Officer pepper sprays food truck and waiting customers in Michigan, video shows
Hungry customers were patiently waiting for their orders from a local food truck late at night when a police officer coated bystanders, and their food, with pepper spray, video shows.
It was around 2 a.m. on August 3 when people were leaving the Flint Jazz Festival and a high school reunion nearby when Leon Lawson II and Leon Lawson III were cooking food, according to MLive.
Lawson II said police told them to stop serving new customers, but that they could finish their current orders, he told the Detroit Metro Times. He added that they have a permit for their food truck Family Recipes x All the Smoke, according to the outlet.
Officers left, drove around the block and came back with sirens blaring and demanding the crowd disperse immediately, MLive reported.
“It agitated them that we were still fulfilling orders, but we weren’t taking new orders,” Lawson II told the Detroit Metro Times. “They weren’t getting the effect they were expecting.”
The video shows Leon Lawson III start dancing in front of the patrol vehicle that had pulled up behind him. Two officers then get out of the vehicle, are seen saying something to Lawson III and then put him in handcuffs as others from the scene try to intervene, the video shows. The tongs he used to cook food were taken as evidence, according to MLive.
Lawson was arrested as another officer could be seen pushing a person nearby while bystanders yelled, the video showed.
After Lawson III was placed in the patrol vehicle, the video shows one officer turning back to the yelling crowd while holding a spray can, then he disperses the spray toward the crowd and over the grill./
A portion of the crowd left the scene, but could be heard coughing on camera.
Lawson III was arrested and held in jail for two days, according to the family’s attorney Michael Manley via WJRT. He was released without criminal charges, according to MLive.
Lawson III was accused of resisting arrest and obstructing a police officer, but Genesee County Prosecutor David Leyton denied a request for a warrant due to lack of probable cause, officials told WJRT.
“To spray, whether it was mace, whether it was pepper spray, any type of spray, to spray at human beings and food, and things like that in the way that it was done, I don’t think meets the standard of Chief Green, or Mayor Neeley, or any person that’s ever been in the city of Flint,” Manley told WJRT.
The Flint Police Department did not immediately respond to McClatchy News’ request for comment on Aug. 7, but told MLive that they are conducting an internal review.
Flint is about a 70-mile drive northwest from Detroit.
