In a federal trial focused on whether two Pope County law enforcement officers used excessive force in questioning and arresting a 16-year-old boy and his mother as they walked on a Dover street in 2011, the officers got to tell jurors their side of the story Thursday.
The trial began Monday in the Little Rock courtroom of Chief U.S. District Judge Brian Miller and is expected to end today or Monday. The plaintiffs -- Ron Robinson, a body shop owner and former member of the Dover City Council; his wife, Eva Robinson, a dietitian; and their now 20-year-old son, Matthew Robinson -- are seeking compensatory and punitive damages for physical and mental trauma they said they continue to suffer as a result of the ordeal.
Steven Payton, a sheriff's deputy who then worked as a Dover officer, said he stopped the pair as they walked a little after 9 p.m. near Water and Elizabeth streets because Matthew, a tall boy who appeared to be a grown man, was acting suspiciously.
Payton said that as soon as he got out of his patrol car and asked a few questions, Matthew Robinson yelled, "I didn't do nothin," and then he and his mother both became visibly angry and uncooperative, refusing to give their names and suggesting that he call their friend, the police chief, to vouch for them.
Payton's sergeant, Kristopher Stevens, arrived as one of two backup officers just after the mother and son, and the tiny dog that Eva Robinson had been walking, got into the back seat of Payton's patrol car. Payton said he had ordered only Matthew Robinson into the car, but his mother had jumped in after him.
Stevens testified that he found both people to be stubbornly uncooperative as they repeatedly refused to identify themselves, so he ordered them out of Payton's car. He said Matthew Robinson, who contends he couldn't get out because his large foot was stuck under the front seat, "appeared to be passively resisting us," so Stevens used a Taser, which shot a dart into the boy but didn't seem to have any effect. The officer noted that the Taser "locks up" a person's muscles in the area between two simultaneously fired darts, but only one of the darts hit its target, so he didn't believe the boy was "locked up."
Stevens told jurors that Matthew Robinson didn't say he couldn't get out of the car, and didn't seem to be making an effort to comply, so "I told him a second one would be deployed." He said that after the resistance continued and the second Taser shot was deployed, "we knew he was unable to move, so we pulled him out."
He said it was difficult, however, because Eva Robinson, who believed her son had been hit with a bullet, "was pulling against us," trying to keep her son in the car, screaming at the officers.
Stevens said the officers stood Matthew Robinson up against the police car and told him to stop resisting, but "he was pulling away from us," flailing his arms, and, "I used the end of the Taser to do a drive-stun on him." A drive-stun is when the device that shoots 15,000 volts of electricity is held against someone's body and rocked back and forth. Stevens said that's what he had been trained to do, and it was part of a series of escalating physical efforts that officers are allowed to use to control a nonsubmissive person.
But, he said, the boy still pulled away, and, "We still weren't able to control him." He said that's when Payton used a "leg-sweep" technique to knock Robinson's legs out from under him and "took him to the ground." He said Payton and Robinson wrestled on the ground until, with Stevens' assistance, the officers were able to grab Robinson's arms, which he held tightly together beneath him.
"We were both telling him nonstop, 'Stop resisting,'" Stevens testified. He admitted that in the process of freeing Robinson's hands to ensure the boy had no weapons, he applied the Taser twice more, and "after a tremendous fight for probably two or three minutes, he finally relinquished both arms and we managed to handcuff him."
The officer said that meanwhile, Arkansas State Police Trooper Stewart Condley, who had arrived as a second backup officer, appeared to be having trouble holding Eva Robinson. While struggling to get free of Condley, the woman broke an antenna off Payton's car before the two officers were able to grasp her by both arms so Condley could handcuff her, Payton and Stevens said.
"We were trying to use as little force as we could," Stevens told jurors, emphasizing, "Nobody struck anybody the whole time. There were no punches, no kicks."
While Payton transported Eva Robinson to the Pope County jail, with her dog still in tow, Stevens said he headed toward the jail with Matthew Robinson in his car, at which point the boy revealed that he was 16 years old, which meant he would have to be placed in a separate jail for minors in Yell County.
"He didn't look 16," Stevens said.
He later insisted, under questioning by the plaintiffs' attorney, Pat James, that he never tried to destroy stored data from the Taser that would have indicated how many times, and in what duration, it was used on the boy.
He admitted, though, that he had lied when Robinson's father, Ron Robinson, later called to ask him whether the data were saved anywhere. The data were destroyed days later. The absence of the data led Miller to grant the plaintiffs' request for sanctions against Pope County on April 21, 2014.
Stevens also admitted Thursday, while reviewing written policies that James showed him for Pope County deputies and the Taser, that he had violated the policies by using the Taser inside a car and on a child.
He also acknowledged that one of the times the Taser was used inside the car may have inadvertently hurt the Robinsons' miniature schnauzer, Jake, who the Robinsons said died about a year later, at age 7, after suffering health problems that the dog didn't have before that night.
Metro on 10/02/2015