Jordan Johnson, his brother Josh and their mother woke up at 4 a.m. Nov. 28 to make the trip to Atlanta from Jacksonville, Fla., to attend Georgia Tech’s game against Georgia.
Little did they know the drama awaiting them.
Johnson, a high school offensive lineman who said he had been “100 percent” committed to Tech despite its disappointing season, hoped to be a good-luck charm for the Yellow Jackets. He had also attended the Jackets’ upset win over Florida State in October.
Arriving at the stadium, they checked in with recruiting staff, where they received lanyards with their names. Johnson’s was pre-printed; Josh and Kecia’s were handwritten on the spot. With guidance from the recruiting staff, they took their seats in the north end zone, at the back of the lower deck under the upper-deck overhang.
At halftime, Jordan and Josh left to get their mother a candied apple from a concession stand.
At 1:30 p.m., around that same time, a Tech police officer received a request for help from Bobby Dodd Stadium security staff. With a packed house on hand for the game and security heightened, security personnel sought to ensure that fans were sitting in their proper location.
However, according to police, some people in the section were not heeding requests for fans without the required blue wristbands to leave the section, so security staff sought police assistance. Somehow, in under 20 minutes, the seemingly benign procedure resulted in a tense confrontation between an officer and a football recruit’s family, the removal of the recruit and his family from the stadium, the loss of that player’s commitment to the Jackets and a story that has sped across the Internet.
“There were a lot of things that went into play that made this go wrong,” Kecia Johnson said. “It was a combination of wrongs.”
Lanyards and tickets
In the meantime, police began to sweep the section where the Johnsons were sitting. On a security video shown to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution by the Tech police department, two groups of fans left the section before officers reached Kecia Johnson.
“You can see that they’re actually asking all these folks to kind of move out of the area,” campus police chief Robert Connolly said of the video clip.
Kecia Johnson saw the groups dispersing, but believed she and her sons were sitting in their rightful seats. A recruiting staff member had taken them as far as the stadium portal, she said, and “we were pointed to the staircase: ‘Go up this staircase and have a seat.’”
The Johnsons took their seats in a student section next to the section assigned to recruits, the same section they said they sat in for the Florida State game without incident. As NCAA rules prohibit coaches and athletic staff from talking about prospects before they sign letters of intent, the athletic department could not comment on the matter. A school spokesman did say that recruits and their guests are assigned to sit in a specific section designated for recruits.
When the officer approached, Kecia Johnson said she produced the lanyard, but was told she couldn’t sit in that section. Further, she said that she was accused of forging the lanyard with her handwritten name on it. The video also showed that the officer stepped away from Johnson to make a radio call. Connolly said the officer called the stadium operations center to see if the lanyard also required a ticket. Connolly said the officer was told that, yes, it also required a ticket. Recruits and their guests are not given tickets, however, just the lanyards.
Said Connolly: “That’s what kept this thing going on longer than it should have,” further describing the situation as a “boiling pot.”
Johnson, a schoolteacher, said she grew up with the concept of a police officer as “Officer Friendly.” She is the brother of a police officer and the cousin of an ATF agent. In that moment, Johnson said she felt bullied and taunted by the officer. As an invited guest of the team, she was accused of forging her pass by a police officer whom she believes should have known the protocol with the lanyards.
Connolly said the issue was not the handwritten lanyards, but whether the Johnsons could stay in the section without a ticket.
Pot boils over
At this point, Jordan and Josh Johnson returned from the concession stand to find their mother with a police officer. Tension was rising. As the officer communicated with the operations center awaited a response on whether the Johnsons needed tickets, he advised that “the situation is getting heated.”
“I went up there, and I asked them what was going on and they were, like, y’all don’t have tickets. You don’t have tickets, You can’t stay here,” Jordan Johnson said.
A few minutes in, the officer supervising the area of the stadium including that section arrived on the scene and was apprised of the situation. On the video, he was seen immediately going to a Tech recruiting staff member, who gave clearance for the Johnsons to stay. The officer who initially approached Kecia Johnson apologized and reached out to shake her hand.
This was when the pot boiled over. Kecia Johnson was ready to shake hands, put the situation behind her and go back to watching the game. Josh, though, told the officer “Just leave my mama alone. You’ve already apologized. You don’t need to shake her hand,” Kecia Johnson said.
Connolly, from statements given to him by officers on hand, said that Josh Johnson became “disorderly and mouthy.” Kecia Johnson said that Josh felt disrespected and intentionally embarrassed with the accusation of forgery. The officer asked for identification and Josh, who has been in the Navy for the past year, presented his military ID. The Johnsons said that the officer snatched the ID from Josh, who then snatched it back. Connolly said that, according to one statement he received, Johnson put the ID card in the officer’s face.
The officer grabbed Josh Johnson’s arm, Kecia Johnson said, and put it behind his back.
“It went from zero to 100 that quick,” Kecia Johnson said.
(The security camera that caught the incident panned away right after the attempted handshake. The camera was not focused on the incident; the angle covered most of the north end-zone stands and happened to capture the situation in an upper corner of the shot. Connolly said the camera was “idling.”)
Kecia Johnson saw her son brushing away the officer’s handshake as her son standing up for the perceived mistreatment of his mother. She also acknowledged that her sons are growing up in a world different than the one she did, one where police have been viewed with increasing distrust after a series of publicized confrontations between African-Americans and white officers. The Johnsons are black. The officer speaking with Kecia Johnson is white.
“That’s a 19-year-old boy talking, not a 50-year-old mother talking,” Kecia Johnson said.
The supervising officer, who is black, quickly jumped in and told the officer to leave the area, which he did, and then was able to defuse the situation. At that point, the Johnsons were told that if they were going to continue to behave in that manner, they would have to leave.
Said Jordan Johnson, “We were like, we drove all the way up here, we’re having a bad time, we’re going to leave.”
On the way out, Jordan said he told the officer that he was going to be the reason that he decommitted from Tech. The officer’s response, according to Jordan, was “I don’t give a (darn) if you come here or not because I’m still going to have my job.”
Connolly’s explanation was that, essentially, recruiting was a foreign world to the officer.
Said Connolly, “The officer said, ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. How this is going to affect my job, I have no idea.’”
The Johnsons got in their car and quickly left Atlanta, stopping in Macon to visit relatives. On Sunday, Jordan Johnson sent out a tweet announcing his decommitment and gave his account to the Tech blog “From the Rumble Seat,” triggering a wave of coverage.
Connolly said the officer involved is “a stern guy, but we don’t have a history of issues with him.”
Results of investigation
Connolly opened an investigation Monday, which the Johnsons hoped would address their alleged mistreatment.
“If this wouldn’t have happened, I’d still be 100 percent Georgia Tech,” Jordan Johnson said. “I just need this problem to be fixed.”
Connolly’s investigation included interviews with Kecia and Jordan Johnson, police and dispatch officers and members of the Georgia Tech Athletic Association. He found that the situation stemmed from “a lack of clarity” about the tickets and the resulting delayed response, which he concluded led to the perception of harassment.
Further, according to the findings, the officer “allowed the family’s refusal to accept his apology escalate into a new argument.” The officer will be trained on techniques to defuse tense situations, and the department will work closely with the athletic association to review all processes dealing with guest services and recruits. While he did not find evidence of harassment, racial profiling or accusations of forgery, Connolly sent a letter to the Johnsons expressing his regrets.
Reached Saturday, Kecia Johnson sounded weary of discussing the matter. “We’ve moved on from football,” she said. “Now, we’re on to wrestling.”
On Tuesday, Jordan Johnson had a visitor to his wrestling practice at Ed White High in Jacksonville — Tech A-backs coach Lamar Owens, who recruits the area. Owens watched practice and then went to dinner with the Johnsons to Golden Corral. Owens, the Johnsons said, came to talk about the incident and to see how it could be fixed.
“I asked, ‘Well, have you pulled your scholarship offer?’” Kecia Johnson said. “He was, like, No, we haven’t.”
Both Connolly and Kecia Johnson see the incident as a teachable moment. Both agree that there should have been another conclusion.
Said Johnson, “It was avoidable.”
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