March 21--The photos and video of Martese Johnson being arrested are not easy to look at. The 20-year-old Chicagoan, an African-American student at the University of Virginia, was accosted by alcohol control agents outside a Charlottesville pub early Wednesday and was soon face down on the pavement, swearing at the officers and his head bleeding profusely as he was handcuffed.
Ten stitches served to close his wounds. Getting at the truth will be harder.
Johnson is not the sort of young man you would expect to end up struggling with cops. A graduate of Kenwood Academy, whose former principal calls him "the epitome of the kind of student you want to graduate from your school," he majors in Italian and media studies and serves on the university's Honor Committee.
The episode sparked immediate objections. Students rallied to protest what they saw as police brutality. University officials said the incident was "highly unusual and appalling based on the information we have received." State police announced they would conduct a criminal investigation of the incident. The attorney general may look into possible racial bias in Virginia law enforcement.
Some pertinent facts are so far elusive. The video, taken with a bystander's cellphone, does not begin until after Johnson was taken to the ground. But some witnesses say the police overreacted.
Johnson's lawyer said he was barred from the establishment after he presented a valid ID but gave the ZIP code of his mother's current home rather than the one on the card. He was then approached by the uniformed Alcoholic Beverage Control officers, who may have surmised that he had a fake ID.
What happened next is not clear. The agents' report said Johnson was "very belligerent and agitated." A companion of Johnson, on the other hand, said he "didn't need to be tackled. He wasn't being aggressive at all."
In the end, Johnson was charged with public swearing or intoxication and obstruction of justice without force. These counts suggest he had no fake ID and was not violent. If he was indeed intoxicated, he was probably not the only person in the crowd of St. Patrick's Day revelers who had been overserved.
It's possible that the agents used no more force than was necessary to deal with an uncooperative suspect. But the burden falls on the agency to demonstrate that, and it has provided little information to buttress its side of the story. You have a young black man with no criminal record, attending a top university, bloodied when his face was banged on the sidewalk as he was subdued.
If the officers overreacted, it would not be the first time. The ABC got unwanted attention in 2013 after six plainclothes officers tried to stop a 20-year-old female college student they suspected of buying beer and one officer pulled a gun as she tried to escape in her car, unaware they were police. The beverages turned out to be bottled water -- and the young woman, after being arrested, sued and got a $212,500 settlement.
As part of that settlement, ABC agents were supposed to start wearing video cameras to document their behavior and that of people they arrest. But there's been no word whether the officers who arrested Johnson had body cams. This case is a perfect illustration of why they are needed -- for the protection of both suspects and police.
In their absence, the information available so far suggests the student was badly, inappropriately treated. Let's see if the officers can prove a different story.
