A federal jury on Tuesday heard a starkly different version of events that led to an off-duty Little Rock police officer punching a man in the face seven times outside a Hillcrest eatery in 2011.
The blows were captured on camera by an out-of-town visitor who had been sitting outside the restaurant after taking pictures with a friend, and the confrontation was soon widely disseminated on social media, prompting cries for the officer, the now-retired Lt. David Hudson, to be fired.
Hudson, now a Pulaski County Circuit Court bailiff, was never fired, and a 30-day suspension for violating departmental rules during the arrest of Chris Erwin was later reversed by the city's Civil Service Commission.
On Tuesday, more than five years after Erwin sued him on excessive force allegations, Hudson got the chance to publicly tell his side of the story. It and the testimony that followed, including from seven people who were at the Kavanaugh Boulevard restaurant that night and witnessed different parts of the incident, created a vastly different picture of the scene that Erwin and his friend, Blake Mitchell, had described a day earlier. Mitchell, originally a plaintiff as well, was dropped after U.S. District Judge James Moody Jr. dismissed most of his claims before the trial began.
Jurors are scheduled to hear closing arguments at 9 a.m. today. If they find that Hudson violated Erwin's rights, they will be asked to award monetary damages to Erwin from the city or the company that owned the restaurant, depending on which entity they believe Hudson was representing that night.
Erwin, now 45, testified Monday that he, his girlfriend, Mitchell and Mitchell's wife were unaware that when they sat at a table in a party room at the Ferneau restaurant on the night of Oct. 27, 2011, they were intruding on a private Halloween costume party. They weren't in costumes and had just come from another Hillcrest bar.
Erwin said he didn't know why Hudson, the restaurant's regular security guard, told him and his friends to leave. But he said that after he complied by paying the tab and walking out, he asked Hudson, now back outside, who had wanted them to leave and why. He said Hudson appeared suddenly enraged and slammed him face-first against a brick wall. Then, as spectators turned to watch and the woman with the camera started filming, he said Hudson punched him in the face repeatedly, threw him to the ground and handcuffed him.
He and Mitchell, who admittedly tried to intervene, were arrested on misdemeanor charges that were eventually dropped.
Erwin testified that he was too "dazed" as a result of his face hitting the wall to understand or comply with Hudson's commands to place his hands on the wall and submit to arrest. But restaurant patrons said Tuesday that from their perspective, Erwin and his companions were drunk, unruly and potentially threatening to the officer. Hudson's attorneys, Bill James and John Landis, suggested that Erwin's swollen, bloodied face was a result of his struggle with Hudson on the ground.
Hudson testified that the restaurant was packed that Friday night. He said he had been sitting outside on a bar stool near the entrance, drinking coffee, when Tracy Rivers, a local business owner who was hosting an invitation-only party, asked him to remove the four intruders, who were spilling drinks on people and dancing inappropriately. He said the disc jockey hired for the party, Seth Baldy, also told him that a woman in Erwin's group threatened to "kick his a**" if he didn't play better music.
Hudson said the group took its time leaving, but he went back to his post outside, where he was soon confronted by Erwin, who demanded to know who had asked them to leave and why. Hudson said he refused to answer, as he routinely does to protect complainants, and told Erwin, "It's not important. ... Just let it go."
He said Erwin insisted that it was "his right" to know, and, "I decided that there was no way out but to arrest Mr. Erwin. ... I told him he was under arrest, grabbed him by his coat and turned him toward the wall in the alcove area."
Hudson said he never slammed Erwin into the wall, but Erwin refused to face the wall and kept turning back toward him, finally grabbing the officer's coat. Hudson said the men struggled against the wall and "then I lost my grip on him; we got separated."
He said he radioed to dispatchers to send backup officers, later realizing it was about this time that Maria Torres of Colorado, the visitor sitting outside with her camera, began filming. He said Erwin then "came at me again, which was a red flag. That's not normal behavior."
Without any backup officers, he said, he had to either throw Erwin to the ground to control him, which was risky because it would leave him vulnerable as well, or punch him, "so at that point I struck him. ... The goal of the face punches was to try to get him to submit to arrest. I believe all of them were necessary."
Hudson, an officer since 1978, testified that he could soon feel Erwin's body slacken a little, indicating "he was ready to submit to arrest," so he stopped punching him. But then Erwin tensed up again, Hudson said, forcing him to throw Erwin to the ground, where Erwin refused to lie facedown with his arms behind his back, instead twisting around until Hudson sat on him.
Hudson said Erwin's friend, Mitchell, then intervened, trying to separate him from Erwin and escalating the situation. Erwin's girlfriend knelt down and told Hudson he was being filmed while Torres screamed in the background, "The cop is doing something really wrong. ... Oh my gosh! ... Stop!"
Stuart Thomas, who retired three years ago as Little Rock's police chief, testified that the department's policy allowed officers to use increasing amounts of force, including closed-fist punches to the face if necessary, to control suspects when they "reasonably believe" it is necessary.
Baldy testified that Erwin's group of party-crashers were "obviously intoxicated," and that he lowered the music volume for two minutes to make sure the four could hear Hudson telling them to leave.
Bartender Geoff Oraha, who worked at the restaurant, testified that he had asked Erwin to leave before calling Hudson in from outside, but Erwin replied, "Well, why don't you kick my a** out?"
Jason Ables, an invited guest at the party, testified that when he saw Hudson and Erwin wrestling outside, it appeared that Erwin wasn't complying with an arrest and he was concerned about Hudson's safety, so he walked over to help.
Matt Lieblong, a guest at a private Halloween party at a neighboring restaurant, testified that he stepped outside, heard a car alarm going off and looked toward Ferneau, about 30 yards away, to see "a cop pushing a guy against a wall."
The former bouncer said he thought, "There goes another drunk getting arrested," and turned away. But then the noise escalated, apparently while Hudson punched Erwin in the face, and Lieblong turned to look again, noticing that "the officer was having trouble getting the man to submit. The man kept turning around. Then one or two other people started to aggress the cop."
Lieblong, who was dressed that night in a vintage, bell-bottomed leisure suit to look like actor John Travolta in the movie Saturday Night Fever, said he worried that the officer could be harmed or killed and rushed over "to create a barrier."
He testified that Erwin seemed drunk and "was resisting without a question," and he saw Mitchell reach out as if to grab Hudson. Lieblong said that's when he "headed that way" to try to stop "what I thought would be an assault of a police officer by a group."
Metro on 06/14/2017