Footage from a Ferguson officer's body camera blew up the cover story he told about why he punched a handcuffed man in the face. On Tuesday, now ex-cop Jackie Matthews pleaded guilty in federal court to charges of violating the arrestee's civil rights and filing a report to impede an investigation.
Matthews was indicted in November 2020, though documents filed with the court at the time alleged only that he had "knowingly made a false entry in a record" and that he had assaulted a suspect who was handcuffed "and not posing any physical threat to anyone."
However, the recent guilty plea goes into greater detail about the lies Matthews offered to explain how a March 13, 2020 arrest turned violent.
That day, Matthews responded to a call for a suspected domestic disturbance case in the 1600 block of Norlakes Drive in Ferguson, and there he arrested a man identified in court documents as "G.R."
Here's what Matthews claimed happened next: After he was placed in the back seat, G.R. supposedly began "kicking the rear door and glass in [the] patrol vehicle with full force," leading to an altercation between the cop and the handcuffed man.
But, as the guilty plea makes clear, the body cam clipped to Matthews' uniform showed a different story: Instead of G.R. kicking at the cop from the backseat, the footage showed Matthews standing outside the vehicle and talking to the man he'd just arrested. Both were engaged in "verbal banter" that soon turned contentious, devolving into "insults, profanity and shouting," the plea stated.
Although both men were involved in the argument, only one had the use of his hands: The plea describes G.R. demanding to be let out of the vehicle — and Matthews obliged. The officer unlocked the rear door and "challenged G.R. to step out of the vehicle."
The plea's description of the incident continues:
G.R. then stepped out of the vehicle. Matthews and G.R. continued arguing outside of the vehicle and then Matthews pushed him back into the vehicle. While trying to force G.R. back into the vehicle, Matthews and G.R. struggled. G.R. moved his face toward Matthews and spit toward him. Matthews placed his hands on G.R.’s throat and delivered several strikes to G.R.’s face with the heel of his open hand. G.R. attempted to defend himself but was only able to kick at Matthews because G.R. remained handcuffed. Matthews then punched G.R. in the face.
In his police report, Matthews described the fight, but he invented details for how it started that would justify his violence, and, later, his attempts to seek charges against G.R. for assaulting a police officer and property damage.
But the body camera was watching. Matthews claimed he had opened the rear of the vehicle to fix G.R.'s seatbelt, and that G.R. had then "quickly stepped out of his vehicle" and "lunged toward" the officer and spit in his face.
As the plea notes, "these claims are wholly contradicted" by the footage. Matthews would eventually acknowledge that his statements were false.
After reviewing the footage, the Ferguson police department fired Matthews, ending his policing career in Ferguson barely a year after his hiring in 2019. His sentencing is scheduled for April. He could face as many as 21 months in prison for his crimes.
Matthews attempted deception is all the more notable considering that Ferguson was among the first departments in Missouri to deploy officers with body cameras in the wake of the fatal shooting of Michael Brown. Amid clashing eyewitness accounts, the killing itself was unrecorded because the department did not have any cameras equipped to its officers or patrol cars.
While Ferguson began rolling out its body cameras to officers quickly enough for the devices to be used during the ensuing protests of 2014, other departments in the St. Louis region struggled for years to get their body camera programs off the ground. In St. Louis County, body cameras weren't fully implemented until 2019, while St. Louis' Metropolitan Police Department contended with numerous delays and false starts before it finally deployed cameras to about 600 officers in July.
Follow Danny Wicentowski on Twitter at @D_Towski. E-mail the author at Danny.Wicentowski@RiverfrontTimes.com
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