Video Of Off-Duty Cop Holding Teen Down A Case Of 'Excessive Force Against A Black Man,' Lawyer Says

LANSING, IL — A confrontation between an off-duty police officer and a 15-year-old boy was captured on a cell phone camera and shared on Facebook by a woman who says the teenager is her cousin. The incident occurred Saturday afternoon outside the home of the off-duty police officer in Lansing, according to police. A video shared by a woman using a Facebook alias of “Ann Falls” shows the officer holding the boy down on the ground, while another person, presumably the boy’s friend, records the incident. The teen's cousin and his attorney believe the teen — who is black — was targeted due to his race.

The video clip is about a minute long and includes the officer indicating that the boy was trespassing in his yard. “Your friends are being (expletive) idiots,” the officer says to the boy on the ground. “You are trespassing in my (expletive) yard... If you come on my property I'll (expletive) kill you."

WGN-TV identified the boy in the video as 15-year-old Jordan Brunson, who told a reporter that the off-duty officer never asked why he was on his property before the physical confrontation and never identified himself as a police officer.

“So this is what happens when you walk on someone’s grass,” Falls wrote on Facebook in a post accompanied by the video Monday morning. “This guy is a LANSING POLICE OFFICER (sic) and our family can’t get anywhere filing a report on him.”

Falls also mentions a racial component, noting that the officer is white and her cousin is African-American, saying, "I'm sick of walking while black being a problem! As you can hear his friend videoing is not black but he’s not being harassed!!”

Falls did not immediately respond to a request for further comment Tuesday night.

The off-duty police officer says he was detaining the juvenile because he attempted to leave the area during a battery investigation. In a statement released by the Lansing Police Department on Tuesday, the officer said he saw a backpack in his fenced-in backyard that did not belong to him and saw a baseball hat and "realistic looking BB gun" inside.

Later, he said a young white juvenile came onto his property "bleeding from the face" and indicated that he was beat up by "several male black juveniles." While the off-duty police officer was talking with the white juvenile, the 15-year-old black juvenile entered his property wearing a backpack.

The police officer says that because they both attempted to leave, he physically detained one of them. The incident came just after police in Lansing were responding to the area on a report of a large fight involving 30 kids and a report of a 12-year-old boy believing he was provided a beverage with drugs in it by a white juvenile.

"We gotta leave," Brunson's friend, presumably the white juvenile recording the incident, is heard saying on the video. "We can forget about all this and leave."

The officer does not allow Brunson to get up, to which the recording friend replies, "You're going to shoot us?"

Andrew M. Stroth of the Action Injury Law Group in Chicago, who is representing Brunson, has said the family is seeking a full investigation from Lansing police and will conduct one of his own on behalf of Brunson's family.

Stroth says Brunson suffers from asthma and was injured during the altercation with the off-duty officer. He "completely" disputes the police account of the incident.

"Jordan did not provoke the attack by the officer in any way," said Stroth, a civil rights attorney who has represented several clients who have been involved in disputes with police.

He called the officer's conduct in the video "outrageous."

"It was an obvious use of excessive force," Stroth said. "The video speaks for itself, and that is of the narrative we've seen far too often of a white police officer using excessive force against a black man."

Photo via Facebook video screenshot