Ida C. Hawkins says she was shoved and called a savage by a Springfield Hospital Center police officer who had pulled her over for a traffic violation.
But Officer Ricky Hinkle says that he was just trying to write a simple traffic ticket the night of June 27, 1990, and that he never pushed her, shoved or called Mrs. Hawkins -- or anyone else -- a savage.
In fact, he says, it was she who provoked him to arrest her.
Now, four years later, it's up to a Carroll County Circuit Court jury to decide whether Mrs. Hawkins should be compensated $5 million for what she claims was overzealous, racist police work or if the two officers named in her three-count lawsuit were merely doing their jobs.
As the trial began yesterday, Mrs. Hawkins' attorney tried to portray the suit as one about racism in Carroll County. Mrs. Hawkins, 54, of Woodlawn, is black; Springfield Officers Hinkle and John Craven are white.
"This is a case of alleged racial prejudice," Mark A. Epstein, the Baltimore lawyer representing Mrs. Hawkins' told the jury of four men and two women yesterday afternoon. "It is unfortunate, but if you find that it happened, it is important to let your community know you are not going to stand for racial prejudice."
Attorneys for the two officers denied that Mrs. Hawkins' race had anything to do with her arrest after two traffic stops that night.
"This is not a case about racism," said Assistant Attorney General Timothy J. Paulus, who represents Officer Hinkle. "If there's any racism in this case, it is all in Mrs. Hinkle's mind."
And Kirk Seaman, Officer Craven's attorney, said Mrs. Hinkle's suit is about one thing: money.
"We're becoming a society of very thin-skinned people," Mr. Seaman said in his opening statement. "It seems that ever since the Rodney King beating trials, everyone is suing police departments. . . .
"You have an opportunity to stop it. Ida Hawkins, plain and simple, ladies and gentlemen, broke the law, and now she comes to you asking you to give her money for breaking the law."
The suit was filed in Baltimore Circuit Court in 1992, but was moved to Carroll Circuit Court later that year. Mrs. Hawkins claimed that the two officers and the town of Sykesville were responsible for false imprisonment, malicious prosecution and intentional infliction of emotional distress. A Carroll judge dropped the town as a defendant last year.
