Family questions treatment of Black man after video of MS traffic stop goes viral
The family of a Black man who appeared to have a medical emergency after a Saturday traffic stop in Hattiesburg is furious about the way police officers treated their loved one.
Loren Smith watched a 14-minute video of the stop involving her brother, Lester Smith, that was posted to social media.
Police had stopped Lester, she said, because he was in a vehicle his parents had reported stolen out of McComb in Pike County.
“I was devastated when I saw that video,” Loren Smith said. “I could not watch the whole thing. I turned it off. It was like my body went numb.
“Here you have this person because that is what he is — a human being — laying on the ground seizing and shaking in the hot heat, and you (police officers) are telling bystanders he is faking. “
Lea Campbell, president of Mississippi Rising Coalition, stopped to film what happened. She shared the video on Facebook, and it has been shared thousands of times.
“I saw him get pulled over, and decided I was going to stop,” Campbell said. “ I don’t know why, but something told me to pull over. I didn’t want him to be alone. I was fearful for him.”
When Campbell stopped, she said Lester was standing outside his vehicle. A police officer handcuffed him and brought him around to the back of his vehicle and patted him down.
While Lester was standing there handcuffed, she said, a second Hattiesburg police officer pulled up in a patrol car and parked behind the first officer.
A seizure at a traffic stop?
The arresting officer, she said, led Lester back to the second officer’s patrol car and put him in the backseat, but shortly thereafter she said she heard him scream, “Help,” and she could see from where she was standing (about 100 yards away) that Lester’s feet and lower legs started to shake and jerk around.
Campbell, who has worked as a trained physical therapist, suspected Lester Smith was having seizures.
She said two officers pulled Lester out of the car.
“They were telling him to stop acting up,” she said.
The officers attempted to place Lester Smith on his back on the pavement, she said, but she told them not to put him on his stomach “because I knew that was dangerous if he was having seizure activity.”
The officers had Lester Smith on the ground on his back. In the video footage, one of Lester’s legs is shaking before an officer later props him up. Eventually, Lester’s head slumps down, the video shows, and Campbell said she couldn’t tell if he was breathing.
“The arresting officer was standing over him, and Lester was completely unresponsive,” Campbell said.
In the video recorded by Campbell, the initial arresting officer could be heard asking Lester Smith, “Are you getting a good nap in?”
Campbell said she asked a police officer if Lester Smith was still breathing, and the officer said that he was, but she said she was concerned because none of the officers seemed to be taking seriously what appeared to her to be a medical emergency.
“They just kind of sat him up and he was still not responsive the entire time,” she said. Another officer said the ambulance service was on the way.
Another police officer told witnesses that Lester Smith “started acting up” after he learned the car he had been in was being towed.
Family responds to traffic stop video
Hattiesburg police released a statement saying the agency was aware of the video and that Smith had been stopped in the 6500 block of Highway 49 due to “an incident that occurred at a separate location.”
Smith, Hattiesburg police said, had been taken to a local hospital by ambulance and released.
In response to questions about the conduct of the Hattiesburg police officers at the scene, Interim Hattiesburg Police Chief Peggy Sealy said in a statement: “We hold all of our officers to the highest standards of professionalism and conduct. We take any allegation of misconduct seriously and will review all accounts, reports, video, etc. to ensure all policies, procedures and applicable laws were followed.”
Loren Smith said she learned her brother was never charged with a crime. She also hasn’t been able to find him since his hospital release, and the family is concerned for his safety.
Campbell, a medical professional with 30 years of experience, is still appalled by the way she saw police treat Lester Smith.
“The officers’ conduct was abhorrent,” Campbell said. “They are not doctors. They are not qualified to say whether Lester was faking it or not and they were completely dismissing what we were saying . . . It was really dehumanizing to him (Lester Smith) and they were comfortable with that and that’s with three witnesses filming it.”
Campbell said Hattiesburg Police Department “needs to answer” for how officers treated Lester Smith.
“Regardless of what a person has done related to crime, everyone is entitled to be treated with decency and respect,” she said.
Hattiesburg police are not commenting further on the incident.
Loren Smith is just hoping she will be able to find her brother soon.
“Why is this story being put out and no one has found my brother, Lester?” his sister said Tuesday, adding that she had filed a public records request with Hattiesburg police to obtain police body camera footage of the stop.
Lester Smith had no prior history of seizures, his sister said.
This story was originally published June 8, 2021 at 2:25 PM.
