THREE ERIE MEN SAY THEY WERE INJURED DURING ARRESTS CONDUCTED BY PATROLMAN JOSHUA ALLISON.

Raimond Hansbrew sees the scar along his hairline every time he looks in a mirror.

It’s a painful reminder of an encounter he had with Erie police in May 2018.

It’s a reminder of the legal battle still ahead, too.

Hansbrew, 40, is one of three city residents who in just over six months have filed excessive force lawsuits in federal court against a single Erie police officer, Patrolman Joshua Allison.

The Erie Times-News reported on the first of the lawsuits in December.

The most recent lawsuit arrived in federal court on June 8, just over a week after Erie police came under increased scrutiny because of a viral video that showed an officer kicking a seated protester in downtown Erie late on May 30.

That officer, whom city officials have declined to name, later received three days unpaid suspension, but an internal investigation found his actions were technically justified under the Erie Bureau of Police’s use of force policy.

The violence that took over downtown on May 30 came hours after a peaceful protest in memory of George Floyd, a Black man whose death at the hands of Minneapolis police on May 25 sparked a national reckoning over the role of police in America.

The three lawsuits filed against Allison raise new questions about how police use force in the city of Erie.

The Erie Times-News identified the lawsuits in U.S. District Court in Erie and last week spoke with each of the plaintiffs about their claims against Allison and the Erie police. Allison did not return a message seeking comment for this article.

Here are the plaintiffs’ stories, according to the interviews, the lawsuits and other legal documents:

Hansbrew’s lawsuit

Hansbrew’s complaint dates back to May 14, 2018, when police responded to his home in the 500 block of East 22nd Street for a domestic disturbance.

A criminal complaint filed against Hansbrew after the incident corroborates some details in the suit. Other details differ substantially.

Hansbrew claims he complied with the two officers who arrived at his home. The criminal complaint, written by Allison, claims Hansbrew seemed intoxicated and screamed obscenities at the officers, which led the officers to arrest him.

As the officers tried to arrest Hansbrew, they took him to the ground. The criminal complaint alleges that Hansbrew refused to give his hand to one of the officers and repeatedly reached toward his waistline “despite multiple requests to stop resisting.”

“During the encounter the fact that the defendant refused to comply with lawful commands and the defendant’s level of physical resistance, both (the other officer) and I were placed in fear for our safety,” Allison wrote.

Hansbrew says that’s an exaggeration and that he was complying with the officers’ orders.

“You can comply with them and do whatever they ask or whatever,” he said in an interview with the Erie Times-News. “At the end of the day, they’re still going to figure out how to say, ‘Stop resisting.’”

Hansbrew in his lawsuit claims that he suffered serious injuries to his head when he was slammed to the ground onto large pieces of gravel during the arrest.

His lawsuit also claims that once the officers brought him to the Erie police station to be booked, the situation got worse. He said Allison began shouting at him, and he turned to shout back.

“We’re in each other’s faces like two wrestlers or something, just yelling,” he said. Then, he claimed in the lawsuit, Allison slammed his head into a cement wall.

Hansbrew told the Erie Times-News he believes he lost consciousness. He awoke in a holding cell to find his head bleeding, he said.

Hansbrew said he had to ask for medical care repeatedly. Police finally took him to UPMC Hamot, he said, where he received 20 stitches to his head.

Allison describes the interaction differently in the criminal complaint he filed against Hansbrew.

As Hansbrew was shouting during the booking process, he “was close enough that small droplets of spit exited his mouth and landed on my face,” Allison wrote.

“Believing the defendant was going to continue spitting or head butt me, I placed an open hand on the defendant’s face and placed his head against the wall.”

Police charged Hansbrew with aggravated assault, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct in the incident. The most serious charges, felony counts of aggravated assault, were dropped when Hansbrew agreed to waive his preliminary hearing in June 2018.

He pleaded guilty in September 2018 to resisting arrest and received six months of probation.

Hansbrew said the scar at his hairline is a lingering reminder of the violent arrest. There have been lasting psychological effects, too, he said.

“I think I got PTSD,” he said. He fears police when they drive by, he said, even if he’s not doing anything wrong.

“I’m not the same me,” he said. “I know I ain’t like I used to be.”

Hansbrew filed his federal lawsuit without a lawyer, but has retained Erie lawyer Charles Sunwabe, who said he will represent Hansbrew in the case.

Hansbrew said he hopes the suit brings accountability. He knows and likes some police officers, he said, but feels police who abuse their power give the rest of the force a bad reputation.

“It’s not like I hate all police, but get the bad ones out of there,” he said. “If y’all ever want to be cool with the community, you can’t hide these guys.”

Anthony Dabrowski’s lawsuit

Anthony Dabrowski, 34, filed the third and most recent excessive force lawsuit naming Allison. He claims that about a half dozen Erie police officers beat him during an arrest on July 8, 2018.

Dabrowski called the police as he was walking by the Erie County work-release center, on East 16th Street, because he saw a van in the parking lot that he believed to have been stolen from a friend of his.

Charging documents that were later filed against Dabrowski confirm police responded to the area because he called in a report of a stolen van.

Dabrowski in his lawsuit claims that police questioned him about why he was in the area and that one officer punched Dabrowski in the face when Dabrowski reached into his pocket to retrieve his ID.

Police said the van had not been reported stolen.

Dabrowski claims that he began walking away, then turned back and told the officers that he would “never call the police again for anything.”

The criminal complaint later filed against Dabrowski alleges he shouted obscenities as he walked back toward the officers. Allison, who filed the criminal complaint, wrote that he decided to arrest Dabrowski because Dabrowski was shouting curse words and a family was on a porch outside a nearby residence.

The officers then approached Dabrowski to arrest him, according to the lawsuit.

“I put my hands behind my back to comply with their demands,” Dabrowski wrote in his lawsuit. “Then, the officer applying the handcuffs shouted to the other officers that I was resisting arrest. Next thing I knew, I was pinned to the ground and attacked by six officers.”

In an interview with the Erie Times-News, Dabrowski said the officers “peeled me up onto my left, exposing my right side, my right ribs.”

Another police officer “came up and kicked me three times in my ribs, and immediately I just started screaming,” he said.

Dabrowski doesn’t know which officer kicked him. But he knows Allison was involved in the incident, because Allison filed the charging documents against him.

In the criminal complaint against Dabrowski, Allison described the incident differently.

“The defendant refused to provide his hands to the officers while tensing, bracing and thrashing,” he wrote. “Five officers were required in order to subdue the defendant.”

Police filed charges of resisting arrest and disorderly conduct against Dabrowski, though the charges were reduced in court a month later. Dabrowski ultimately pleaded guilty to a summary count of harassment.

Dabrowski claims that he asked to go to the hospital after the arrest, but police refused. After his release, he wrote in the lawsuit, he went to UPMC Hamot and learned he had two fractured ribs.

“I want them exposed,” Dabrowski said of the officers. “They should not represent anybody, let alone our city.”

Davaughn Tate-Johnson’s lawsuit

Davaughn Tate-Johnson sued Allison in December.

Tate-Johnson, 31, claims in his lawsuit that Allison punched him three times as two other officers were holding Tate-Johnson’s arms behind his back during an arrest in January 2019.

“Officer Allison punched Mr. Tate-Johnson three times in his stomach in quick succession, while Mr. Tate-Johnson stood restrained by the other two officers unable to move or shield his body from the blows,” Tate-Johnson’s lawyer, John Mizner, wrote in the complaint.

According to the criminal complaint police later filed against Tate-Johnson, officers responded to East 26th and Elm streets at about 2:49 a.m. on Jan. 4, 2019, for a report of a burgundy Chevrolet Suburban driving at high speed.

The officers who responded located a vehicle matching that description with no headlights on at a red light at East 26th Street and East Avenue, police wrote in the complaint.

Police wrote that there was a strong odor of marijuana and alcohol coming from the vehicle and that Tate-Johnson had bloodshot eyes and refused to step out of his vehicle.

Police also wrote that Tate-Johnson continued reaching for his waistband until officers had to “pry his hand” to place him in handcuffs, and that Tate-Johnson kicked his legs when police tried to search him and attempted to crawl under the vehicle to resist complying with the officers.

Mizner wrote in the lawsuit that video taken by a witness disproved the officers’ claims, and that Tate-Johnson refused to exit his vehicle because he feared for his safety.

Tate faced charges related to the arrest. He pleaded guilty in February 2019 to a misdemeanor count of possession of drug paraphernalia and summary counts of disorderly conduct and compliance with a police order.

Other charges, including resisting arrest and driving under the influence, were withdrawn when Tate entered the plea, according to court records.

In a response to the lawsuit filed in January, Allison’s lawyer wrote that Tate-Johnson was “argumentative, combative and non-compliant.”

“Because Mr. Tate-Johnson refused to comply with officer commands and continued to struggle with officers who were attempting to gain control over him, Defendant Officer Allison utilized two-three control strikes to Mr. Tate-Johnson’s midsection, which, in conjunction with the efforts of the other officers, allowed the Erie police to gain control over Mr. Tate-Johnson,” the lawyer wrote.

In an interview with the Erie Times-News, Tate-Johnson said he kept his hands on the steering wheel of his vehicle because he did not want the officers to claim he was reaching for something.

“The wrong move gets you killed,” Tate-Johnson said. “So I wasn’t trying to make the wrong move.”

Tate-Johnson, who said he has an associate degree in criminal justice from what was formerly called the Tri-State Business Institute, wants officers to start wearing body cameras.

That process is underway. The city in late May announced it had chosen an Arizona-based company to equip Erie police officers with body cameras.

“It’s just not saving me, it’s saving them, also,” Tate-Johnson said. “It works hand in hand. I think if they would have had body cameras that night it would have never happened.”

City’s response

Allison joined the Erie Bureau of Police in 2015.

On the day of his swearing-in, the Erie Times-News reported he had most recently served as an Edinboro University of Pennsylvania police officer and had previously worked as a law enforcement officer for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

In 2017, Allison and another officer were awarded the City of Erie Combat Cross and received commendations for their actions during a January 2017 incident in which a city man was shot by the officers after he fired numerous gunshots at them on the grounds of the Pennsylvania Soldiers’ & Sailors’ Home. The man, Deandre R. Tate, survived the shooting and is now serving 25 to 50 years in state prison for crimes including attempted homicide.

City Solicitor Ed Betza declined to discuss the pending litigation against Allison.

In general, he said, police officers report their uses of force internally, so the city should be aware of any incidents involving force before a lawsuit is filed.

When officers are sued individually, Betza said, they typically receive legal representation through the city’s insurance carrier. Any settlements reached as part of the lawsuits would also be covered by the insurer, Betza said.

Allison has not yet been served with Hansbrew’s or Dabrowski’s lawsuits. In Tate-Johnson’s case, Erie lawyer Patrick Carey is representing Allison on behalf of the city’s insurer. Carey could not be reached for comment Friday.

Erie police Inspector Mark Sanders, of the bureau’s Office of Professional Standards, also declined to discuss the cases against Allison.

He said an officer being sued repeatedly doesn’t necessarily mean there is a problem.

“Some officers are more active,” Sanders said. “Some, because of their assignment, are more exposed to cases like that.”

The existence of multiple lawsuits doesn’t prove an officer has acted improperly, he said.

Betza agreed.

“We don’t make decisions based on how often somebody is sued,” Betza said. “We make decisions based on the actions of the individual.”

Original Article By: Madeleine O’Neill at moneill@timesnews.com. Follow her on Twitter @ETNoneill.