An internal investigation is underway at an Arizona police department after video emerged of a deputy tackling and pinning down a shirtless 15-year-old quadruple amputee.
The incident happened at a group home in Tucson, Arizona. An eight-minute video captured on a cellphone and released by KOLD, shows a white Pima County Sheriff’s deputy roughly tackling and pinning a black teenager named Immanuel to the ground. The video also recorded the same officer slamming the head of another teenager named C.J. into the wall.
The teenagers’ public defender, Joel Feinman, said that Immanuel was living in the group home because he was abandoned by his family. In late September, an adult at the group home called police and said that Immanuel was shouting and had knocked over a trash can. When deputies arrived, C.J., 16, began filming.
The footage shows a deputy about twice Immanuel’s size using the weight of his body to hold the teenager to the ground. Immanuel begins shrieking as he tells the officer to stop pinning him down. Immanuel attempts to shake him off, but the officer tackles him and wrestles him to the floor.
After he calms down, the deputy let go and asked him what his problem was. As Immanuel says he doesn’t have a problem, the officer gets louder.
“I will raise my voice to you whenever the [expletive] I want, you understand?” the deputy shouts.
C.J., who is still filming, told the officer that Immanuel was just asking a question, and the officer snaps back, “Shut the hell up!”
After C.J. refused to leave the room, the officer told him he would be arrested too. A third teenager takes the phone and records C.J.’s arrest. The footage shows the deputy placing him in handcuffs and then slamming his head into the wall.
Both Immanuel and C.J. were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct. Although the officer was not wearing a body camera at the time, C.J. suggested that Feinman watched the video that was filmed of the interaction. Feinman said he cried the first time he saw the clip.
“We did, and it was horrific,” Feinman said. “We’re public defenders, so we have an iron stomach for a lot of things, but this was especially terrible.”
“These are kids who have already been traumatized in some way,” Feinman said, noting that if a parent were to do the same “they might be arrested for child abuse.”
Feinman said that instead of reacting physically, the officer should have attempted to mediate and de-escalate the situation, especially considering the two were in state custody.
“Fifteen-year-olds who have not been through what Immanuel went through act out all the time,” he explained.
After video of the arrests was made public, the Pima County Attorney’s Office dropped the charges for both teenagers.
