Maryland man files suit, claiming officer knelt on his neck

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) - A Black man is suing police in Anne Arundel County alleging that a white police officer pressed a knee to his neck even when he yelled that he couldn’t breathe.

The Capital Gazette reported Monday that the suit names the county, its police department and three detectives.

Daniel Jarrells of Odenton claims he and a friend, also Black, were told to stop for no reason by white detectives driving an unmarked vehicle in February 2019. The lawsuit says Jarrells kept moving, slowly, until they reached his mother’s house, to avoid being pulled over on a street “where he did not know anyone.”

The situation then escalated to the point where he was thrown on the ground and an officer put his knee on his neck. The lawsuit says a neighbor of Jarrells’ mother recorded what happened.

“It’s a shocking video. It is brutal. It is violent,” Nicholas Bernard, one of the lawyers representing Jarrells, told the newspaper. “Seeing a police officer behave that way is completely unacceptable … absolutely unconscionable.”

The police department declined to answer questions from the Capital Gazette about the officers. Sgt. Jacklyn Davis, a spokeswoman, said no internal affairs complaint was filed. She declined to comment further, citing the pending case.

Charges against Jarrells were later dropped. Tia Lewis, a spokeswoman for the State’s Attorney’s Office, said police arrested Jarrells improperly, and a judge denied a prosecutor’s request for a delay after a police witness couldn’t make it to court.

“The police report indicated that Jarrells was placed under arrest for fleeing and eluding,” Lewis said. “The prosecutor further determined that this was not an arrestable offense in this situation because the officers were not in uniform or in a marked police vehicle.”

Officers said they used lights and a siren. Their accounts differ from what’s described in the lawsuit.

One report says police pulled them over because the two-door car had a Lyft sticker, which they described as suspicious because the ride-sharing company requires four-door vehicles.

Another report says the car’s owner had been arrested for drug possession with intent to distribute and possession of a gun. Jarrells had said he was borrowing the car from a friend.

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