The stop was for an alleged turn signal violation.
Minutes later, Wheatcroft was handcuffed lying face down on the hot asphalt on a 108-degree day. He'd already been tased 10 times, with one officer kneeling on his back as another, Officer Matt Schneider, kicked him in the groin and pulled down his athletic shorts to tase him a final time in his testicles, according to a federal lawsuit and body camera footage obtained by ABC15.
The scene was witnessed by his 11- and 6-year-old sons.
Warning: Disturbing and violent footage
Multiple independent law enforcement experts, who agreed to review the incident, said the officers' conduct was unlawful, potentially criminal, and one of the most cruel and troubling cases of police misconduct they've ever seen.
"I have never seen anything like this before," said Jeff Noble, an attorney and former deputy chief of police in Irvine, Calif., who's testified in hundreds of cases including Tamir Rice and Philando Castile. " It reminds me of a case in New York where an individual was sadistically taking a broom handle and shoving it up (the suspect's) anus. This is just beyond the pale. It's outrageous conduct."
Former LAPD detective supervisor T.T. Williams echoed his shock.
"That's not even borderline," said Williams, an expert witness who testified in the Philip Brailsford case on behalf of the prosecution. "That's inhumane."
Schneider was suspended for 30 hours and remains an active officer on the force, records show.
Officer Matt Schneider
"If he intentionally struck a passenger in the testicles, and then intentionally tased him in or near the genitals, I'm surprised he hasn't been prosecuted," said Seth Stoughton, a former police officer who's now an attorney and professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law. "It raises half a dozen red flags that suggest the need for a thorough review, including a review to determine if the officer committed any crimes."
On February 8, the Glendale Police Department released the following statement:
See statement here
In addition to the statement, Glendale PD released 30 seconds of surveillance video showing the incident:
The release is full of omissions and information that does not match up with the departments own records.
Read more on our analysis of their statement here.
But the lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court of Arizona by attorneys Marc Victor and Jody Broaddus, alleges that the officers violated the constitutional rights of Wheatcroft and his wife, Anya Chapman, and engaged in the "excessive use of force and torture."
"No one is necessarily above the law, whether it be a priest, a police officer or any civilian on the street. No one is above the law either civilly or criminally," said Broaddus.
When I saw this video, and this has never happened to me in my legal career, I couldn't work anymore that day. I was so disturbed," Victor said.
Wheatcroft and Chapman, who were arrested and charged with aggravated assault on a police officer, spent months in jail after the incident because they couldn't afford bail.
Chapman agreed to plead guilty to a lesser charge in order to get home to her children, her attorneys said.
The charges against Wheatcroft were dismissed by the Maricopa County Attorney's Office after prosecutors saw the body camera video.
Wheatcroft, who's currently in prison on an unrelated burglary charge stemming from a copper wire theft, was not available for comment.
For independent analysis, ABC15 spoke with three former law enforcement officers, who testify as expert witnesses in police use-of-force cases across the country: Williams, Noble, and Stoughton.
ABC15 traveled to southern California to interview Williams and Noble in person. Stoughton was interviewed over the phone.
See entire article here
Reader Comments
My advice is to educate yourself. You cannot simply refuse to cooperate/comply. You must know what legal grounds entitle you to refuse to comply. Even so you still need to comply, the police are wearing body cam's and those can be used agains them too, a debate in the parking lot is not the place to contest the rights of the police. In most cases that means understanding the rules of a so-called "Terry Stop."
You should always comply first. This cop was reasonable up to the point where the actions of the suspect, in refusing to comply, lead the officer to take action out of concern for his own personal safety and that of his fellow officer. Know what you're doing when you're dealing with the police.
The passenger was in a vehicle that failed to signal, when stopped and questioned the suspect said he had no ID, which BTW is cause enough to detain you as an adult if there is a suspicion that you could be engaged in criminal activity, which the suspect provided with an apparent attempt to conceal from the view of the officer an unknown, which could have been a weapon.
When the police stop you it's yes sir, no sir, or I'm sorry I don't understand officer, ect. If you think what the police do while you're being detained is illegal then you go see the local prosecuting attorney for that locality, or seek professional advice from an attorney.
The REAL reasons I or we were pulled over were simply having:
- Surfboards on surfboard racks;
- Empty surfboard racks; or,
- long hair.
You are getting more than a little too close to spouting the line of thinking that MOST Americans - despite the obvious facts that this sh*t happens all the time and a hundred times more than it is ever videotaped - still have. (E.g., that at ages 14-17 we should have hired attorneys and 'taken it to the USSC!") Reality dictated - and still dictates - that unless money is of no consequence to you (something very few can say), you will NOT FIND AN ATTORNEY to take a case like that.
The critical key here is that there is video evidence. And yet every single day, lawyers turn down folks who were videotaped as they were wrongfully pulled over, behaved politely, and still placed in jail for a day or three for no reasons; for there is no way the jury will provide enought money to make it worthwhile to either the attorney OR the falsely arrested person, given how often juries, using your here-first-ever-espoused-by-you-that-I've-read-PC-viewpoint, will routinely rule for the cops or award $100 per day for the wrongful arrest, frankly 'armed kidnapping.'
I don't care what was said etc. Sure he's a fool to do that, and all of it will be used, by any jury, to reduce his damages- although it shouldn't because, under the law, the COPS are the only ones in that situation who are LEGALLY REQUIRED TO SPEAK AND BEHAVE AS COMPETENT, REASONBLE AND RESPONSIBLE ADULTS.
R.C.
R.C. rests his case.
R.C.
However, being a policeman is and always will be two things; it will always be a young man's job, and it will always be a dangerous job. This is problem in itself because youth and wisdom do not easily go hand in hand, and when you add in idiocy the outcome is assured.
Not saying this was acceptable, but it wasn't the only possible outcome either, because that cop did behave civil and reasonable right up until he had probable cause to act out concern for his own safety. Now yea, they over did it slightly, but that outcome was the makings of the person on the receiving end.
I think you will see that about 99.9% of the time I'm in complete agreement with the stories we typically get about cops abusing their power, and here I'm disagreeing in that they didn't abuse their authority to act. I'm not disagreeing that the reaction was overboard and beyond what was necessary. So there's two issues here. One is they didn't about their lawful authority, the second is they did abuse the legal requirement to obtain compliance.