‘He Followed His Command’: Chicago Man Who Suffered Permanent Eye Damage After Cop Uses Taser on His Face Says He Was Trying to Protect Female Friend
The first thing you notice about 22-year-old Dominic Bradford is his right eye, where his eyelid is stitched together following four surgical procedures.
The stitches will eventually be removed, but the scars will persist. Doctors have told Bradford he may never see out of his right eye again.
“I’ll never look the same again, or feel the same again, quite frankly,” the Chicago man said. “This is what my reality is right now. I don’t wish this on my worst enemy.”
The damage to his eye came after a Robbins, Illinois, police officer struck him in the face with a Taser. It all went down on March 18 when Bradford was forced to leave a convenience store after words were exchanged with the officer, who had asked the 22-year-old to stop knocking on a glass counter inside the store.
The officer’s bodycam footage, obtained exclusively by Chicago’s ABC affiliate, tells the rest of the story.
Bradford had left the store but admitted being “frustrated, upset, being removed from an establishment for no reason.” But still, he and his friends can be seen walking to their vehicle, complying with the officer’s command.
The officer, holding a Taser in his hand, approaches the car and orders Bradford to get inside.
“Say something else. You’ve got two seconds to get in the car,” the officer is heard saying.
Bradford is suing the officer and the village of Robbins, claiming the use of force was unjustified and unprovoked.
“I’m not here to sugarcoat the fact that Dominic was angry,” said Keenan Saulter, Bradford’s attorney. “But he’s outside the store. That’s the key. He followed his command. … Police officers, quite frankly, are trained to deal with individuals who are not happy that they are being interacted with by police. That’s part of the job. That doesn’t mean police officers don’t have feelings, they do. But they’re trained to not emotionally react, particularly when they are not being placed in danger.”
After the officer approached the car with the Taser, things got heated, as Bradford’s friends came to his defense.
The officer deploys his Taser on Bradford, who then advances toward the officer.
“I was feeling a mode of protection, because I had just watched the officer push my friend away to tase me,” Bradford told ABC-7. “It was very intense, and everything was happening super fast.”
That’s when he’s hit in the face with the Taser.
Backup is called. Bradford re-emerges from the vehicle in distress.
“Look at my face. I’m in pain,” he says.
Bradford is last seen being taken by ambulance to a nearby hospital.
“It was difficult to view. My husband had to support me because, that’s our son,” Bradford’s mother, Starlet Banks, said. “To see blood on his face, his eye almost hanging out of his head, grotesque is the only way to describe it. … No mother, father, no parent should ever have to see their child in that situation.”
Robbins police defended the officer, saying Bradford “was irate and noticeably intoxicated” during their exchange. The officer remains on the force. Neither he nor Bradford was criminally charged.
“All of which was in response to the owner of the local business requesting the officer to have the individual leave the store following a prior hostile exchange,” the statement continued.
“I feel confident in saying that video does not display his proudest moment, but in that video, I watch him and his friend walk away,” Banks said. “I don’t understand why he pursued them. If he told them to leave and they left, what’s the rationale for following them to the car, engaging with them verbally? At that point, it’s like antagonistic.”