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The Campus Way apartment parking lot in Tuscaloosa where Alabama football player Tony Brown was pepper sprayed and arrested Saturday night.
(Michael Casagrande/mcasagrande@al.com)
TUSCALOOSA, Alabama — Alabama cornerback Tony Brown was pepper sprayed, arrested then charged with failure to obey and resisting arrest Saturday night at an off-campus party.
That was the Tuscaloosa Police Department's account, according to a press release Sunday night.
Multiple eyewitnesses, however, have told AL.com the news release was filled with inaccuracies or fabrications. One witness told AL.com an unidentified officer pointed a gun at Brown and others during the encounter.
Multiple attempts by AL.com to obtain or view an arrest report and any other public documents linked to the incident were rejected by Tuscaloosa police. Sgt. Brent Blankley said Tuesday the press release would be the only comment from the department.
Jaison Davis, 23 from Atlanta, said Brown was never threatening to the two police officers, who responded to a noise complaint at Campus Way, an off-campus student apartment complex. The party was attended by mostly Alabama track and field team members, Davis and other witnesses said.
Police ordered Brown, also a member of the track team, and other witnesses to disperse in the parking lot. The officers could not be identified without arrest reports, which police would not release to AL.com and other news outlets. Blankley refused to name the officers.
According to the press release, Brown "would walk a few steps away and then would walk right back towards officers. The officers warned the individual that if he did not leave the parking lot he would be arrested. The individual yelled threatening profanity at the officer and stepped toward the officers again."
That's not true, said Davis and fellow Campus Way resident Richard Sharper.
They say Brown and a few other guests turned to leave immediately after officers pulled out the pepper spray. Brown walked approximately 30-40 yards to his car with an officer following behind, they said. The officer walked beside Brown and pepper sprayed Brown in the face as the athlete was complying with the command to leave, said Davis who only briefly met Brown before Saturday night..
"The police officer kept heckling him in his ear walking behind him," said Sharper, a 19-year-old Alabama student from Tuscaloosa.
Davis and Sharper said they never saw Brown say anything or make any threatening move to provoke the pepper spray.
Brown immediately fell to the ground in a fetal position, Davis said, as the officer pulled his gun. The crowd, which had been relatively calm to that point, was more tense after the pepper spray was used and when the gun came out, Davis said.
Sharper said everyone moved away fast when they saw the gun.
"I was like 'whoa, he's going crazy,'" Sharper said.
The officer then approached Davis, and instructed him to leave. In video provided by Davis, he can be heard yelling at the officer he said sprayed Brown. Davis argued he had a right to stay at the scene because he lived in the complex.
"I'm going to say it now," the unidentified officer tells Davis on the video. "Walk away now."
Davis said he raised his arm to shield his eyes expecting to get the pepper spray and cut the video off a few seconds later.
David Thomas, 20 of Tuscaloosa, shares an apartment with Sharper which faces the parking lot where the confrontation took place. The Alabama student said the police officer appeared to become more aggressive when witnesses pulled out camera phones to capture video of the encounter.
Davis said there's at least five other videos out there that paint a much different picture than what police presented, though AL.com has not been able to obtain those.
Davis came forward to dispute accounts based solely on the police statement. Blankley said the police would not comment on claims their account of the situation was not accurate.
"We've already sent our statement of what happened," Blankley said. "That was the accounts given to us by the officers."
Attempts by AL.com to speak with Brown and other track athletes, who Davis and others say were at the scene, were unsuccessful through a request with Alabama's Athletics Communications.
Alabama football coach Nick Saban said he's spoken with Brown and he's doing fine.
"Look, some people are in the wrong place at the wrong time," Saban said in Mobile on Tuesday afternoon. "Some people don't make good decisions about what they do, what they say. Tony Brown's a fine young man, we're glad to have him in the program. We'll certainly try to use this as a learning experience for him.
"The punishment he receives will be so that he learns not to do something like this in a disrespectful way to somebody in a position of authority who is there to protect us all, which is our police. We're going to get him to learn from this."
Davis wants the record set straight.
"Everything that's on the Internet, that is a complete lie because it makes it seem like Tony was just totally insubordinate and straight ignoring every instruction by the police officers," Davis said. "And that wasn't the case at all."
Davis and other witnesses said the crowd was much smaller than the estimate of 40 listed in the news release. It was close to half that size, he said.
AL.com reporter Andrew Gribble contributed to this report from Mobile.