Doctor Upset After Being Mistaken For Armed Robbery Suspect

EVANSTON, IL — An Evanston doctor who was detained by police in the aftermath of two downtown armed robberies last month said he intended to file a police-misconduct complaint about the incident. However, Dr. Gregory Hall has yet to sign an affidavit to make his grievance official, nor has he signed a waiver to allow footage of the encounter to be released to the public, police said Monday.

Hall, 60, was walking along Main Street around 4:45 p.m. on Jan. 22 when Evanston police cars pulled up alongside him as he walked away from the Evanston Public Library and jumped out with their guns drawn, the video shows.

Police were responding to a report of a robbery about a block away that came over the radio moments earlier. The suspect was described as a skinny black man in his 50s with stubble and a receding hairline, and officers think Hall might be the robber.

"Hello?" asks a shocked Hall. "What's wrong with you guys?"

Video seen by Patch of the roughly 15-minute encounter shows Hall repeatedly asking police to check his alibi, pointing out it would take just a few seconds to verify that he had been at the library at the time of the robberies.

Police repeatedly tell him that "somebody said you had a gun," and "somebody called 911 and said you just committed an armed robbery."

They ignore Hall's repeated requests to confirm his alibi, according to the bodycam footage. At no point do officers explain why they decline to substantiate his story.

Cops ask Hall for identification, but he refuses.

"No, we're not going to play this game," he says. "You expect a lawsuit."

Police are unable to identify Hall, finding only his son's Ventra card, the video shows. Later, Hall provides a supervising officer his name and birthday in order to begin the process of filing a complaint.

Police would later say that even though Hall had an alibi, was a different height and was not carrying a gun or the proceeds of the robbery, he was still a potential suspect.

At the time of his stop, police said they believed two armed robbers were on the loose. They would not get a copy of surveillance footage of the suspect in both robberies – at 1630 Orrington Ave. and 920 Main St. – until several hours later.

» More: Gunman Rebuffed by Yarn Store Staff Before Robbing Evanston Thrift Shop: Police

"I yelled and screamed as they put my arms behind my back and I fell to my knees in pain, especially my left wrist, the handcuffs were too tight,” Hall remembered, according to his son's account.

Only after a witness told police Hall was not the robber did police remove his handcuffs. It was around this time Hall can be seen falling to his knees. There is no indication the officers push him or otherwise force him to the ground.

The incident is among the first to test the ramifications of Evanston's policy on body-worn cameras, which its police department fully implemented last month.

Since Hall was never charged, he is considered a witness and has an expectation of privacy over the tape and would have to sign a waiver for it to be released publicly, police said.

Deputy Chief Jay Parrott, who supervised implementation of the department's camera program, said it was "unfortunate things did not go better." But the video demonstrated that officers behaved properly, he contended.

"Had he been cooperative, that stop would have been reduced to one or two minutes," he said. "It was a reasonable stop, that's all we ask."

"No one is going to be calm when there are guns pointed at you," Hall said after the handcuffs were removed.

Parrott said because Hall was "verbally uncooperative," "mildly resistive" and was moving his hands, he was cuffed for officers' safety.

"His moving around creates the safety issue," he said, noting police "never put him on the ground, never pushed him against the wall."

Hall has filed a complaint online through the Evanston Police Department website, but he has not officially signed an affidavit containing his allegations of police misconduct to make it official, according to police.

A use of force investigation has also been opened as a result of his verbal complaint of paint from handcuffing, police said.

"Further determinations on how to move forward with the investigation is pending Doctor Hall's decision to file a formal complaint," said Cmdr. Ryan Glew.

Hall is a naprapath who provides wellness consultations and massage therapy to clients throughout the Chicago area. He has been not been able to see patients as he recovers from his injury, according to his son.

Hall has declined a request for an interview about the tape, saying he had already told the media everything he had to say. He has not said if he intends to sign a form consenting to its release.

No arrests have been made in connection with the Jan. 22 robberies.