Having finished their finals, students of the University of
Tennessee on Saturday engaged in the time-honored tradition of
throwing huge, drunken parties. One block party that had an
estimated 800 attendees spilling into the street would have
probably gone down in student lore as particularly awesome, except
the cops showed up. Knox County sheriff’s deputy Frank Phillips
stole the show by getting particularly gung-ho about protecting and
serving the community: He choked out a student who was already
handcuffed. The act was caught by a photographer and Phillips was
promptly fired on Sunday for “gross incompetence, inefficiency
and negligence on duty.”
Jarod Dotson, a 21-year-old student, was being arrested for
public intoxication and resisting arrest when John Messner, a
freelance photographer with the Knoxville News Sentinel
pulled out his camera. He claims that Dotson did not actually
resist arrest at any point.
“There is a … picture of the victim being walked up the
block…. He’s compliant. When they get to the paddy wagon they
swap cuffs. The arresting officer takes his personal cuffs off and
they put on ‘paddy wagon’ cuffs to take him to jail,” Messner
told the New York Daily News. While two officers
handcuffed Dotson, Phillips “choked him till he went unconscious”
and then “smacked him once on the back of his head or shoulder
area.”
His photographs were incentive enough for Sheriff Jimmy Jones to
launch an investigation the morning after the incident. By the end
of the day, he determined
that Phillips, a 22-year veteran, had to be removed from the
force:
In my 34 years of law enforcement experience, excessive force
has never been tolerated. After an investigation by the Office of
Professional Standards, I believe excessive force was used in this
incident. Therefore, Officer Phillips’ employment with the Knox
County Sheriff’s Office is terminated immediately. The
investigation will now be turned over to the Knox County Attorney
General’s Office to determine any further action.
He also noted that the department is taking steps to make sure
similar incidents don’t occur.
This incident provides a perfect example of why we are in the
process of purchasing officer worn body cameras (video and audio
recordings) so incidents like this will be fully documented.
The two other officers photographed, Brandon Gilliam and Ronald
Chaperon, were put on
paid leave.
Law enforcement officials, who arrived at the party with dogs
and apparently shotguns,
said that students were throwing beer bottles at them. There
are no reports that Dotson paticipated in the bottle throwing.
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