“If I had been a young black man I doubt I would’ve even been taken to the hospital.”
It was the kind of treatment some might expect for a mob informant, not a 68-year-old man arrested for obstructing traffic — a misdemeanor.
Kevin Moran of Tucker said he was shackled to a bed at Grady Memorial Hospital, accompanied at all times by an Atlanta police officer, for roughly 16 hours following his arrest Monday night. Moran had participated in a Black Lives Matter protest in Buckhead near the Lenox Square MARTA station.
He said he was hospitalized for a dislocated shoulder after an officer handcuffed him.
“I had no intention of getting arrested because of my shoulder,” he said, adding that he’s had multiple surgeries following a fall a few years ago.
When told to move to the side of the road during the protest, Moran, carrying a sign that read “White Silence Equals Violence,” said he was complying when he felt an officer tap him on the back. He was told he was under arrest.
“I told him I had limited mobility in my shoulder and asked him to handcuff me in front,” he said.
He was handcuffed him from behind anyway. “See, you can put your arms behind your back,” the officer told him, according to Moran.
“It seemed unnecessarily brutal,” he said.
The Atlanta Police Department’s Office of Professional Standards is investigating the allegations, said spokeswoman Kim Jones.
“This is a ticketing type (of) offense,” said Moran’s attorney, Mawuli Davis, who called the arrest “hyper-vigilant and over-aggressive.”
“This is not an isolated incident,” he said. “(Police) give instructions but they don’t give protesters a chance to act.”
After his shoulder was dislocated, Moran said he was told to sit in the back of the van used to transport protesters to the city jail. Fourteen other demonstrators were arrested Monday in Buckhead, all for misdemeanor offenses.
Moran is no stranger to jail. He has been arrested for civil disobedience before — three times in 2014.
“But I’ve never been treated like this,” he said.
Once he was transported to Grady, he said he was not allowed to call his wife or anyone else to apprise them of his situation.
“I was doing what they said and now I’m in pain, I’m shackled,” Moran recalled. “I was in a tough place.”
He was released at 1 p.m. Tuesday after Davis interceded, keeping him out of jail.
Davis said he wants the charge against his client dropped.
“We intend to fight this, take it to trial if necessary,” he said. “This could’ve been prevented if only the officer had listened to him.”
Moran, now back home in Tucker, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution he remains in pain and fears another surgery might be necessary.
“If I had been a young black man I doubt I would’ve even been taken to the hospital,” Moran said. “I won’t allow them to silence me, or intimidate me.”
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