Carrollton police Officer Don Patin was pretty sure Jason Geils was drunk when he pulled him over on December 10, 2009, for speeding down Stemmons Freeway and driving in the HOV lane without a passenger. Patin said he could smell alcohol on Geils' breath and, according to Dallas County court records, Geils had been picked up for DWI before.
Problem was, Geils wasn't exactly cooperating with the investigation. Geils refused Patin's request that he recite the alphabet, then refused to get out of the car, then refused to take any field sobriety tests, according to the The Dallas Morning News.
So, Patin took Geils down to the Carrollton police station, where he slammed the suspect's face into the wall. Geils wound up in the hospital with a mild concussion and four stitches. The whole scene was captured on surveillance video, which you can watch below.
"It just seems that officer Patin lost his cool," Geils' attorney, Scott Palmer, told NBC 5 on Thursday."He simply asked my client for his jacket," Palmer said. "Jason said, 'No, I'm not giving you my jacket.' And in one swift, deliberate, continuous act, lifted him and hurled him into a wall -- literally plowed him into a metal box on a wall."
Palmer, and Geils for that matter, were in a buoyant mood Thursday. A federal jury awarded Geils $80,000 in damages -- $5,000 more than he had requested -- in an excessive force lawsuit filed against Patin, who was sued individually and thus will have to pick up the tab. It was, Palmer told the Morning News, a "great day for justice."
Patin, who was fired in the wake of the incident, regained his job on appeal. The DWI charges filed against Geils were dismissed.
