Charlotte Police Accused Of Excessive Force During A Hard Arrest

Charlotte, NC, 26 March, 2017 - The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department is defending the actions of four officers caught on camera punching and elbowing an unarmed suspect in the head during an arrest.

The incident took place on March 26, 2016. It started when officers stopped a car they said was wanted in connection with a string of larcenies. James Yarborough, a passenger in the car, ran from police.

Eventually, officers caught up with Yarborough after a foot chase. Once on the ground, officers struggled with Yarborough for roughly four minutes before putting him in handcuffs.

It’s what happened during the four-minute-long struggle that Yarborough said should be considered excessive force.

The entire incident—starting with the traffic stop and concluding after Yarborough was loaded into an ambulance—was caught on body cameras worn by two CMPD officers.

In hindsight, James Yarborough realizes he shouldn’t have run from police after they stopped the car in which he was a passenger.

Yarborough said he was in the car getting a ride back to his truck that had run out of gas when police stopped the vehicle.

Yarborough, who has multiple federal convictions for illegally possessing firearms, said the man giving him a ride back to his truck tried to sell him a pistol. When police stopped the car, Yarborough said, he decided it would be better to run away from the pistol than get charged with having a gun.

That’s a decision he now wishes he had made differently.

“The only thing I did wrong that day was run. That is the only thing I did wrong that day,” Yarborough said. “I regret running.”

The video captured by the first officer starts with the traffic stop. It shows Yarborough starting to run and the officer chases after him. Both men are on foot.

Several minutes into the chase, the video shows the first officer chasing Yarborough fall down in pain, apparently injured somehow during the foot chase.

A second officer’s body camera picks up the pursuit, showing the moments when Yarborough is captured and brought to the ground before the four-minute-long struggle ensues.

“I will kill you”

The second officer’s body camera video shows Yarborough on the ground for 17 seconds before an officer pulls out his pistol and presses it to Yarborough’s temple on the left side of his head.

“Don’t [expletive] resist,” one officer says to Yarborough seconds before the weapon appears in the video.

Once the gun is pressed to Yarborough’s head, an officer is heard saying “I will kill you, you understand? Give me your hand, now!”

Yarborough said he thought, in that moment, he may die.

“That moment felt like—it felt like it might have been my last day,” Yarborough said.

The gun only appears in the video for roughly ten seconds before the officers puts it away and calls for another officer to use a Taser to shock Yarborough.

“Light him up, he don’t want to do it,” an officer is heard saying of Yarborough refusing to put his hands behind his back.

At that point in the video—roughly 37 seconds after Yarborough had been brought to the ground—he is lying on the ground with both arms extended in front of him with what appear to be several officers on top of him.

That’s when you hear an officer say “light him up!” and then, about ten seconds later, the sound of a Taser.

The reports identify Officer Jon Dunham as the officer who pressed his pistol to Yarborough’s head and threatened to kill him.

But Dunham’s report provides a different recounting of his actions at the beginning of the struggle with Yarborough.

“At this point I observed him shove his hand towards his waistband. He was completely uncooperative’ I believed he was reaching for a gun in an attempt to seriously hurt me or Officer Michaels; knowing that suspects are known to frequently place guns in the front if (sic) their waistbands, I drew my pistol and threatened to shoot him,” Dunham wrote.

Dunham’s narrative made no mention of the gun pressed to Yarborough’s temple nor his threat to “kill” Yarborough.