 "Photo: Bryant Haertlein")
 "Photo: Bryant Haertlein")
When UT junior Jeffrey Thornton went to Sixth Street on June 20, 2002, he said he didn't expect to end the night in jail for being a pedestrian in the roadway.
He didn't expect to be repeatedly slammed against the hood of a squad car, either. He didn't expect to be involved in a law suit against the police department, and he didn't expect to see the same officer again five years later, this time on
the news for shooting Kevin Brown.
On that night in 2002, Thornton had gone to Club Rehab with a friend to celebrate Juneteenth. After clubs closed at 2 a.m., Thornton observed an altercation in the street. Two men were horsing around but stopped as Sgt. Michael Olsen, the officer involved in the Brown shooting, approached.
Olsen ordered one of the men to go home. Thornton was nearby and said Olsen picked the man up by his shirt and shoved him while telling him to "go the fuck home."
In a court deposition, Olsen admitted to using profanities during the incident, which is against Austin Police Department policy. Olsen said profanity is sometimes necessary to convey immediacy in certain situations.
After Thornton commented to his friend about how Olsen was handling the man, the officer approached Thornton, telling him to get out of the road before he got a ticket. Thornton said he was one of more than 100 people in the road.
Thornton said he complied, but Olsen said he wasn't moving fast enough and would get a ticket.
Olsen then took Thornton to his squad car, where he slammed him against the hood twice, after which Thornton stood up and called to his nearby friend to call his mother. Thornton stood up once more, and Olsen slammed him against the hood a third time. Thornton slid off the hood of the car to the pavement, where he briefly lost consciousness.
When Thornton awoke, his head was bleeding. When he opened his eyes, he said it felt like they were burning, and when the officer picked him up he felt dizzy and collapsed repeatedly.
An EMS unit came to the scene to take Thornton to the hospital and began to drive off, with Olsen accompanying Thornton. Olsen insisted that Thornton was faking, and soon the ambulance stopped. Officers helped Thornton to a squad car and took him to jail.
After Thornton spent 36 hours in jail for being a pedestrian in a roadway, authorities released him.
"It felt like six years," he said.
Thornton filed a complaint with internal affairs at the APD, and an investigation began. After a surveillance video of the incident emerged, confirming Thornton's account of the events, the charges against him were dropped.
Olsen was suspended for 60 days for inappropriate use of force and falsifying his account of the incident, according to a police department memo.
However, Thornton wasn't done. He contacted the Texas Civil Rights Project, and project director Jim Harrington filed his lawsuit. After a year and a half of litigation, the city settled the suit for $31,000.
"Right off the bat I was very impressed with Jeffrey himself," Harrington said. "I know that there is a lot of excessive force on Sixth, so I wasn't surprised by the story at all."
Harrington and the project did all the work pro bono. After the settlement, Thornton donated $5,000 to the project.
"They went above the call of duty," Thornton said. "I felt like their only client. I got to the point where I got really tired of them calling me. Everyone knew my name, and I felt welcome."
Thornton, who is black, said race most likely played a part in the incident.
"I really think if I was white, this shit would never have happened, and I'm going to stand by that," he said. "I hate to pull the race card, but in that situation I think it would never happen. Some people said I was at the wrong place at the wrong time. It wasn't one of those situations. I was celebrating."
Three years later on June 3, Olsen shot Kevin Brown, a 25-year-old black male, twice in the back, killing him.
News that the same officer was now involved in a use-of-force investigation against another black male stunned Thornton.
"I was in disbelief," he said. "It shook me and it really hurt me. That could've been me. I still can't believe it."
Harrington had a similar reaction to the news.
"What a colossal series of mistakes by the Austin Police Department," Harrington said.
The next day, UT graduate Paul Merryman, who graduated in the spring of 2006, uploaded a video to YouTube.com titled "APD: Downtown Discipline." The documentary video, which details Thornton's incident with APD, was made in 2005 as a project for a radio-television-film class.
Merryman said he made the video because he witnessed police brutality on Sixth Street against a friend of his who is a black male. Officers encircled Merryman's friend with horses, Tasered him and used pepper spray.
The video calls into question the disciplinary procedures of APD, placing the blame on a police union, which Merryman said is too powerful to allow the department to properly discipline officers.
According to meet-and-confer procedures, which determine officer promotions, disciplinary actions play no part in the process of promotions. Since Thornton's incident, Olsen has been promoted twice.
Thornton is now a neurobiology junior at UT, having transferred from Austin Community College. He's currently on track to graduate next spring.
Despite his past with APD, Thornton now does forensics work for the department.
"Its kind of ironic," Thornton said. "We are our own division, but on a whole, it's a part of the APD. I have no interaction with APD, which is a good thing, yet we do all the crime scenes."
Thornton said what fascinates him most about forensics is the fact that trace evidence can lead to capturing a criminal. He said he hopes to become a full-fledged forensics investigator.
Harrington and the Texas Civil Rights Project are now involved with Antoine Thompson, a witness to the Brown shooting who came forward recently saying he was brutalized by police officers that night, and that Brown was shot while pleading for his life.
