In the summer of 2019, Mohamed Nadil Jaber was violently arrested by Tampa Police officers for a second degree misdemeanor traffic offense. In the process, his head was bashed against the hood of a car, his hair was pulled from his scalp, and his legs were repeatedly beaten with a baton to the point he could barely walk.
None of the officers wore body cameras that night, and none of these details were mentioned in the official police report.
Fortunately, a bystander filmed the arrest.
Last summer, a Tampa man was violently arrested by TPD. His head was bashed against the hood of a car, his hair was pulled, and his legs were repeatedly beaten with a baton to the point he could barely walk. None of it was in the police report. https://t.co/tyvLyEvmpD pic.twitter.com/Y4QeUGnHK4
— Colin Wolf (@WolfColin) August 12, 2020
The incident occurred on July 19, when Jaber was out with a friend. The arrest report stated that he wasn’t at the scene of the alleged crime, but Jaber was arrested a few blocks away after his car was misidentified by a security guard as being involved with a hit-and-run at the Lowry Park North restaurant and lounge Room 1701.
“I think what's important in regards to the alleged hit-and-run, is that technically it's a second-degree misdemeanor,” Jaber’s lawyer Alex Stavrou, tells Creative Loafing Tampa Bay. “So, it's probably one of the lowest levels of crimes in the state of Florida. And he was brought from where they started back to the ultimate incident location.”
The security guard pursued Jaber to Club Flow, says the report, with Jones following close behind. Club Flow, a hookah lounge, is about a half-a-mile away from Room 1701.
According to the arrest report, Jaber was detained by Tampa Police Sgt. Kimberly Jones—an 18-year veteran on the force who has since been promoted to lieutenant—with the help of a security guard. They were later assisted by Jones’ subordinate, Officer Michael Bishop.
As anyone can see in the video, the most obvious omission is Jaber getting repeatedly beaten with an expandable metal baton by a security guard, who is dressed in a camouflage flak jacket and has an apparent sidearm on his hip. The security guard, identified as Thomas Hubert Terry, can be heard telling the crowd that Jaber is “resisting arrest without violence,” while he repeatedly hits him with the baton.
“I think what's most shocking about that video,” says Stavrou, “is there appears to be a time where the security guard strikes Mr. Jaber so hard that he drops the baton.” Stavrou also said his client was beaten with the baton prior to the start of the video.
Nowhere in the arrest report does it mention anything about Jaber getting hit with a baton, nor does it mention anything about the officers even attempting to stop Terry from intervening with the arrest. Not to mention it’s literally illegal for a security guard to make an arrest in the state of Florida.
This is an important thing to note, since both officers acknowledged Terry’s help with detaining Jaber. In her report, Sgt. Jones wrote, “Officer Bishop and the witness (security guard from Room 1701) were both on scene and assisted with taking the def. into custody.” Officer Bishop also wrote in his report, “At this time, Thomas Terry, who is an armed security guard at Room 1701 and Club Flow assisted me in controlling the defendant by holding his left arm while I attempted to put handcuffs on the defendant.”
Seeing as both Jones and Bishop acknowledge his help in the report, Jaber’s legal team argues it’s easy to conclude that the security guard was acting under the direction of the Tampa police officers, and that his use of force techniques should’ve been listed.
“That's the first time I’ve ever seen anything like that,” says Stavrou, who’s been practicing law for 22 years. “That’s the first occasion I've ever seen where a civilian was permitted to use what could arguably be considered deadly force against someone else without it being written in a report or without law enforcement permission.”
TPD denies that the security guard’s involvement was unlawful.
“There is no information to indicate Jones was involved with the guard’s employment and/or activities,” said Tampa Police spokesman Eddy Durkin in a lengthy email to CL. “If the guard was merely acting as a good Samaritan and trying to assist the officers with a resistant subject, this could be permitted by FL law.”
Unsurprisingly, TPD wouldn’t say if the security guard’s use of force was justified, and claims that it’s possible the officers were not even aware that Jaber was getting beaten with a baton.
“If you watch the provided video closely, both officers were looking away and engaged in active verbal commands/conversations when the security guard appeared to deliver a single, seemingly weak, baton strike towards the defendant’s legs,” said Durkin. “Neither officer physically reacts or appears to notice this.”
Notes from the computer aided dispatch (CAD) obtained by CL, confirmed that Jaber had difficulty walking that night. At the time, Officer Bishop told the dispatcher that Jaber was “refusing to walk and playing dead.” However, Jaber later told investigators that his ankles were swollen from the repeated baton strikes and that it was difficult to walk.
“He's got some residual issues to this day,” says Stavrou. “He has some nerve damage from being struck by the baton. He has issues, where on occasion, that respective ankle swells for what arguably would be no reason.”
Besides the baton, the police report from that night also downplayed other forms of use of force. The report says Jaber was using “active resistance” by grabbing the hood of the car and tensing up his body. By definition “active resistance” is non-violent, and officers are supposed to be trained to de-escalate this with non-violent techniques.
Officer Bishop says he applied a bent wrist transport technique to Jaber’s arm and then pushed him over the hood of the car. He then struck Jaber’s hand with an open hand strike. Sgt. Jones reaffirmed this, and wrote that she used textbook immobilization techniques to subdue Jaber.
“I used my hand and forearm to pin his head down which assisted in limiting his ability to move around,” wrote Sgt. Jones.
No other use of force was documented by either officer in the report, and the eyewitness video shows a completely different story.
In the video, Sgt. Jones can be seen pinning Jaber down over the hood of the car, while holding a tuft of his hair with her left hand, fully exposing his scalp, while also twisting his head beyond a normal range of motion. She also slams his face against the hood, and contorts Jaber’s arm behind his back, also well past its normal range of motion.
But TPD’s Durkin says Jones and Bishop used the necessary force to counter the defendant’s resistance.
“Since the defendant gave no appearance of being injured and did not, according to this material, make any claims of injury, his neck was clearly not moved ‘beyond its normal range’ (that would lead to a broken neck, torn musculature, etc.; none of which happened),” wrote Drukin. “His scalp was not damaged to any degree beyond what he would have induced by resisting. The defendant’s head was moved back onto the hood once when he tried to lift up/pull away only a few inches. ‘Slammed onto his face’ is grossly misleading and, in viewing the video, inaccurate.”
But regardless if TPD says these techniques are justified, they still weren’t mentioned in the report. And, they’re not even supported by the Florida Department of Law Enforcements’ Criminal Justice Standards and Training Commission curriculum. In fact, these types of extreme force techniques are often used as examples of what not to do, and are typically reserved for combat scenarios where an officer might be fighting for their survival.
By itself, this video is certainly bad. The police report not mentioning obvious examples of excessive force is also bad. But when you consider that Mohamad Jaber’s experience is just one example of TPD’s underreporting and increasing reliance on use of force then it’s much worse.
According to a Response to Resistance internal report obtained by CL, use of force during arrests by TPD has jumped by 24% since Brian Dugan became Chief of Police in 2017, and a closer look at the report shows that 15 out of the 25 categories that track use of force techniques by officers saw a significant increase.
However, if TPD isn’t properly logging every incident involving use of force, like in Jaber’s case, then it’s safe to assume these use of force numbers are probably significantly higher than what’s being reported.
Gretchen Cothron, President of the Greater Tampa American Civil Liberties Union, tells CL the inaccuracies in Jaber’s arrest report are especially concerning since it involves such a low level crime.
“Besides the baton, the grabbing of his hair and twisting his neck, by those things not making the report it’s a blatant mischaracterization of what [Jones] did,” says Cothron. “I find that frightening. For this to be such a minor charge, who knows how she acts when faced with a more serious charge, or a defendant that is excuriting more force.”
According to the arrest report written by Bishop, Sgt. Jones was the only officer who witnessed the hit-and-run traffic misdemeanor, but she also says she was alerted to the incident by the security guard. So, which is it? Not to mention that the CAD notes, which are made in real time, say Jones did not not witness the hit-and-run traffic misdemeanor. This is just one of many contradictions in the report.
Jones then notarized the accompanying arrest affidavit, charging the defendant with the two misdemeanor offenses, despite the fact that her role was omitted.
For the unfamiliar, a Criminal Report Affidavit is a legal document that requires the affiant to declare under penalty of perjury that the facts stated in the document are true.
Jaber’s legal defense argues that if Sgt. Jones witnessed the original misdemeanor crime and developed the proper probable cause to arrest him, then that information should have been included in the report, which it wasn’t.
“Lt. Jones personally and accurately documented what she saw and did in the report,” said Durkin. “The fact that another officer initiated the ‘face sheet’ or ‘title page’ is irrelevant.”
But to leave out her own involvement and then notarize the arrest affidavit is not only a conflict of interest, it’s a potential crime, says Cothron.
“It’s flabbergasting to me that a report is this inaccurate. It doesn’t appear to be a simple mistake, and that's a big problem,” Cothron says. “I think that this is something that should definitely go into internal affairs.”
Ultimately, Jaber’s charges were dropped after the alleged victim of the hit-and-run chose not to pursue the case. While Stavrou says there wasn’t even evidence that a single car was damaged during the incident, he believes his client was still lucky that someone filmed the incident.
“In this case, if there wasn’t a video, then it would've been very problematic to prove that anything occurred,” says Stavrou. “It's not written in the report. You have officers that have sworn to things that they arguably did not witness or see. So I think one big advantage in this case of course is that we have video. Additionally, if law enforcement is going to allow private actors to act and use deadly force, there's going to be a situation where that encounter ends very bad for somebody.”
Recently the Tampa Police Department announced that it would outfit 650 employees with body cameras, but a TPD spokesperson told CL that only corporals and officers would be given the new equipment. This means that even under the new program, Jones wouldn’t have had a body camera at the time of Jaber’s arrest because she was, at the time, a ranking sergeant.
In total, Jaber was accused of two misdemeanors that night, but according to his defense team, TPD and the assisting security officer potentially committed a total of 11 felonies and seven misdemeanors during this one arrest.
This isn’t the first time the Tampa Police Department has been accused of sloppy reporting. Last year, Dugan terminated Mark Landry and John Larattoa and cited a total of 10 officers for cutting corners on official police records, as well as not properly filing drug evidence (though, Laratta was recently hired back through an arbitrator).
“I’ve seen it more often than I would like,” says Cothron, when asked about issues with Tampa police reports. “Recently we’ve seen some inaccuracies with a protester who was hit by a car on June 27. The report even had the wrong street where the protests are with it.”
Cothron says TPD’s report from the June 27 incident also stated the protester damaged the car, but video captured by local radio station WMNF shows the driver hit several people, and the person who initially damaged the car wasn’t the protester who was ultimately charged.
Officers misreporting incidents isn’t anything new, says Cothron; she argues that TPD has had quite a few recent problems with failing to admit use of force, especially involving protesters.
“Many issues have arisen during the protests, and myself and other members of the ACLU have written letters to [Mayor Jane Castor] and to [Tampa Police Chief Brian Dugan] about what we witnessed as legal observers,” says Cothron.
“We wrote about the use of rubber bullets and the use of gasses, and all we’ve ever heard back were denials,” she continued. “At this point, I don't know how we move forward unless TPD is going to take a good look at what they're doing, and acknowledge that they're using heavy-handed tactics.”
On July 4, multiple Black Lives Matter protesters were arrested by TPD after they blocked traffic on Dale Mabry Highway. In the police report, TPD wrote that “members of the group began pushing against bike officers,” who then “deployed two short bursts of O.C. (pepper) spray to push the group back.”
However, a recently surfaced video disputes TPD’s report, and shows an unprovoked attack from Tampa Police officers who violently push over at least one demonstrator.
There’s no clear reason why TPD has witnessed such a dramatic spike in use of force under Dugan, but there are plenty of factors to consider.
A 2019 study from John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York found that for each college credit an officer had earned, they were less likely to use force—and if force was used, it was often a much lower degree of force. Currently, a high school diploma and a few years of relevant experience is enough to be hired as an officer at the Tampa Police Department.
Out of the 926 sworn officers at TPD, 691 have a two-year degree or higher, which is roughly 74% of the force. Just about half of TPD has a bachelor’s degree, and about 16% have an associate’s degree.
According to data requested by CL, just 153—or 17%—of sworn officers with the Tampa Police Department live in the city they patrol on a daily basis. Dugan himself doesn’t even live in Tampa, he lives in Lutz (City of Tampa spokesperson Ashley Bauman told CL that Dugan has a City of Tampa address, which CL was not able to confirm).
On top of this, TPD also has a stark diversity problem. While most experts agree that a police force which reflects the community it’s supposed to serve isn’t a panacea to unfair policing, a June report from the Orlando Sentinel says the population of Tampa is just 45% white, while the racial makeup of the Tampa Police Department is a staggering 69% white.
But besides being outsiders, undereducated and significantly whiter than the community they serve, TPD is also setting themselves up for a future transparency problem.
In recent weeks, Tampa City Council approved $952,000 to purchase more than 650 body cameras for police officers. But as previously mentioned, officers above the corporal rank won’t be outfitted with the new equipment.
Stavrou argues that all sworn officers should be outfitted with body cameras, regardless of rank.
“Leadership generally always starts at the top,” says Stavrou. “So, yeah, certainly, any law enforcement officer that engages with a private citizen on the street, in any city, should have body camera footage.”
Since the protests began last March, following the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, Tampa protesters have called for sweeping law police reform. This prompted Mayor Castor to announce three new initiatives at TPD, including a duty-to-intervene policy, a new task force and the announcement that investigations involving officer-involved shootings will be led by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, rather than internally.
"I believe good can come from these difficult times that we are in right now. I believe we can move forward toward a new level of connection and partnership with our community members," said Castor. "The first step is listening and hearing the community concerns, and then, affecting real change."
However, protesters have criticized Castor for not listening and failing to discipline Dugan. Despite multiple protests calling for Dugan’s termination, spokesperson Bauman told CL that, "Dugan is the chief at TPD and there have been no discussions about a change at the top." Last week, Castor even proposed boosting Dugan’s budget by another $13 million under the city’s 2021 fiscal budget.
But besides his department’s propensity for beatings, much of the criticism towards Dugan also stems from his total disregard for any form of change at TPD. Though a couple weeks ago he created his own task force on policing, a gesture protesters have since called meaningless, Dugan has gone out of his way to shift blame and provoke his critics.
On June 24, Dugan told a packed Citizen Review Board that “it was sad that George Floyd had to get murdered before anyone would come to these meetings.” Calls for his termination also got louder after Dugan went on Fox & Friends to argue that “cops can't win,” and cited a block party that had nothing to do with the Black Lives Matter protests as evidence of unruly protesters and justification for use of force. He also ended the interview emphatically stating that Tampa cops “won’t kneel.”
“We really need to have a community sitdown with the Tampa Police Department,” says Cothron. “Because from what I've seen so far is a total lack of acknowledgement that they’re doing anything less than admirable.”
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This article appears in Aug 20-26, 2020.