Many questions linger over two arrests made last week at 33rd and Seward Streets. The questions focus on the police officers as many in the community are claiming police brutality.
I’m not going to jump to any conclusions about what happened, but this is definitely a case that should be given a second look and rightfully has been, not only by the Omaha Police Department, but also by the public as a video of the incident went viral this week. An unidentified third party caught the incident on tape. (Editor’s note: You can view the video here. Warning: the video contains explicit language.)
As of now, an internal investigation by the Police Department is underway and Police Chief Todd Schmaderer has vowed to oversee the investigation of the allegations. As for the police officers involved, two have been temporarily reassigned and a third officer involved in the incident has been placed on paid administrative leave.
You are probably wondering what happened.
Based on the video, it appears some police officers were ticketing and towing some vehicles, when two men Octavious Johnson and his brother, Juaquez Johnson, walk up towards the officers after exiting their blue truck.
The officers appear to instruct Octavious Johnson to step back and he seems to do so, but was then slammed to the ground by one of the officers and then punched repeatedly.
Mean while Juaquez Johnson is standing on the other side of the street yelling and videotaping his brother. After Juaquez Johnson went inside a nearby house, several officers raced after him and placed him under arrest on suspicion of obstruction.
Sharon Johnson, the men’s aunt, told “The World-Herald” that police told Juaquez Johnson to stop videotaping. She said he ran inside the house to get away from the police officers, but the officers followed to get the video.
The thing is with this incident we don’t know what happened outside of the frame of the video or what was not picked up on the camera’s microphone. Because of this, I am left with more questions than answers.
Does the body slam look bad? Yes, but did Mr. Johnson make some sort of threat? Did he have a weapon? We don’t know. We don’t know what he did, or if he did anything.
Same goes for his brother. It is surprising that the police ran into the house after him without first obtaining a search warrant. Did they think there was some overriding circumstance? Did the officers feel like weapons were going to be used? But, again Juaquez was arrested and charged with suspicion of obstruction, not a weapons charge.
The bottom line is that it is tough to tell from the video what precedes all of this and what could have happened to escalate the situation the way it did. It is tough for me to judge fairly because I simply don’t have the answers, but will concede that this looks bad and can only hope that the Omaha Police Department truly does a thorough investigation.