The friend who was driving former NBA all-star Allen Iverson's Lamborghini when it got impounded last month is saying Atlanta police falsified information in their report about the incident.
Antwuan Clisby told the AJC Friday that, contrary to the official police report, Iverson didn't swear at a cop or ask her a boastful question about his fame.
"It's not right how they're trying to portray this whole thing," Clisby said.
Clisby is one of several people who've come forward to dispute the details of the police report.
Clisby, 35, was cited for failure to signal and for driving a car with expired tags after an officer pulled him over in Iverson's gray 2007 Lamborghini Murcielago. Clisby, a friend of Iverson's from Virginia, was handcuffed after he grew "angry" during the March 30 encounter, according to a police officer's report of the incident.
Officer S. J. Durham called for backup and, according to Clisby, five squad cars and eight more cops came to the scene, in the parking lot of the Ruth's Chris Steak House and Embassy Suites Hotel on Peachtree Road in Buckhead.
The car had a dealer tag, and after running the vehicle identification number through a computer, Durham realized the tag had been expired for two years, she wrote in her report.
When a tow truck was called, Iverson became upset.
"Take the vehicle, I have 10 more," he told Durham, according to her report. "Police don't have anything else [expletive] to do except [expletive] with me. ... Do you know who I am?"
For the next 20 minutes, according to the officer's report, Iverson "went on and on" about who he was.
But Clisby told the AJC that neither he nor Iverson behaved as the officer reported.
"I'm not going to be rude when I get pulled over, because I'm not trying to get a ticket," Clisby explained. He said Iverson did not swear and did not boast about his fame.
"‘Do you know who I am?' Who would say that? Only an [expletive] would say that," Clisby said.
Clisby said he did ask the officer early in the encounter if Iverson, the passenger, could get out of the car and go to Ruth's Chris, where he had a take-out order waiting. Clisby said he made the request to shield his friend from the publicity. A crowd was gathering around the Lamborghini and people were taking pictures, he said.
The request was denied. Instead, Iverson and Clisby were ordered from the car and searched. Clisby said an officer asked where they were keeping the drugs and guns.
Ernest West, a courtesy van driver for the Embassy Suites, was parked next to the Lamborghini and witnessed the incident. He said Iverson has been a regular at the hotel and restaurant, so he recognized him immediately.
"He didn't curse at all," West told the AJC. "I mean, he was upset by the situation. But he didn't curse."
When asked about this, an Atlanta Police Department spokeswoman said Clisby called Thursday, claiming Durham fabricated her report.
"We told him that he will have his day in court, and if there is something in that report that he feels is not true, he could testify and she would testify," Officer Kim Maggart told the AJC Friday.
Maggart said Clisby didn't appear to appreciate the response, and started cursing at her and the other two police employees -- one a sworn officer -- who were participating on speakerphone. She wouldn't repeat what he said, but said he used words like those attributed to Iverson by Officer Durham in her report: "Everything she stated he said in the police report is pretty much everything he [Clisby] said to us last night."
Clisby also denies that the tags were expired. He said Iverson bought the car in Georgia two years ago and left it undriven at his home in Philadelphia, and recently had it shipped back to his home in Atlanta after asking the same dealer to give him new drive-out tags while he got permanent tags. The drive-out tags expired in early April, he said, days after the car was impounded.
Another witness offers some corroboration of that claim. Andrea Dzeda wasn't there the night of the traffic stop, but 10 days earlier she and her husband, both visiting from their home in Austin, met Iverson and his friends at the bar of the Embassy Suites. They hung out together, and Iverson and his friends were polite, even calling her ma'am, she told the AJC.
On their way out of the hotel, Dzeda snapped photos of Iverson's gray Lamborghini with her cellphone. She provided a copy of one of the photos. It shows a car with dealer drive-out tag that was dated April 3, 2011 -- four days after Clisby was given the expired tag citation.
The AJC had no way of verifying the authenticity of the photo.
The public likely will not see a resolution about the accuracy of the police report or the underlying traffic violation though. Clisby said he won't be fighting any of this in court. It'll be less expensive to just pay the fine, he said.
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