A blind man in Arkansas sustained a back injury after being assaulted by Little Rock police who failed to identify themselves before lying about the incident.
After missing the bus from his job at Lighthouse for the Blind on June 1, Eric Wilson was walking home when he was approached by police and ordered to walk over to them.
Wilson is legally blind and says that he can only see shadows. He complied, despite not knowing if he was about to be robbed or about to be confronted with actual police officers as they did not identify themselves.
> “I could have possibly been getting robbed, or, you know, I didn’t know what was about to happen.” Wilson told [**Fox 16**](http://www.fox16.com/story/d/story/blind-man-says-he-was-injured-during-police-take-d/42181/MQdXpDtwLUuYfy_AmILeEw).
The police claim they had received a call about someone “fitting Wilson’s description” who was either running from someone, or chasing someone, and “looked scared.”
The cops then ordered Wilson to remove his hands from his pockets, to which he complied. The officers proceeded to handcuff him for no reason, leaving him standing with his hands behind his back calmly following their orders. Despite the visible compliance, one of the officers violently threw him to the ground.
But police wrote in their report that Wilson had “pulled away violently causing me to lose grip,” and that he had thrown Wilson to the ground because he was “afraid that Wilson would strike myself or my partner with the handcuff.”
The dashcam video shows those claims to have been false.
> “When they tell him to ‘come over here,’ he walked towards them,” Wilson’s attorney Reggie Koch told Fox 16. “When they tell him ‘take your hands out of your pockets,’ he takes his hands out of his pockets. What more do they want?”
After the incident, the police claimed that a “handle” was visibly sticking out of Wilson’s pocket. However, it was actually a special clock that reads the time to people who are blind.
> “Why would they throw me to the ground, if anything, you all should have been trying to help me.” Wilson stated.
Wilson ended up in the hospital where they diagnosed him with an injured lumbar. He has filed a complaint with the department.
