INDIANAPOLIS -- An Indianapolis police officer is under investigation after he was caught on video slamming a handcuffed teenager into a wall.
The video shows the 17-year-old with his hands handcuffed behind his back. The teen responded to IMPD Officer Robert Chappell's question about seeing his ID. Chappell then slams the teen into a wall.
WATCH THE VIDEO IN THE PLAYER ABOVE
In the video, Chappell can be heard asking the 17-year-old, “May I see your ID?”
The teen responds, “I don’t have my ID on me, because I’m in my house.”
The officer then slams him into the wall and says, “You are in your house and right now you’re being detained! So if I were you, I would shut your (expletive) mouth.”
The teen then responds, “You just asked me a question.”
Chappell says, “We’re in charge here, you’re not.”
You can hear other officers in the background calling out for the 19-year-old that the police were looking for.
At one point in the video, Chappell points another officer to a teen recording the incident on his cellphone.
In the video, you can see the officer start to grab the phone. The teen recording says, “You can’t do that.”
The officer then grabs onto the phone and is heard saying, “Let go of the phone.”
The 17-year-old’s mother, Vickie McGregory, spoke to Call 6 Investigates’ Paris Lewbel on Thursday. She’s a city bus driver with IndyGo. She says she got a call around on 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday from one of her kids, but she didn’t see it because IndyGo drivers are not permitted to use their phones when they are driving.
When she took her break around midday, she saw that missed call and a text message from one of her other kids. She says she looked at the text first, which was a video of the officer slamming her 17-year-old into the wall inside their home.
She says that the officers went inside her home looking for her 19-year-old son, but she doesn’t know why.
She says the officers told the kids that they had a search warrant, but it was “out in the car.”
McGregory says she wants her kids to trust the police and feel like they can trust them if they ever needed to. She says this incident rocks that trust with police.
IMPD released the following statement about the investigation:
“We reviewed a copy of the cellphone video, which was recorded inside a home during a police investigation. Within an hour of receiving the video, members of the executive staff initiated an internal investigation regarding the actions of the officer observed in the recording. At the direction of Chief Riggs, the involved officer was placed on administrative duty, which prevents him from using his police powers. His gun, badge, and police identification were surrendered until the internal investigation is complete.”
As of Thursday evening, IMPD says the internal investigating is ongoing and all officers who were at the home will be interviewed.
