‘Is This a Joke?’: Atlanta-area Police Oddly Arrest Paraplegic Atlanta Man for ‘Kicking In’ Woman’s Door and Assaulting Her Then Stand By After He Falls From Wheelchair
A metro Atlanta police department arrested a paraplegic man confined to a wheelchair after a woman with a history of lying to police accused him of kicking down her door and assaulting her.
Charles Read, who has been paralyzed for 25 years from a bullet that damaged his spine, showed up at the College Park Police Department last month hoping to clear up the false charges against him.
While trying to renew his passport earlier this year, Read says he learned that a warrant for his arrest had been issued after Katherine Jensen, a woman he had dated decades ago and hadn’t seen in 20 years, called police on June 15, 2024 and told them he had just kicked down her door, choked her, and then fled on foot after trying to steal her car keys.
Besides his physical limitations that made such actions impossible, Read was at a dinner party with friends on the night of the alleged incident, he says.
He contacted College Park Police Officer Markenley Belotte, who responded to Jensen’s crime report last year, to set the record straight. After corresponding with him via email for a few weeks, Read says he agreed to meet Belotte at the police station to complete some paperwork.
Belotte’s bodycam video shows Read’s surprise on March 20 when, as he sat in his wheelchair in the lobby of the police station, the officer approached and read him his rights, questioned the origin and extent of his paralysis, and then told him he was going to arrest him and take him to jail.
“According to Ms. Jensen, on this date, you forcefully entered her home and attacked her,” Belotte said.
“I certainly didn’t force my way into anybody’s house,” a stunned Read replied, and reiterated that he had been paralyzed from the chest down since 2000, was married, and hadn’t seen Jensen in many years. “This is crazy to me … Is this a joke?”
Impervious to his protestations, Belotte then handcuffed Read’s wrists as he warned that he had no muscle control to hold himself upright, and promptly fell out of his wheelchair onto the floor.
Belotte called for a paramedic and then stood by and talked with another officer about how to proceed with the arrest for three and a half minutes as Read lay on the floor, requesting assistance.
“They just watched me writhe on the ground,” Read told Atlanta News First (ANF).
Two officers eventually helped an exasperated Read back into his chair, who complained that he could have broken his hip or have other internal injuries and not be able to feel it.
At this point Belotte, a rookie who graduated from the police academy in October 2023, sought some advice from his superior officers.
One officer whom Belotte checked with after walking down a hallway and into another room said of Read, “It’s a ruse, man. It’s an obvious attempt not to go to jail.” He reasoned that if Read could drive and wheel himself into the police station, he could break into a house.
But another supervisor, Sgt. Harvey Dorsey seemed more concerned about the arrest in progress after getting a look at Read in his wheelchair.
“We’re gonna due our due diligence, because if you’re paralyzed, somebody must have made a mistake,” he told Read. Then, talking privately with Belotte, he said that Read’s withered legs looked similar to limbs of some of his own family members who were paralyzed, lending credence to his account.
“I would suggest calling the district attorney’s office, let them know what you got … because if the door was kicked in, he didn’t kick it in,” Dorsey told Belotte, who replied, “Because now it’s looking like she might have made a false report.”
Records obtained by ANF show that Jensen was arrested in 2023 by nearby Newnan, Georgia police for theft, forgery, and filing a false police report after telling police that Airbnb guests stole her property. This was information available to officers in a statewide database, but not mentioned in the College Park police incident report, Read’s attorney, Andrew Fleischman, said.
While talking with officers at the police station, Read repeatedly offered to provide paperwork establishing the severity and timeline of his paraplegic condition. But Belotte insisted he must transport him to the Fulton County Jail to be processed, and that Read would need to spend at least one night there until he could bond out and later plead his case to a judge.
A U.S. Justice Department investigation found last year that the Fulton County Jail is overcrowded, unsafe, unsanitary and does not provide adequate health care to its inmates, with conditions so bad they violate the Constitution and the Americans With Disabilities Act.
Read explained that as a paraplegic with severe scoliosis, he had complex medical needs, and that being put into a police car or even an ambulance without his customized wheelchair could cause him injury. He pleaded with officers to find a way to avoid or minimize his time at the jail, and to let him make his case to a judge.
“How can we do this in a way that protects my body?” he asked.
A female officer then stepped in and told Read he could come back to the police station and turn himself in at 3 a.m. to shorten his time in custody, but that nothing could be done to avoid his arrest and detention.
“I’ve never seen a case where somebody was so clearly innocent, and it would take so little work to establish it, and nobody was willing to do the work,” Fleischman said.
Last week, Jensen sent an email to a College Park police detective recanting her accusation against Read.
“My mental state and physical trauma in that moment worked to confuse me,” she wrote in the email obtained by ANF. “Please contact me… so I can edit the information in the report and clear the name of an innocent man.”
Fleischman said that a Fulton County District attorney told him this week that the arrest warrant against Read was dismissed and that the charges would be dropped by the prosecutor.
Jensen has not been arrested for filing a false police report in Read’s case, ANF reported.
The city of College Park, which Read said has not yet apologized to him, issued a statement saying it is “currently looking into this matter with care and consideration. We understand the importance of resolving this situation and appreciate your patience as we conduct a thorough investigation.”