2 Norman Park GA police officers accused of excessive force while arresting man on smoke break

August 6, 2010
Man claims brutality in Norman Park arrest
Alan Mauldin
The Moultrie Observer

NORMAN PARK — Video of a loitering arrest by Norman Park police shows two officers violently slamming a man against a car.

Tarius Jackson, 29, said the arrest occurred after he told the first officer to approach, whom he identified as Police Chief Justin Rutherford, that he did not have his wallet.

“I wasn’t resisting or anything,” Jackson said. “It seems like they were trying to make me fight them back, but I wouldn’t fight them.”

The officer who took him to Colquitt County Jail taunted him on the way about how they overpowered him, Jackson said.

The video shows Jackson sitting outside a convenience store and leaning against the wall while smoking. He is with several other people, but the officer walks by the others and directly to Jackson.

Jackson said he had been helping out in the store moving boxes and had just gone outside for a smoke break at the time the officers drove up.

In the video, Jackson stands up and puts his hand behind his back. There was no sound with the video, of which Jackson had a disc copy.

Jackson said Rutherford asked him for identification, and when he said he did not have his wallet on him was ordered to put his hands behind his back.

When he put his hands behind his back, he said, he felt his wallet was in his back pocket and he pulled out his identification.

At about this time on the video a second officer approaches Jackson from his right side and both of them grab Jackson, pull him forward and slam his face and upper body onto the hood of a truck in the parking lot.

http://moultrieobserver.com/local/x1936223536/Man-claims-brutality-in-Norman-Park-arrest