoke an attack by the officer. But South Bend Police Chief Scott Ruszkowski paints a different picture.
“You saw at least two, if not three, occasions where the juvenile pushed the officer away by hands and then was hitting the officer sideways on the ground – not head on a curb, not throat on a curb, not knelt on, not kicked, not punched, not pepper sprayed, not tasered, not any of those things,” Ruszkowski said during a press conference Wednesday.
He added that the officer may have had reason to make physical contact. “It's called establishing a relationship,” Ruszkowski said. “Even if we stood out in the street and God forbid that that juvenile would have got hit by a car, that is our responsibility. So moving that juvenile out of the way to the somewhat semblance of the safety of the side of a squad car off the side of the road would prevent that.”
Ruszkowski said Internal Affairs must still complete its investigation. The chief noted that Chaput could have pursued criminal charges against the girl, even though he appeared to tell the McDonald's manager that he couldn't.
“I don't know his demeanor when he said that,” Ruszkowski said during Wednesday’s press conference. “Maybe at that time it wasn't going to make an arrest for trespass. Rather than maybe put a record on a juvenile, the officer opted to take the juvenile to their legal guardian and work out whatever it is that way.”
Still, Ruszkowski defended Chaput’s actions, and the department's use of force committee has found that he used appropriate force.
