Louisiana family fears police retaliation while attempting to file a complaint against officer

ABBEVILLE, La. (KLFY) — An Abbeville family wants to file a complaint against a police officer but has been unsuccessful. They say now they are feeling unsafe.

The use of force this family is filing a complaint over was all captured on camera. In the video, you can see two officers tackling a man to the ground.

“All I know is the other police come from behind, grabbed me with a chokehold, and I’m just looking at the sky. I don’t know know what’s going on after that, and I’m face-first on the ground, knees planted in my back. I’m like, ‘What’s going on? What’s the occasion for this? No one’s committed a crime over here,'” Fenery, who did not want his last name published, said.

Fenery and his wife, Maureen, say the incident happened Saturday. They say their 16-year-old son was outside their home on a motorbike when a police officer started questioning him.

“I told the police officer, I was like, ‘I’m his mother.’ I was like, ‘What’s going on? He started hollering at me and really getting aggressive with me,” Maureen said.

The nervous mother says the officer told them he was searching for a white suspect on a motorcycle. She says she was confused, as her son is black, and the officer was becoming increasingly angry. She yelled for her husband to come outside.

“So I come off the porch and I’m asking him, ‘What’s going on?’ He says, ‘I’m tired of this such and such, such and such. We’re looking for a certain individual.’ Well I’m like, ‘He’s not here. Why are you aggressive with my son?’ I said, ‘I’m not going to let you touch him.’ He says, ‘You not going to do nothing,’ then he grabbed me, turned me around, so I put my hands behind me back,” Fenery said.

“They twisted [my son’s] father’s arm and body, slammed him to the ground, and injured him,” Maureen added.

The couple says they planned to file a complaint against the officer, who they believed initiated the alleged assault. However, a few days later, the officer came to their house again and attempted to convince them not to file a report, according to the family.

“The police officer came to our home too. So that’s another harassment because he shouldn’t have came to our home again stopping us from going,” Maureen told News Ten.

They say they’re now afraid of retaliation, as they pursue a complaint against the officer.

“Something needs to me done. I’m hurting, and this shouldn’t have been called for,” Fenery said.

News Ten did reach out to Abbeville police and was told by Lt. Touchet they are looking into it and cannot make a comment at this time.

The couple went to the police department today to file the complaint in person but say they were refused the proper forms by the same officer they want to report.