Kadejah Townes reported former Memphis officer Demetrius Haley for using excessive force in a 2021 incident, but he was not properly reprimanded.
On February 21, 2021, the Memphis police were investigating a shooting at a Walgreens, and a male officer approached Kadejah Townes asking if she heard gunshots.
I told him no, and he told us, like, he told us we could go ahead and leave.
Kadejah was with her aunt at the time, and when she put her car in reverse to leave, a female officer stopped her, and her aunt started recording.
She wouldn’t tell me what I did. She was just telling me to get out!
She proceeded to stick her hand in my car, unlock my door, and kind of wrestle with me.
Two male officers grabbed Kadejah’s arms, and former officer Demetrius Haley put her in handcuffs.
I’m crying out, like, you dislocated my shoulder.
He just telling me, ‘Stop resisting. Stop resisting!
I’m, like, ‘I’m not resisting.’ I’m trying to tell you… Because if you look at the video my hands are behind my back.
The officers then approached her aunt, and the video ended.
Kadejah told the officers several times that they were at Walgreens to return a Red Box video and get another one.
Once they put her in the squad car, Kadejah demanded they take her to the hospital for her shoulder pain.
Her family was following the police vehicle until an officer pulled over and got out.
And drew a gun at my brother and my aunt.
Kadejah said they took her aunt into custody, and they took her to the hospital before taking her to jail, but she never faced any charges.
She said she gave a statement to the Memphis Police Department (MPD) internal affairs, but she never received any follow-up information on what became of the case until she saw the mugshots of the police officers charged in Tyre Nichols’ death, and she noticed officer Demetrius Haley, who put her in handcuffs that night.
She said she wasn’t surprised when she saw Haley on the news because of how he treated her that night at Walgreens.
According to his disciplinary file, former officer Haley was written up for not filling out the proper paperwork to alert his supervisor that excessive force was used., but he was not written up for using excessive force.
The Lieutenant said Haley usually “routinely makes good decisions” and he was sure this was a “limited event.”
Haley told internal affairs he did not know why they were “handcuffing Townes,” and he “was not familiar with why” she was pulled over in the first place.
The female officer involved in the incident, Alexis Brown, said she saw Kadejah laughing in her car, so she initiated the traffic stop.
She said Kadejah became verbally and passively resistant so she put her in her squad car for an investigative detention.
She claims she found marijuana in Kadejah’s car but disposed of it.
Internal Affairs said Brown violated numerous policies including excessive force, but they allowed her to resign before her disciplinary hearing.
Kadejah’s case was never turned over to the Shelby County District Attorney’s office for review to see if any of the officers did anything criminally wrong.
A month after Kadejah’s incident, the then DA and the former Police Director created a new policy.
“WREG News Channel 3” asked if the case was never sent to the DA because the female officer quit before being disciplined for using excessive force, but they have yet to hear back.
Kadejah Townes thinks they need a better system, and she doesn’t think it’s fair that the female officer was allowed to quit before facing disciplinary actions.
For them to give her time to quit on her own, that wasn’t fair at all…
It’s not right it should be another system a better system…
And we still don’t know what we did. We still don’t know what we did.
Watch the “WREG News Channel 3” report below:
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