Within minutes, Kazimer was on foot in the West Terrace Apartments parking lot chasing someone in a red shirt who had turned away and ran. His partner radioed in: "In the back of the apartment, black male, red shirt, blue shorts."
Except the person Kazimer was chasing was neither a white man in his 50s nor a black male in a red shirt. It was a 4-foot-11 Hispanic teenager with Down syndrome named Juan Ortiz, scared and in search of his parents.
Little Juan Ortiz had been outside the apartment where he lived, with headphones in, listening to music from the church he and parents attended. When he spotted the police cruiser coming down Lorain Avenue, he ran toward his parents, who were sitting outside on a hot summer afternoon.
No one knows exactly why Juan took off when the police car caught his attention he can't communicate beyond a couple of Spanish words he uses and simple hand gestures, like putting his fingers near his mouth when he's hungry. But he was rushing toward them with Kazimer in pursuit.
And multiple witnesses reported that when Officer Kazimer caught up to Ortiz, just as Ortiz was reaching his parents, he slammed the 16-year-old into a car.
"Juan's parents were standing in the parking lot by his mother's vehicle," declared apartment resident Eliezer Manzano in a court filing. Manzano is Juan's nephew but is older than him, an adult. "Juan ran to his parents and stopped. He began hugging his mother when the officer grabbed Juan from behind, forcefully pulled him from his mother's arms, and slammed him very hard into her vehicle like a football player making a tackle."
That's what others reported seeing too, adding that Kazimer forced the kid's head down and handcuffed him.
Officers should have known, witnesses say, from the beginning of the chase that Juan had Down syndrome. If they couldn't see his facial features, they could have listened to Manzano, who saw Kazimer chasing him and told him about his condition, only to be told, "Shut up, get out of my way."
"As [Kazimer, chasing Juan] approached, I asked him, in English, if there was a problem. I told him that Juan was my uncle, had Down syndrome, and could not understand what the officer was saying," Manzano said. "I told the officer that I could help him. The officer responded, 'Shut up, get out of my way.'"
Manzano's story is backed up by another witness, who was on her balcony at the time: "As the officer was chasing Juan, I observed Eliezer Manzano standing outside his apartment building," she stated, again under oath. "As the officer passed Manzano, I heard him yell, 'Yo, he has Down syndrome,' but the officer did not stop chasing Juan. I then saw Manzano follow the officer. Manzano continued to yell as he followed."
If Kazimer didn't hear it from Manzano, he definitely heard it from Juan's parents, Ramon and Alma, who were right there when the officer captured their son. Alma was frantic about what she saw, yelling over and over again "my baby," one of the few English terms she knew.
"I heard one of the officers tell Juan's parents to go back to their own country if they can't speak the language here," Kennedy stated. "The officers were telling Juan's parents and other relatives to 'shut the **** up' and 'get the **** away from here.'"
Another witness a woman who was babysitting at an apartment in the complex came out on the balcony when she heard the commotion and saw "Juan's mother attempt to intervene to protect him, but the police held her back and pushed her down on the ground.
"In response, the police were screaming and using vulgar and obscene language toward Juan's parents," she said. "The language those officers used would make a sailor blush. One of those officers told Juan's mother to 'get the hell back to where she belongs.' He called her a 'Mexican *******.'"
The lawsuit also contends that in the middle of the racial slurs and threatening language, after a chase against an unarmed citizen with no connection to the crime, Kazimer said this: "You're lucky we didn't shoot him."
