In Evanston, Illinois on October 10, 2015, Lawrence Crosby, a civil engineering Ph.D. student at Northwestern, was tackled and brought to the ground. Police officers continued by kneeing him and using unnecessary physical force to keep him down. As seen in the background of the dash cam video, you can hear Crosby saying that he is complying and trying to explain that he is a Ph.D. student being wrongfully accused of stealing his own car.

In a recorded 911 dispatch audio recording, it is clear that the woman who called the authorities was uncertain about her accusations. Yet, she then follows Crosby and gives their location to police. 

In the dash cam, Crosby made it prevalent to whomever he was on the phone with that he felt uncomfortable.

After the incident, the woman who called in the alleged theft can be heard crying and being very apologetic. The officer near comforted her, telling her she had done nothing wrong by wrongly accusing Crosby. In the end, they charged Crosby with new crimes of disobeying officers and resisting arrest.

"There's underlying problems in our town we're not admitting," Alderman Miller, who is running for mayor in Evanston, said to The Washington Post. "There's a true desire that people have — they want to address these problems and actually solve them. But we don't want to necessarily admit that we have these problems."

Crosby was promptly acquitted of all charges and, in 2016, he filed suit against the four officers that tackled him, as well as the city of Evanston.


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