A 74-year-old Black grandmother and nurse has filed a lawsuit against three Oklahoma City police officers she said broke her arm while they were arresting her son last summer, according to KOKO News. Ruby Jones said during a news conference on Wednesday she was “violated” when she tried to ask officers who had barged into her home what was going on. “They came and they pushed me to the side,” she said.
Jones can be heard screaming in body-camera video The Oklahoman obtained from the incident on Aug. 24, 2020. "Stand up," one officer demanded of her. "You can walk. You can walk. Get to the car." Jones’ legal team identified the involved officers as Dan Bradley, Ryan Staggs, and James Ray.
Police told KOCO they can't comment on pending litigation, but the Oklahoma City Police Department released a statement in February when the body-camera footage was released. “It was determined that the responding officers should have made greater efforts to de-escalate the situation prior to resorting to use of force,” authorities said in the statement. Jones said one arm was broken and they pulled it back. “I’ll never forget this, the pain, the agony,” she said. “Oh God, the headaches and all that I suffer.”
Police were reportedly responding to a call Jones’ son, Chauncey, is accused of making alleging a bomb threat to a mental health facility where he was formerly a patient. Ruby Jones said he had stopped taking his medication, KOCO News reported.
Jones' legal team alleged in the suit that Jones did not consent to officers entering her home and officers did not provide proof of a warrant when they entered in search of Chauncey. He had locked himself in a bedroom and at one point, two officers continued down a hallway leading to the bedroom with guns drawn and fixed on the closed bedroom door, attorneys said in the suit.
"Ms. Jones pled with the officers not to shoot Chauncey. She informed the officers that Chauncey suffered from bipolar disorder and that he did not have a gun in his possession," attorneys said in the suit. One point in the encounter, Bradley allegedly told the elderly woman, "You're fixin' to go sit in the car." When she refused, Bradley "grabbed her arm, and forcefully yanked her out of the bedroom," attorneys said in the suit. When Ruby Jones informed Bradley that she suffered from heart disease, he allegedly responded: "I don't care."
Bradley began pulling Ruby Jones at that point, and Staggs, who later entered the home, grabbed her by her left arm to help, attorneys said in the suit. "Both officers, towering over the approximately 5'10'' tall grandmother, moved Ms. Jones towards the front door with her hands behind her back," attorneys said in the suit. As Staggs cuffed the woman's left wrist, Bradley pulled her right arm "upwards and at an angle beyond its physical capabilities," attorneys said in the suit. When Ruby Jones told officers they were hurting her arm and leaned forward to prevent further injury, one of the officers allegedly told her "stop resisting." "Both Defendants Bradley and Staggs then immediately threw Ms. Jones against a wall and pressed her face into a mirror," her legal team said in the suit.
One of Ruby Jones’ attorneys, Demario Solomon-Simmons, accused the officers during the press conference of treating the grandmother unnecessarily harsh because she is a Black woman. He called for the officers’ termination. “That would not have happened to a white grandmother, in a white neighborhood,” Solomon-Simmons said.
Garland Pruitt, president of the Oklahoma City NAACP chapter, said during the press conference training wasn’t the issue in this case nor the one involving George Floyd, whom former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin is accused of murdering when he kneeled on the Black father’s neck for more than nine minutes. "You ain't got to be trained to know not to go in there and abuse an elderly person,” Pruitt said. “You don't have to be trained to know not to put your knee on somebody neck.
“You don't have to be trained to (know not to) abuse your power, title, and position. That's called decency. It ain't got nothing to do with training.”
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