Arrests on video spur excessive force complaints in Rockford (2024)

ROCKFORD — Video recordings show police in riot gear taking a man to the ground, striking him with batons and kicking him during an arrest made in the waning minutes of a May 30 rally that deteriorated into violent clashes between officers and protesters at the city’s District 1 police station.

The man on the ground is Jeremy Holliman, a 27-year-old certified nursing assistant who says he was not resisting officers when they pulled him over the hood of his friend’s car and then to the ground. Holliman, along with two friends who also were arrested and a third who witnessed the arrests, are accusing police of using excessive force.

“I felt like I was defenseless. I had given my hands up,” Holliman told the Register Star in an interview Thursday. “I was just trampled. There was nothing I could really do at that point besides just cover and try to block my face.

“When I did finally get released from (jail) my body was in excruciating pain.”

The tactics used by officers to clear protesters from the police station May 30 — namely pepper spray, tear gas and bean bag guns — spurred additional demonstrations in the days that followed. The videos — one taken by the Register Star and another by a passenger in a passing car — have been shared on social media by protest organizers who are calling for the officers involved to be fired.

“I’m realizing in my head, this is the police that’s doing this. We can’t call the police on the police.” said Taye Way, 21, who witnessed her friends’ arrest. “This is who we trust with our lives every day.”

Rockford Youth Activism, which has led the protests, has pointed to the videos as evidence of brutality. Others on social media have commended the officers, saying they had to respond with force after several objects were thrown at them.

The identities of all of the officers involved in the arrest are unclear, and only one arresting officer is named in the probable cause statement in court documents.

Police Chief Dan O’Shea has said the department will conduct a review of each use of force — anything beyond handcuffs — at the protest, as it does with any use of force. He said he would not comment on the videos because they are just a snippet of a larger investigation. Likewise, the Police Benevolent and Protective Association Unit 6, the union that represents Rockford officers, said it will not comment on active investigations.

Department policy requires officers to intervene in situations in which other officers are subjecting a civilian to unreasonable force. Officers also are required to use reasonable force to accomplish lawful objectives, and they receive training on what constitutes reasonable force under various circ*mstances, the department said this week on Twitter.

O’Shea has said that if officers are found to have acted inappropriately, the consequences could be anything from additional training to discipline. State’s Attorney Marilyn Hite Ross said Monday that she had not reviewed any videos from the protest but would look at whether resisting arrest or excessive force charges are warranted when the images are reviewed.

“We’re not above charging officers with crimes. In the last year, the state’s attorney’s office has charged at least two officers with crimes,” O’Shea said. “We’ll hold ourselves accountable.”

The American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois said several arrests made at protests around the state have been brought to the ACLU’s attention.

“This is yet another example that we’re seeing here in Illinois and across the country that definitely deserves to be investigated,” ACLU spokesman Ed Yohnka said after reviewing the video. “The point of these protests is police violence. The notion that, given that reality, given that circ*mstance, that someone thinks wailing on someone while they’re on the ground is an acceptable behavior just demonstrates how far we have to go in curbing behavior within police departments across the country.

“I’m sort of at a loss for words. This is the point of this and yet here we are.”

Chaotic scene

In the video, the moments leading up to the arrest of Holliman, Nizeah Carter, 20, and Brittany Rosenbaum, 21, all of Rockford, are chaotic. As officers approach Rosenbaum’s vehicle at the corner of Avon and Jefferson streets, an unidentified person runs toward the vehicle and throws a trash can directly at police. That person then runs out of frame and officers do not follow.

But before that moment, Rosenbaum had two other encounters with officers while in her vehicle, including one in which officers struck her vehicle with batons and smashed her rear passenger window before she sped away, she said. A Register Star journalist observed that incident.

Rosenbaum had twice driven down Avon Street despite police orders to clear the area. She said she and her friends were leaving because police were spraying tear gas, but she had to double back to pick up her friend Way, who got into the passenger seat, and then returned a second time to look for Carter, who had gotten separated from them.

It was during the second trip down Avon that officers closed in on her vehicle and broke out the window, presumably because it was tinted and officers wanted to see whether anyone else was inside, she said.

“My whole vehicle was surrounded,” Rosenbaum said. “They were banging on my car. I was scared for my life. Of course I’m going to speed off as fast as I can. I don’t know what they’re going to try to do to me.”

Rosenbaum is charged with resisting a peace officer and aggravated assault using a deadly weapon. Police allege in a criminal complaint that she kept driving in the direction of officers as they were clearing the road and that she pulled away after officers directed her to stop. She said she pulled away out of fear and denied that any officers were in front of her vehicle.

She stopped a few feet up the road near Jefferson Street, where police had erected a barrier, and got out of the vehicle to inspect the broken window. That’s when Carter and Holliman approached, they said.

Carter said he was instructed by police to get into the vehicle and leave. He said he complied but was pulled out of the vehicle by officers and taken to the ground. He said he was struck in the face at least once.

“What was I doing besides what (police) told me to do: Get in the car,” he said.

Carter said he believes police were punishing him for the acts of other protesters, who had hurled water bottles, rocks, tree limbs and other objects at SWAT team members throughout the night. He said he and his friends had demonstrated peacefully, locking arms in standoff with police.

“There were literally guys way bigger than me throwing rocks, bottles in their face and all you do is move towards them,” said Carter, a short, slender man. “But you see little ole me, you want to come throw me down, beat me up.”

Holliman, who said he had stood on the sidewalk watching the protests but was there to use his health care background for anyone in need, saw Rosenbaum’s vehicle approaching after its window was broken. He approached the vehicle and shut it off after Rosenbaum went to the other side to look at the broken window.

Rosenbaum is seen on the video standing near the rear passenger window before she is ordered to the ground. She said she was hit once in the face during her arrest and showed photographs of bruising under her eye in the first days after the protest.

“As I’m on the ground that’s when I see Jeremy against the tree on the ground and all these officers are beating the crap out of him,” she said. “When I see this I’m so scared the only thing I could do is sit up and scream. I don’t know how many times I screamed it. All I could scream was ’Stop! Stop!’”

Neither Carter nor Holliman was charged with resisting. Each was charged with criminal trespass to real property for being on police station property after being told such entry was forbidden, according to the criminal complaints against them.

The trespassing charge likely stems from protests early in the night. Around 8:30 p.m., about an hour and a half before the three were arrested, police had announced over a loudspeaker blaring from a SWAT vehicle that protesters had to disperse “or you’ll be subject to arrest.”

Way, 21, of Rockford, who was in Rosenbaum’s vehicle, was not arrested. She drove her friend’s car home from the scene.

“I was worried about my friends because I witnessed the police beating on them. Like, four or five officers on each of my friends, and I have to leave them,” she said. “That’s traumatizing. It still eats me up to this day.”

Protest unravels

Demonstrators have said the presence of SWAT officers escalated tensions with protesters and caused the otherwise peaceful protest to turn violent.

SWAT officers have not been called to any protest since May 30 as demonstrators have taken over city streets in acts of civil disruption they say are done in the spirit of the desegregation sit-ins and Freedom Rides of the 1960s.

Way and Carter, who work for a logistics company, and Holliman are black. Rosenbaum, a waitress, is biracial. Each said they wanted to be part of a moment they felt was important in the push for civil rights. They arrived at the protest shortly before 6 p.m., roughly the time it reached the District 1 police station, after learning about it through social media.

They said they saw people throwing objects at police, and saw other protesters try to maintain order. They said they tried to continue their peaceful demonstration amid chaos.

Rosenbaum said she was shot in the lower back by what she thinks was either a rubber bullet or bean bag gun while she ran from police after one skirmish between officers and other protesters.

None of the four has filed an official excessive force complaint with the city, although they said they’re working to hire a lawyer to determine what to do next.

They have not attended a protest since, each saying they’re afraid of any potential conflicts with police.

“When I leave out the house it’s only to go to work,” Holliman said. “The everyday normal life I used to live I cannot, no. I’m afraid for my life. I can’t even live my life normal anymore.”

Kevin Haas:khaas@rrstar.com; @KevinMHaas