Hackney: Police taunted, endangered disabled man

Have you heard of the cinnamon challenge? It’s a prank where someone talks an unsuspecting person into trying to ingest a spoonful of cinnamon in 60 seconds without the aid of liquids.

Often the tricksters shoot video of their gullible victim as the spice stimulates a gag reflex, causing uncontrollable choking and vomiting. Some teenagers have ended up on ventilators or suffered collapsed lungs after falling prey to this practical joke.

Hilarious stuff, right?

Now imagine an on-duty, uniformed police officer — or three, in this case — conning you into taking the cinnamon challenge and then posting their handiwork on the internet. It happened in August 2012 in South Bend to Jonathan Ferguson, a mentally disabled 7-Eleven clerk.

These three officers, the same officers who six months earlier had beaten and used a Taser on a South Bend teen as he slept in his bed, once again exhibited highly questionable decision-making while on the job. The misconduct of officers Aaron Knepper, Eric Mentz and Michael Stuk led to yet another lawsuit the city would lose.

“The actions of these officers was despicable — they did it for their own amusement,” Johnny Ulmer, Ferguson’s attorney, told me. “My client is mentally challenged. When he was a small child, he was attacked by a dog, and the dog crushed his skull. These officers frequented that 7-Eleven. They knew that Jonathan was mentally deficient and that, in part, is why they chose him.”

South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg acknowledges the current crisis in his community: repeated incidents of alleged abuse that have created a strained trust between officers and city residents. And episodes like the cinnamon challenge certainly don’t foster healthy community-police relations.

“Obviously I’m not pleased,” Buttigieg said. “Look, anybody who represents the city needs to represent the city to the highest values. But there is a subset of those people, and those are the public safety officers, who actually have the name of our city stitched on their shoulders. And as such they need to be individuals who can be trusted at all times to do the right thing, especially when it comes to interactions with our most vulnerable residents.”

I’m not attempting to admonish the entire 250-person South Bend Police Department here. I know their jobs are dangerous and difficult. But there is clearly something wrong in a city when police officers are repeatedly sued for behavior that violates civil rights.

Something also is clearly amiss when those victimized by police are too frightened to talk to journalists for fear of retaliation. Neither Ferguson, who was 28 at the time of the incident, nor his parents would agree to be interviewed by IndyStar because, according to their attorney, they are scared their words could prompt retribution from the police.

This fear is nothing new for a segment of South Bend’s population. For more than four years, residents have been telling city officials again and again: There are some bad cops here. These officers don’t respect us. Some of them abuse us. Some of them purposely want to hurt us.

Yet they felt their concerns were ignored.

Hackney: A case where civil rights are worth $1

But in the month since I wrote about the DeShawn Franklin case, residents have become more vocal. They have protested in front of police headquarters, requested a Department of Justice investigation into the department and presented a list of demands to the South Bend Board of Public Safety that includes the firing of Knepper.

Knepper has been named in civil lawsuits alleging misconduct at least three times since 2012. He has become the police department’s poster child for officer wrongdoing.

Most recently, he was involved in the high-profile arrest of University of Notre Dame senior cornerback Devin Butler outside a bar in August.

Officers were called to the Linebacker bar after reports of a fight between patrons and bar security. When officers arrived, the fight already had broken up. The officers went back outside and saw two women fighting near the curb, according to police documents. Police said Butler shoved one of the women, and the officers jumped in to stop him from further assaulting her.

Knepper said he was then thrown to the ground by Butler, before he was forced to use his Taser. But eyewitnesses dispute his account. Two witnesses told police Knepper grabbed Butler from behind, which set off the struggle. An internal investigation is pending, and Knepper has been removed from street duty. Butler, charged with felony battery of a police officer and resisting law enforcement, has been suspended indefinitely from the football team.

Sgt. Dan Demler, president of the South Bend Fraternal Order of Police, cautioned that calling for Knepper to be fired is unfair. He said Knepper had been on the streets for the past two years without an allegation of misconduct before the Butler encounter. He works the midnight shift, which, the union president said, means he has to deal frequently with citizens’ disorderly behavior, often fueled by drunkenness.

“Like every other department across the country, we’re under the microscope; we’re being scrutinized, and we get it,” Demler said. “The use of force is always going to be ugly; there’s no getting around it. But officers have the same rights as everybody else, and that’s a right to due process and the right to innocence until proven guilty.”

I acknowledge that not all of the facts in the Butler case have been determined, and it’s important to allow for a thorough investigation.

But what Jonathan Ferguson had to endure on that August evening in 2012 was wholly unacceptable.

According to the family’s civil lawsuit, several officers working the midnight shift, including Knepper, Mentz and Stuk, entered the convenience store and were told by Ferguson that a drunken customer had just left in a car and should be stopped. The officers, according to court records, said they didn’t want to go after the motorist because it would require them to spend time completing paperwork afterward.

Ferguson, surprised by the officers’ response, filed a formal complaint with the police department. A few days later, one of the officers was seen outside the store in a marked patrol car. The officer walked over to Ferguson’s car, removed an object from his pocket and bent over a tire. The three officers then entered the store and told Ferguson he should check the tire. He discovered that it had been punctured by a sharp object.

Ferguson filed a complaint about the incident, claiming that an officer had cut the tire in retaliation for his original complaint about their refusal to pursue a drunken driver.

A few nights later, the same three officers entered the 7-Eleven and told Ferguson that if he could swallow a tablespoon of cinnamon, they would give him a coupon for dinner at Applebee’s and $30. Ferguson agreed and began to consume the cinnamon. He started choking, became ill and vomited for several hours. The officers later posted a video of the encounter online to humiliate him, the lawsuit states.

Knepper, Mentz and Stuk were suspended without pay for two days, and earlier this year the city settled the lawsuit, paying Ferguson $8,000. Department officials also made the officers delete the video from YouTube.

“Was it a stupid thing to do? Absolutely. But they took their lumps for it,” Demler said.

Yet another lawsuit involving Knepper is pending. It involves the March 2014 arrest of well-known local golfer Tom Stevens. The 55-year-old was hospitalized with head injuries, including a brain bleed, after a run-in with Knepper and other officers. Stevens’ 76-year-old mother also was taken to the hospital after the incident, which started when Knepper pulled over Stevens’ vehicle as the golfer drove to his home. The lawsuit accuses Knepper of using excessive force.

“Knepper is a bully,” said the Rev. Mario Sims, a South Bend pastor and activist who monitors police and government actions in the city. “He’s a bully who has inflicted great pain on a number of citizens. This community is tired of it. This community is now awakened and unified; police corruption will not go unanswered.”

Mayor Buttigieg legally cannot discuss specific personnel issues about Knepper or other officers. But he does feel immense pressure to fix what’s wrong with his police department. He has ordered a review of the department’s duty manual to include national best practices for community-police relations. He has improved the training structure to ensure officers receive the best possible instruction. And he has instituted more community conversations between residents and officers.

Buttigieg told me his city has “deep problems” related to policing, but those problems are shared in most urban communities. He won’t run from the fact that “in American history, racial injustice has often come at the hands of law enforcement,” but he acknowledges he didn’t fully understand how much work it would take to reform the police department.

“All people want the same things — people want peace, they want safety and they want justice,” Buttigieg said. “Our best officers go out under incredible pressure to try to be the instruments of justice and work in these incredibly difficult circumstances. And people in the community, many who feel there is already a lot working against them, are under the stress of not knowing if they can trust their police department.

“I’ve got to change that,” he said.

Email IndyStar columnist Suzette Hackney at suzette.hackney@indystar.com. Follow her on Twitter: @suzyscribe.

Hackney: A police assault against America

South Bend Police Department

Calls for service

2014: 89,428

2015: 96,674

8.1 percent increase

Total cases

2014: 20,824

2015: 22,992

10.4 percent increase

Arrests

2014: 2,628

2015: 2,435

7.3 percent decrease

Use of force

2014: 88

2015: 79

10.2 percent decrease

Citizen complaints about use of force

2014: 4

2015: 4

Source: South Bend Fraternal Order of Police