LAKELAND, Fla. (WFLA) — Lakeland Police Chief Sam Taylor released new information and video related to a violent encounter between a 16-year-old boy and two officers back in early summer.
On May 27, officers responded to the Caroline Apartments regarding a group of teenagers trespassing at the swimming pool, which had a history of trespassing problems.
VIDEO: Vice Principal, teacher arrested after student put in chokehold at Tampa middle school, deputies say The chief said a responding officer spent 15 minutes trying to figure who in the pool lived at the property and who did not. Police said the teen wouldn’t provide them with an apartment number and did not identify himself.
“They were not allowed to be there, and they should’ve left when the officers asked them to do so,” he said.
Dr. Clayton Cowart is an advocate and spokesperson for the 16-year-old. He said those teens said they were there because they knew someone who lived there.
“Unfortunately, we’re not able to go to court to hear all of the testimony of whether they were allowed there or not, because the state attorney says, hey, we apparently don’t agree with what the Lakeland Police brought out,” Cowart said.
The responding officers determined that none of the teens were residents, so they began to leave. However, things soon escalated when the 16-year-old boy began antagonizing the woman who called the officers to the apartment complex, Taylor said in a video statement.
“The male subject then moved around the primary officer, walked closer to the caller, and continued making disparaging comments to the caller, including calling her ‘a white Karen,'” the chief said.
Cowart argues the chief didn’t play the audio from the body camera in order to give his narrative of what happened.
Taylor said there was no audio from the apartment surveillance cameras. We do hear snippets of audio from the body camera, but not all of it.
“He wasn’t there. He’s he’s given a narrative of it. So why don’t we hear this exchange taking place?” Cowart said.
According to Taylor, one of the responding officers tried to put the 16-year-old under arrest due to his aggressive actions toward the caller and his refusal to obey the officer’s commands.
Cowart said at this point he did not believe there was cause for an arrest.
However, Taylor said the officers first attempted to put the teen’s arms behind his back, but he continued to resist. The primary officer attempted twice to put the teen against the wall but did not succeed as the teen continued to tense his body.
“The subject flailed his arms and struck the primary officer in the face,” Taylor said. “During the active struggle, the male was seen grabbing at the officer’s police radio.”
This is when the primary officer struck the teenager in the head while trying to gain control of his arms.
A video captured during the incident showed the teen pressed against a wall after an officer punched him repeatedly. A second officer then grabbed his hair, as he kept getting punched in the head.
Editor’s note: The video below may be disturbing for some viewers. The teen’s face has been blurred to protect his identity due to his age, and the video’s audio has been muted due to profanity.
Taylor said the officers continued to tell the teenager to stop resisting, but the fight continued, with the teenager even assuming a fighting stance and saying “let’s go.”
The brawl eventually came to an end when the officers were able to finally shock the 16-year-old with a stun device, at which point the officers stopped using force and took him into custody.
“This incident would not have happened had the subject simply complied with the officer’s lawful command,” Taylor said, concluding that the officers followed their training and standard policy in the boy’s arrest. “Those are just the facts. The fact that he was willing to resist and actively fight the police officers until he was tased, and once he was tased the fight was over.”
Cowart asked if this was the teens fault, then why were the charges against him dropped?
“If these facts are the case, we never had a chance to hear those because the state attorney decided ‘I don’t think this is something that we want to waste our time in court with’,” Cowart said. “And if the state attorney says that, then the state attorney essentially is telling the Lakeland department, ‘hey, whatever you saw wasn’t enough for us’. Someone between those two agencies have to take responsibility.”
The chief said he had a conversation with the state attorney, and said prosectuors make decisions based off criminal history and a number of cases.
“He did tell me however to relay that based on our conversation he certainly agrees that there was probable cause for an arrest,” Taylor said.
Taylor also addressed concerns of the officers using force on a 16-year-old, saying it was “somewhat irrelevant” and that the officers did not know the suspect was a minor until later on.
“Let me remind you about some of the incidents we had lately,” Taylor said. “We had a 13-year-old shoot at one of our police officers last year, shot him in the foot. We certainly had barely a young man that had just turned 18 take several shots at two of our officers last week, and of course, we all know what happened in Georgia.”
Taylor also mentioned that the 911 caller faced numerous threats after the incident to the point that she no longer lives at the home.
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