SPRINGFIELD — The mother of a Springfield teenager said she was “relieved” that Springfield Police officials were reversing course on a May 30 arrest of her son after a meeting last week.
But Jenna Guzman said she would like to see the police do more, like community outreach, after the case she and others referred to as “racial profiling.”
Several alderpersons spoke in support of Guzman and her 14-year-old son, who is not being named because he is a juvenile, at the June 2 city council meeting.
Ward 3 Ald. Roy Williams Jr. said the arrest, in which the teen was tackled and handcuffed, was “disturbing.” Different videos of the arrest have been posted online.
Guzman was called into a meeting June 3 with SPD Chief Joe Behl, Mayor Misty Buscher and other members of the SPD command staff.
The meeting also included Guzman’s sister, members of The PURPLE (People United to Reform Power, Liberty and Equity) Coalition and Springfield ACLU chapter president Ken Page.
That’s where Guzman learned that SPD wasn’t following through with the teen’s resisting arrest complaint.
“Relieved because we know that he didn’t do anything wrong and that goes to show they’re admitting, ‘OK, OK, we did mess up,'” Guzman told The State Journal-Register June 5.
Behl said on June 4 that he wouldn’t be giving a statement about the case.
Addressing the city council June 2, Behl said officers were investigating a ShotSpotter/911 call around 25th and Cook streets May 30. The caller described several juveniles wearing all black clothing and were headed eastbound. Behl said that’s why they engaged the 14-year-old.
Behl said an officer followed the teen for two blocks, through two different parking lots, asking him to stop. Behl said the teen acknowledged the officer multiple times, but he didn’t stop.
Behl said as the teen turned the corner, he was ahead of the officer, so the officer started jogging to catch up with him and that’s when the foot chase started.
“We’re right there,” Guzman told the city council during the public comment section. “So he screams ‘Mom.’ We see a cop chasing him. He is then tackled, arrested, humiliated in front of the whole neighborhood over something he had nothing to do with, because he looked like the description of (the person they were given).”
The teen, speaking to the SJ-R following the June 2 meeting, acknowledged that the officer said he needed for the teen to stop so the officer could talk to him.
The teen said he asked the officer why he had to stop and when he didn’t get an answer, he kept walking.
The officer again asked the teen to stop, but “I kept on telling him I did nothing wrong,” the teen said. “I even took my hands out of my pocket and told him he (could) come to my house and speak to my mom. He told me that I couldn’t go to my house or none of that and I had to stop right there and talk to him, so I kept on walking towards my house.”
As the officer started chasing him, “(the officer) had his hand on his weapon, so that’s exactly why I ran,” the teen said.
“That is on video (the officer appearing to reach for his weapon),” said Guzman, who viewed the officers’ body-worn camera footage as part of the June 3 meeting.
Guzman admitted there could have been “a different outcome” to the situation.
The city council meeting included an animated exchange between Behl and Ward 2 Ald. Shawn Gregory, who told the chief the department has to “do better.”
“You know what ticks me off? When we have something like that and we know we messed up, we have to throw a stinking charge on him, when we can let him go and be done with (it),” Gregory said. “Here’s a situation where we are out of order. We have to get better at this. We have to get the right person.”
“So let me understand this,” Behl countered. “When somebody matches the description of somebody who may have shot a gun off and they’re not responding to a police officer’s lawful order to stop, you just want us to walk away from that?”
“No, I’m not saying just walk away from it. But if it’s not him and we search him and he (doesn’t) have a gun,” Gregory answered.
“But we don’t know it’s not him because he won’t stop,” Behl said. “Resisting arrest is not responding to a lawful order.”
Behl said it was determined at the scene that the teen wasn’t involved in the 911 call.
Guzman and her son only learned at the city council meeting that the resisting arrest complaint had been made.
Williams said the situation “could’ve been handled differently.”
“Just be a human about it, not the mentality of a policeman-robot,” Williams said. “The law says this, so I gotta do this. Remember you’re working with kids, with young people. There are a lot of ways we can handle things other than getting to this point.”
Like Guzman, Tiara Standage of The PURPLE Coalition, who spoke at the June 2 city council meeting and briefly attended the June 3 meeting, said she was still hopeful SPD could do more community outreach.
“They need to do more in the community instead of making kids afraid of them and then charging them when they act on that fear because it’s the actions of the police that have them afraid in the first place,” Standage said.
That might include, Guzman said, educating people about police stops and what rights the public has.
Standage said she’s read comments on social media, questioning why the teen was running if he didn’t do anything wrong.
“Until you experience life as a Black youth, you’ll probably never understand that,” she said.
(This story has been updated to fix an inaccuracy.)
Contact Steven Spearie: 217-622-1788; sspearie@sj-r.com; X, twitter.com/@StevenSpearie.
This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: Mother of 14-year-old ‘relieved’ arrest dropped by Springfield Police
Reporting by Steven Spearie, Springfield State Journal-Register / State Journal-Register
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Steven Spearie, Springfield State Journal-Register | USA TODAY Network
