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Last updated on Wednesday, October 8, 2014
(HAMMOND) - An Indiana family is suing the Hammond Police Department, alleging excessive force during a traffic stop near Chicago - and the incident was caught on camera.
It started as a routine traffic stop last month for no seat belt, but it ended with police officers shattering the family's car window and using a stun gun on the front seat passenger.
WMAQ Chicago reports, Lisa Mahone, her boyfriend Jamal Jones and her two children were driving to a hospital in Cook County (around Chicago) to visit Mahone's mother who was near death. Mahone was pulled over for not wearing a seat belt and given a ticket.
Then police asked Jones for his ID. He told police that he didn't have his license on him because he had recently received a ticket.
This is when Mahone's 14-year-old son started recording the incident on his cell phone.
When Jones reached to show police his ticket, the officers drew their guns. Mahone called 911 and asked for a supervisor telling the 911 operator that they were scared. Jones refused multiple requests from police to get out of the car, so they smashed the window, used a stun gun on him and arrested him.
"It felt like my civil rights was just thrown out the window along with my body," Jones said during a press conference Tuesday. "I tried to explain it to the officer. My first thing that I said to him, 'My kids are in the car; my mom is passing. Could we please just make this as quick as possible? Here [is] our information - can we go to the hospital?' He threw that out the window. It didn't feel right. I felt-- I felt black again."
"At the end when it was over with, I looked at all the officers and I said...'I do not feel like I have police officers in my presence right now. It felt like I was just...It felt like it was nothing but gangbangers around me'," added Mahone.
The family's lawsuit alleges excessive force, false arrest and battery. They also claim both children in the back seat suffered minor cuts from flying glass.
"The family in this case has filed this lawsuit because they want to make sure that not only officers with the Hammond Police Department, but officers all around this country understand that you cannot engage in this type of conduct and terrorize American families," said the family's attorney, Dana Kurtz.
A statement released by the Hammond Police Department said their officers "were at all times acting in the interest of officer safety acccordance with Indiana law," adding that officers may ask passengers to exit a vehicle "for the officer's safety without a requirement of reasonable suspicion."
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