Unnecessary Force?

By Amanda Ripley

For days now, investigators, police experts and television-news viewers have been watching and rewatching a 28-sec. tape. In that short yet endless sequence, they scan for clues to explain why so many Philadelphia policemen are surrounding a man, stomping and punching him as he lies on the ground, wounded.

It's human nature to try to make order out of chaos--even more, perhaps, when that chaos is captured on video, preserved for dissection. But at this point, none of the labels slapped on the Philadelphia videotape quite fits the known facts.

Police spotted a green Chevy Cavalier driving erratically in North Philadelphia last Wednesday afternoon. When officers ran the license plate, the car came up stolen--carjacked more than a week earlier. The chase was on. Behind the wheel of the stolen car was Thomas Jones, a 30-year-old African-American man with a record of assault, burglary and theft convictions. Two patrol cars wove behind Jones, backing off temporarily when he veered onto a sidewalk crowded with mourners from a funeral procession. A few minutes later, Jones crashed into another car, injuring two people. Then he took off on foot, hopped a fence and raced down the streets of the working-class neighborhood.

In front of one of the row houses, Dolores Dandridge had just placed a table outside to serve her grandchildren lunch. From out of nowhere, she says, nearly a dozen policemen streaked after Jones about 100 yds. from her. Dandridge watched as about five or six officers caught up to him. "The police were swarming around him like bees swarm honey," she says. "They began to beat him, punching him and kicking him. He had his hands in the air, and I didn't see any gun. People were screaming at the police, telling them to stop, that they were going to kill him."

Several officers had their guns drawn, witnesses said. Suddenly, a gun went off. It is still not clear who fired, only that an officer had been shot in the hand. Jones then lunged behind the wheel of a squad car and fled again. Police showered the car with more than 40 bullets, but Jones managed to drive 1 1/2 miles to the corner of Oxford and 26th streets. There, a hovering helicopter from a local TV station captured the now infamous 28 seconds.

What had already been a messy pursuit now got even sloppier. At least seven officers surrounded the car, all with their guns drawn. One officer yanked Jones out of the car. By this time, he had been shot five times. But the video shows well over a dozen officers, some in uniform, some not, some black, some white, converging on Jones. Frantically, they kicked and punched, inflicting more than 50 blows. "He was down on his stomach and was not fighting back," says witness Sherwood Fogle. "What he did was wrong, but he didn't deserve to get a beating like that." Finally a supervisor arrived on the scene, and the officers handcuffed Jones and led him away with his head in a choke hold. He is recovering in a hospital and will reportedly face 25 charges, including attempted murder, aggravated assault and carjacking.

Philadelphia police commissioner John Timoney and Mayor John Street have been doing around-the-clock damage control, scrambling to salvage the city's image just two weeks before the Republican National Convention comes to town. Timoney told TIME that while the video "does not look good--in fact it looks awful," the public should withhold judgment until investigations are done. "What you're seeing is the last 28 sec. of a 20-min. car chase during which a police officer was shot." For now, 12 officers have been placed on administrative duty, eight who were involved in the gunplay and four who were seen kicking Jones. The Justice Department has commenced its own review. Congressional Black Caucus leaders have called the incident another example of the "epidemic" of police brutality sweeping the country.

So far, the quest to label the incident has been frustrating and clumsy. Jones is not another Rodney King, as some have suggested. For one thing, King was pursued for speeding. Jones was allegedly driving a stolen car, ramming bystanders and possibly firing at police. "There are more dissimilarities than similarities," says Laurie Levenson, a Loyola Law School professor. "With Rodney King, it was deliberate, coordinated and brutal." The Philadelphia cops, by contrast, "look disorganized and scared. It's sort of like everybody piling on in the schoolyard."

Others, including local civil rights leaders, maintain the incident was not about race at all. Black police also threw punches. But, says Jill Nelson, editor of an anthology on police brutality, "that is an easy cop-out." Racism almost never works in simple if-then steps. If a black person is involved, race is not then necessarily moot. "Success [in a department] is designed in white male terms," says Ronald Hampton of the National Black Police Association. "So these guys internalize the racist, oppressive culture of the police department in order to succeed."

Another option is to demonize Jones. His record is riddled with cowardly charges--stealing a bike from a 12-year-old, snatching purses from women. But should the punishment be a beating and five bullet wounds? "What I saw was excessive for what was happening at the moment," says Leslie Seymore, a retired Philadelphia cop and president of the local A.C.L.U. chapter.

There are already calls for better police training. Tactical mistakes occurred throughout the incident. (Even before the beating, for example, officers left themselves vulnerable to friendly-fire accidents.) But criminal-justice professor and former cop Gene O'Donnell says it's "ludicrous" to expect this kind of arrest to be orderly. "I've seen many tapes about which the media is screaming, 'Look at this! It's brutal!' And I see it and I say, 'No, it's police work.' Police work is brutal, and nobody wants to own up to that." Then again, says Seymore, "I have not seen an incident such as this in Philadelphia that did not involve a person of color." For now, perhaps the only hopeful news is that the city's leaders have thus far responded quickly and evenhandedly to the disturbing display of force. That has not always been true in Philadelphia. Indeed, some observers note that in the not too distant past, Jones might have ended up dead. --With reporting by Elaine Rivera/Philadelphia and Rachel Dry/New York

With reporting by Elaine Rivera/Philadelphia and Rachel Dry/New York