Albert Mosley is in a wheelchair, unable to walk and barely able to move his arms. He says it's because a Baltimore officer threw him headfirst into the concrete wall of a police district holding cell.
Yesterday, almost two years after he was injured, Mosley filed a $40 million police brutality lawsuit in Baltimore Circuit Court against the police officer, Bryan Kershaw.
"I don't want the police to get away with this," said Mosley, 54.
Mosley's lead attorney, William H. Murphy Jr., said such violence is "rampant" in the Police Department and pointed to a jury verdict last year that awarded a similar amount to a man whose neck was broken during a 1997 arrest. The city eventually settled that suit for $6 million.
City Solicitor Ralph S. Tyler, who had not seen Mosley's lawsuit, called the allegations serious and said the city would respond in court. Kershaw could not be reached for comment, but Lt. Frederick V. Roussey, president of the local police union, said an internal investigation cleared the officer of any wrongdoing. Both Roussey and a police spokesman disputed Murphy's contention of widespread police brutality.
The 13-page lawsuit and his attorneys give Mosley's account of what happened to him:
On June 25, 2003, an intoxicated and handcuffed Mosley, who had been picked up on a probation violation, became loud and unruly behind bars at the Western District police station.
Kershaw, who was supervising Mosley and four other prisoners, engaged in a shouting match with him and later entered the cell, picked him up and tossed him against the wall, Mosley contends. Handcuffed, Mosley was unable to break his fall.
Mosley lay on the cell floor for about 45 minutes, immobile and bleeding from a gash over his left eye, he says. Kershaw and other officers at the station ignored the other prisoners' shouts for help, Mosley says.
One of those prisoners has confirmed the story, Murphy said, but the city has not identified the other prisoners or officers present.
In charges the officer filed against Mosley when the incident occurred, Kershaw said he had shoved Mosley "in a controlled manner" because the man was trying to escape and appeared ready to spit at him. The officer said he immediately called for medical help.
The charges against Mosley - second-degree assault and attempted escape - have been placed on the inactive docket.
Kershaw joined the force in 2000 and is a full-time officer. "If the department had found that he did anything wrong, believe me, he would no longer be with the department," Roussey said.
It has been almost two years since Mosley was injured, and the lifelong West Baltimore resident, with a history of mostly drug- and alcohol-related convictions, can do little more than feed himself and scribble his initials with his right hand.
As he sat in his motorized wheelchair this week at the private medical facility in Towson where he now lives, Mosley kept his left arm in his lap. The fingers on that hand appeared stiff - some curled, others straight. He asked a nurse for help when he slid down in his chair.
"I'm totally dependent on others," he said.
Mosley said he spends his days watching television and smoking cigarettes. To sleep, he said he is stretched flat on his back and is so immobile that "you could set a glass of water on my chest at night, and that's where it'll be when I wake up in the morning."
He keeps a few greeting cards and family photos in a brown paper bag nearby in a hospital-like room that he shares with another man. His two grown daughters and 69-year-old mother, who has diabetes and heart problems, visit occasionally.
Mosley's medical records, provided by his defense attorneys, state that he has a cervical spinal injury that includes the compression of two vertebrae.
Mosley will never walk again, Murphy said, and has regained only minimal use of his arms.
"This is just like being confined," Mosley said. "I don't want to be like this the rest of my life."
Mosley said he filed the lawsuit to cover future medical costs and also to "show police that this is wrong."
"I don't want them to laugh this off," he said. "I don't want this officer to have this as another notch in his gun."
Murphy said the amount requested in the lawsuit is in line with a jury verdict last year in which $39 million was awarded to Jeffrey Alston, who said city police officers paralyzed him by holding him in a headlock.
Amid the appeals process, the city settled Alston's lawsuit for $6 million in December. In the early 1990s, Murphy represented a client who won a $1.5 million jury verdict for police brutality, which the lawyer said was the largest such award at that time.
A longtime defense attorney and former city Circuit Court judge, Murphy said Baltimore is facing "an epidemic of police brutality." He said citizens are tired of officers' "ineffectiveness and utter disrespect for the law."
Matt Jablow, a police spokesman, called Murphy's allegations "patently ridiculous" and said there has been a five-year downward trend of complaints against officers.
Excessive-force complaints have decreased more than 16 percent this year and discourtesy complaints are down 34 percent, Jablow said.
Roussey, the union president, said the department does a good job of weeding out rogue officers. He also said the union supports Kershaw "100 percent" and that any court proceedings would exonerate the officer.
Murphy said that before filing the lawsuit, he attempted to reach an agreement with the city in Mosley's case - efforts that he said were rebuffed.
"The city is not interested in doing the right thing for Mr. Mosley," Murphy said. "They're making us do it the hard way, and we're going to do it."
