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Celebrants claim cop brutality

Baby shower turns violent

Dionne Whitaker describes how she and her daughter, Adima Davis, were maced by police during a baby shower. (Yong Kim / Daily News)
Dionne Whitaker describes how she and her daughter, Adima Davis, were maced by police during a baby shower. (Yong Kim / Daily News)Read more

ADIMA DAVIS is barely a toddler and already she knows what it feels like to get maced in the face.

"Mommy, it burn," Adima, 1 1/2, said yesterday as her mom, Dionne Whitaker, recounted a violent encounter with Philadelphia police over the weekend.

Whitaker, 28, said she and her daughter had been at an outdoor baby shower in North Philadelphia when a narcotics officer rushed into the yard, igniting a police "riot" that injured at least six people, including two little kids and women who were maced, struck with batons and pushed to the ground, according to witnesses.

Adima, who still had a little lump near her left eye yesterday, was treated for a head injury at Episcopal Hospital, medical records show.

The police Internal Affairs Bureau and the city's Police Advisory Commission are investigating the incident.

"These guys were totally out of control. They were worse than any thugs that I've seen," said Joseph Williams, 47, whose nephew is the father of the soon-to-be-born baby. "It was like back in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, when Martin Luther King Jr. was marching . . . Women and children were maced and beaten. Kids are crying and these cops were laughing."

Two officers on the scene - Thomas Schaffling and Sean Bascom - were linked to the May 5 police beating of three shooting suspects. That incident was captured by a Fox 29 news helicopter and broadcast around the world.

In the Fox video, Schaffling, a member of the elite Narcotics Strike Force, is seen pulling driver Brian Hall out of a car. Schaffling acknowledged afterward that he had "utilized foot strikes" on Hall in an attempt to subdue him, police documents show.

Bascom struck a suspect in the head, face and collarbone during the May incident, an Internal Affairs investigation concluded.

At the time, Schaffling and Bascom were partners assigned to Squad B of the Strike Force.

Schaffling was not disciplined in connection with the videotaped beating. Bascom, one of eight officers disciplined, was suspended for five days by Commissioner Charles Ramsey.

At a May 19 news conference, Ramsey said Bascom would be transferred.

But he and Schaffling were merely transferred from Squad B of the Strike Force to Squad D of the Strike Force, police records show.

Ramsey did not return a phone call from the Daily News last night.

Lt. Kevin Long of Internal Affairs said Schaffling and another officer on the Narcotics Strike Force, Timothy Devlin, filed the required Use-of-Force report in connection with two arrests made on the night of the baby shower. Long said that the internal investigation is in its early stages and that the details of what happened that evening were still unclear.

Police have said that the officers were chasing a drug suspect who ran through the yard where the baby shower was being held, but those at the celebration said that the suspect had not cut through the yard and that police had mistakenly arrested a relative who had just arrived at the shower with a gift in hand.

Schaffling, Bascom and Devlin could not be reached for comment. Capt. Verdell Johnson of the Strike Force declined comment last night.

John McNesby, president of Lodge 5 of the Fraternal Order of Police, said that he was unfamiliar with the baby-shower incident but that Schaffling and the other Strike Force members are hard-working officers who are the best of the best.

"I know all them guys to be good cops," McNesby said.

"The Strike Force is the go-to unit," he added. "They get the guns off the street, they get the drugs off the street, they are out there aggressively fighting crime and you're going to have complaints . . . Police officers have a right to use force. You're dealing with people who don't want to be arrested."

McNesby cautioned that complaints filed by citizens against officers are mere accusations.

But William Johnson, executive director of the Police Advisory Commission, a city-funded watchdog agency, said the accusations in the baby-shower case were troubling. Johnson said "quite a number of people" at the shower came to the commission's Center City headquarters to file complaints.

"Some of the allegations seem very serious, and we want to take a thorough look at the matter and determined what went on," Johnson said.

What went on, citizens allege, was that a bunch of rogue narcotics cops unleashed a fury on some working-class folks enjoying what should have been a happy occasion.

Joseph Williams, the uncle of the baby's father, said he watched the incident unfold in horror and called 9-1-1 for help.

Williams is the block captain of the 2400 block of West Master Street, a block that sits as an oasis in crime-ridden North Philadelphia. On the afternoon of the shower, the Rev. Albertis Ford, of the Faith Tabernacle Church of God, had the block closed off for his annual "Feed My Sheep" event, in which his family serves free food to community members. As he dished out potato salad and slices of ham, people began to gather across the street at the home of Matthew and Lorna Peterson for the shower.

The Peterson home is an inviting place. A Winnie the Pooh flag that reads "Welcome" is posted above the front door. The once- trash-strewn, abandoned lot next to their home has been turned into a garden with rows of flowers and vegetables. The fenced-in grassy lot, with its swing set and miniature basketball hoop, has always been a place for neighborhood kids to play. It seemed the perfect spot for a baby shower - or so the Petersons thought.

Lorna Peterson's daughter Lacrecia Tindley, 30, who is nine months pregnant, was just about to open her gifts when Schaffling allegedly ran into the yard, grabbed Tindley's brother, Jamar Stroman, 24, pressed a baton across his neck and dragged him out of the yard. Relatives said they had followed Schaffling to ask why Stroman was being arrested.

Witnesses said Schaffling then took out his gun and screamed obscenities as he told everyone to get back. He called for back-up officers and placed Stroman in a squad car. Then Schaffling took out a metal baton and began to swing it into the crowd, striking several people, witnesses said.

Tindley's older sister, Monique Tindley, 32, told the Daily News that she had been struck with the baton while trying to enter her house. Yesterday, she displayed baseball-sized bruises on her arms.

An officer in another squad car pulled up and bumped Dionne Whitaker, who was holding Adima in her arms, with his car while she was crossing the street, witnesses said. When that officer got out of the car, Whitaker complained to him that he had struck her leg with the squad car. The officer then said, "F--- you!" and sprayed her with mace, she said.

Whitaker said that she fell to the ground and that her daughter smacked her head on the pavement. She said that when the officer sprayed the mace, some of it splattered on her daughter's face and she began to scream.

Rev. Ford said he had been sitting on his front stoop when he heard the screaming.

Witnesses said Andre Williams and his 4-year-old son, Ahssan, were walking down the street while the incident was unfolding. Trying to protect his son, Williams chided Schaffling, telling him to be careful of his son while wielding his baton, witnesses said.

Schaffling and other officers allegedly beat Williams, who fell to the ground on top of his son, who was buried under his father and several officers, witnesses said. Ahssan has a bruise on his forehead and leg, according to his grandmother, Kim Goodwin.

"He was really traumatized," Goodwin said. "Every time he heard a police siren, he just screamed and screamed and screamed and said, 'Where's my dad?' "

His father was arrested by Officer Devlin and charged with aggravated assault, simple assault, resisting arrest and hindering apprehension.

Meanwhile, Stroman, the other man arrested at the baby shower, had not been charged in the incident as of last night, but remained in custody. *