That officer, with his gun drawn, ran up to Jones and slammed him against a rock wall behind Key Bank on Union Street, at 24th Avenue East, according to the Washington State Superior Court testimony of Jones' parents, Arzelia and William Jones. They also say the officer kicked the boy and shoved a handful of dirt in his mouth.
The cop who left Darrell Jones with bruises on his face is Greg Neubert, one of the two officers involved in the Central District shooting death of Aaron Roberts on May 31.
The Joneses' account is one of many court documents that portray a Seattle police officer with a controversial past. Several themes emerge in the pages of court records bearing Neubert's name: He seems to have a history of intimidating people through verbal threats and physical assaults, a reputation for lying in court, and a tendency to accuse others of assaulting him--à la his Roberts defense.
With this history, it isn't a surprise that many residents of the Central District--the area Neubert has patrolled for much of his nine-year career--are disturbed that the King County inquest into the Roberts shooting will hinge on the officer's account. Many in the neighborhood know something terrible happened that night at the corner of 23rd and Union, and they don't believe Neubert's version of events.
Court documents show Neubert's career through the eyes of Central District residents. First, people feel threatened by Neubert. The most striking example of Neubert's threats involves the case of Justin Bacami, a black youth whom Neubert arrested for possession of a deadly weapon in 1995. Nina Bacami, Justin's mother, wrote in an affidavit that Neubert verbally harassed her son while driving to the East Precinct. "Neubert drove [Justin] to Cherry Street and threatened to let the Crips beat him up and kill him," her affidavit states.
LaDonna Morris, a black woman who filed an affidavit in August 1996 to bolster Bacami's defense, was arrested by Neubert in the Central District while she was sitting in a parked car with her friends. She described the physical force Neubert used when he suspected a drug sale, according to her testimony.
"Officer Neubert approached my group of friends and started throwing people on the car," Morris said in her court statement. "Next, he yanked me out of the car and threw me on top."
Neubert also harassed the aforementioned Joneses, a black couple from West Seattle, according to their 1996 affidavits. After arresting the Joneses' son Darrell in the Central District, Neubert told the parents he "had a lot of friends in the police department," William Jones' statement reads. "And that he could make the summer hell for Darrell."
Neubert also appears to lack credibility, as evidenced by several cases where the officer's testimony conflicts with experts' and other officers' statements.
"At [the LaDonna Morris] trial, Officer Neubert testified he was working alone [the night of her arrest] and was not assigned a partner," Morris' statement says. However, "another officer testified that he was Officer Neubert's partner that night and that Officer Neubert had ran off and he was unable to locate him for some time," Morris says.
In another case, a 1999 traffic stop by Neubert led to a drug arrest. The black defendant, Frederick Smallwood, claimed he never saw or signed the traffic citation, and a handwriting expert testified that the signature on the citation was not Smallwood's. According to court reports, Neubert, who issued the citation, said that Smallwood signed the paper. The judge threw out the charges against Smallwood.
"Officer Neubert has built his own reputation, and his reputation for being less than honest has been made known to me by attorneys at Northwest Defenders, as well as other agencies," wrote public defender Jackie Walsh, one of Neubert's critics, in a 1996 court document.
Neubert has also accused people of assaulting him, including his latest story that Roberts grabbed his wrist and dragged him down the street with his car, provoking the shooting. In one 1996 instance, a black man named Winifred Dean Ross was charged with assaulting Neubert with a pickup truck. However, Neubert's story was discredited, and the man was cleared. A second case involved Joseph Palmer--a black man Neubert shot and paralyzed in a downtown McDonald's in 1995. Palmer was charged with assault because of the realistic gun-shaped cigarette lighter he carried, which led to the shooting. Palmer was convicted on the third-degree charge.
Lonnie Nelson of Mothers Against Police Harassment, a group that keeps files on police officers, is familiar with these stories about Neubert. She says people called her organization to complain about Neubert as early as 1993.
"[Neubert] is the one we know the most about," Nelson says. However, no one has ever filed an official complaint with the organization. "If they had, there would be quite a file on Neubert," she says.
Official complaints against Neubert are difficult to find because few people are willing to challenge the officer. For example, our picture of Neubert was pieced together from defense testimony in Neubert's arrest cases. It was not culled from cases where people formally accused Neubert of misconduct.
"People are scared to take him to court," says Aarikka Brown, one of several black workers at Philly's Best Steaks & Hoagies, a popular greasy spoon on 23rd and Union. The outspoken young woman--the only Philly's employee willing to give her name--says she and her friends have had numerous problems with Neubert, but haven't filed official complaints. They don't want to create any more trouble for themselves, she explains.
Standing across Union Street from Philly's, a young black man named Ahblf Shauf points to the remnants of Roberts' memorial, etched on the sidewalk in front of Earl's Cuts & Styles. "If we say too much, all they're going to do is come by here and harass us," Shauf says. His friend Davanian Hunter nods in agreement.
"There's only so much we can do," Hunter says.
