By Allison Klein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 14, 2005
A high-ranking Prince George's County official and her police escort felt threatened by a TV reporter and cameraman trailing them in their car last month, prompting the officer to call for backup, a county spokesman said yesterday.
Patrol cars responded, and with drawn guns, police ordered the reporter and cameraman out of their vehicle. WJLA-Channel 7 reporter Andrea McCarren says an officer then grabbed her wrist and pulled it behind her back, pulling her shoulder out of its socket. She filed a complaint Wednesday with the internal affairs unit of the police department, alleging excessive force. Police are investigating.
Jim Keary, a spokesman for County Executive Jack B. Johnson (D), said the police escort, Cpl. Danon Ashton, and Jacqueline Brown, the county's chief administrative officer, noticed that they were being followed by a black sport-utility vehicle the morning of April 15 and became alarmed because they did not know who was inside. McCarren was trailing them in an unmarked car as part of an investigation into possible inappropriate use of a county car.
Ashton, who was driving Brown, "noticed a man in the back of [McCarren's] vehicle ducking up and down and looking suspicious," Keary said. "His concern was this was somebody trying to do him harm and maybe Dr. Brown harm."
Neither Ashton nor Brown could be reached to comment. Keary said Ashton is not Brown's driver or bodyguard. There are "instances," he said, when Ashton will drive Brown to county events.
The officers called in by Ashton conducted a "felony traffic stop," which they use when they feel there is a threat, according to Percy Alston, president of Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 89. He said the objective is to get people out of the vehicle with their hands visible and to gain control of them.
"I did not see anybody handcuffed, placed on the ground or roughed up at all," Alston said, referring to the cameraman's tape of the stop. "If someone was injured as a result of the traffic stop, it is an unfortunate situation."
Asked by The Washington Post for the written rules regarding police traffic stops, police spokeswoman Barbara Hamm said they are part of police tactical training and not available to the public.
According to McCarren, the officers manhandled her, leaving her with a shoulder that was "on fire." When McCarren saw a doctor April 21, the physician told her that her shoulder had been yanked out of its socket, she said.
Cameraman Pete Hakel's videotape shows officers with their guns drawn and McCarren responding to their command that she walk toward them backward with her hands over her head. It does not show what happens when she reached an officer.
McCarren, who is 5 feet 4 and weighs 110 pounds, said an officer grabbed her right wrist and pulled it behind her back.
"They were a perceived threat," Keary said. "She might be 5-4, but threats come in all sizes, like the Cessna that paralyzed Washington" on Wednesday.
The incident involving McCarren, like all such interactions, was supposed to be videotaped by cameras in the police cruisers, although it is unclear whether the cars had cameras that were functioning and switched on.
"The cameras were supposed to be on. Whether they were or were not is currently being investigated," Hamm said.
As a policy, all Prince George's patrol cars need to be equipped with video cameras that switch on automatically when the lights and sirens are turned on. This policy, implemented last year, is a result of a four-year Department of Justice investigation into excessive force in the department.
Staff writer Ovetta Wiggins contributed to this report.