An Ohio police officer claimed he was detaining a group of Black teens for their “safety” after spotting them walking in the middle of a residential street on April 10.
But the Toledo officer ended up grabbing a 15-year-old girl, Kaelynn Reynolds, shoving her against a patrol car, then throwing her to the ground and placing his knee on the back of her neck while handcuffing her.
After handcuffing the crying teen, the officer lifted her up, then threw her to the ground again after accusing her of spitting on him. He charged her with felony assault with a bodily fluid, along with two misdemeanors.
Video Sparks Outrage as Family and NAACP Accuse Officer of Racial Profiling
The incident was recorded on video by Reynolds’ mother, Tosha Woods, and later went viral, sparking outrage in the community. Critics questioned why the officer did not simply tell the teens to move to the sidewalk instead of detaining them.
Woods told The Toledo Blade she arrived at the scene about a minute after the detention began, after receiving a call from her daughter, who said she and her 18-year-old brother were being detained.
“She’s very, very protective over her brother, who’s 18 and has mental health issues,” Woods said, adding that she believes the teens were racially profiled.
“That’s kind of what sparked the whole incident with the police, because they were questioning him and she was telling [the officer], ‘My brother don’t got to answer y’all; he ain’t done nothing wrong.’”
The NAACP of Toledo issued a statement saying “the young people involved posed no threat and were engaged in typical activity.”
“Yet officers reportedly approached the situation with immediate hostility, escalating the encounter to the point where a child was slammed to the ground and restrained with a knee to her neck.”
Watch the video below.
Cop Blows Stop Sign
Toledo police cleared the officers, Michael Routson and Nicholas Palmer, of any wrongdoing, saying they had the legal authority to detain the teens under Ohio law.
However, the department did not address dashcam video showing an officer driving past a group of youths playing basketball in the street, as well as running a stop sign.
The group playing basketball appeared to include a white boy, a Hispanic boy, and possibly a Black boy — something an attorney on YouTube pointed to as potential evidence of racial profiling.
“They’re blocking the entire street having a game of basketball,” said attorney James White, a former police officer who runs the YouTube channel Southern Drawl Law.
“But the Black ratio is not real high here.”
White noted that the officer did not stop until encountering a group of Black teens, at which point he exited his vehicle and ordered them to stand in front of his patrol car so he could run their names, calling it a “safety thing.”
“It’s important to illustrate the fact that he committed a much more serious offense on the way,” White said, referring to the stop sign violation.
“And he ignored a more serious obstruction of the roadway on the way too,” he added, referring to the basketball game. “And I’m not making an argument they should have harassed those kids either — shouldn’t harass anybody.”
“Second, you blow a stop sign, which is arguably creating the very danger that you are using as the predicate for enforcing against the person in the street,” he continued.
“You’re literally saying you can’t walk in the street because it’s dangerous, because people in Toledo don’t know how to drive — 30 seconds after you could have literally killed somebody at the intersection where you ran that stop sign.”
‘Officer’s Ego Has Been Offended’
About a month after the arrest, Toledo police responded to a domestic violence call where Reynolds was accused of firing a gun without striking anyone. Authorities later cited that incident in discussions about the earlier arrest.
“These officers in Toledo worked their way backward and determined that because that girl was later alleged to have committed a violent offense, treating her like a criminal weeks earlier was somehow justified,” White said.
Reynolds now faces a felonious assault charge in addition to the earlier felony charge for allegedly spitting on the officer, The Toledo Blade reported.
But critics argue the initial encounter could have been avoided had the officer not escalated the situation by demanding identification and physically confronting Reynolds within about 90 seconds of arriving, while she was on the phone with her mother.
The officer accused her of having an “attitude” when she did not immediately provide her date of birth — something White said contributed to the escalation.
“It’s our first indication that the attitude is actually the problem and that the officer’s ego has been offended, which becomes the predicate for escalation,” he said.
Woods told local media that her children already feel unsafe living in a low-income neighborhood with high crime.
“[My kids] can’t be comfortable in their own neighborhood — in a neighborhood that’s already unsafe for them, that they already somewhat fear for their life,” she said.
“And then [the police] come over here and do what they do and make them feel more unsafe than what they already feel.”
Watch White’s video below.
