Photo By Jymi Bolden

A Cincinnati Police officer offered his gun to Marvin Jackson (above) after squeezing himself beside Jackson on this narrow stoop.

Marvin Jackson calls the gun that Cincinnati Police Officer David Donnells offered him "a pretty python" when he tries to describe how alluring it was, how badly he wanted to take it and shoot it at the two officers taunting him.

Instead, he ran to a pay phone and called 911. The police department listened to him. An investigation by the Internal Investigation Section (IIS) sustained Jackson's allegations against Donnells, who will have a written reprimand in his personnel jacket for the next three years.

But Jackson's still upset. He's afraid to go back to District 1 -- where he lived for eight years -- to visit his friends, lest he have another run-in with the police, despite repeated reassurances from Sgt. Barry Ford.

"Sgt. Ford strongly believes that you will not be approached by police officers in your new location, so long as you maintain a socially acceptable pattern of behavior, which I know is what you want," said Sharon Mangold, executive assistant to City Manager Valerie Lemmie, in an August 2003 memo.

Jackson remains uncomforted.

"There's a bullet waiting for me, and the police got it," he says. "Next time one of them do that, I'm gonna bust a cap. I'm gonna grab that. I got no choice. Am I supposed to call the police again, or am I supposed to defend myself?"

'You ain't nothin'
Jackson asked that very question at the public forum portion of city council's April 7 meeting. Mayor Charlie Luken told him to give his information to a deputy clerk. He says he's heard nothing since.

Jackson, a 40-year-old African American, passes his days on the West side, where he moved after the lease on his Over-the-Rhine apartment was terminated. He says even in his new environment he's afraid.

The talkative, personable man suffers mental illness, and Officer Tara Newberry, the second officer at the scene on the day in question, knew it.

The IIS report says she "believed he was 'talking trash' because of his mental illness and hatred for the police."

Newberry denies hearing Donnells tell Jackson to take his gun or speaking to Jackson at all. IIS ruled his complaint against her unfounded.

"What else are you supposed to do?" Jackson says. "You can't hit them. You can't punch them. I'm trying to figure out what is the right thing to do. You gotta call the police on the police?"

Jackson knows what people say, but he says nothing's wrong with him. He says he used to take Prozac, but it made him feel "worse than I ever had in my whole life," even worse than when his first son died at age 3 from a birth defect.

"When he lost his first baby, things just went downhill," says Jackson's mother, Ora Lee Jackson. "It looked like he just give up."

Sometimes her son doesn't seem to have a mental illness and sometimes he does, she says.

"Like sometimes he maybe forget things and he says sometimes he hears voices talking to him," she says.

Jackson might have a mental illness, but he's not stupid.

"I don't attack with my hand, I attack with my mouth," he says. "I know my rights. I know how to keep from going to jail. If I'm doing something wrong, take me to jail. If I was doing a bunch of disorderly stuff, you would give me a disorderly conduct ticket. If I hit (Donnells) or even attempted to grab that gun, what would've happened to me?"

If Jackson had tried or succeeded to get Donnells' gun, "Officers Donnells and Newberry could have been forced to use force or deadly force," the IIS analysis says.

Jackson sets the scene: 80 degrees, sunny afternoon, Walnut Street. He sat on his narrow stoop smoking a Black and Mild -- "Not a blunt," he says -- and listening to the miniature boom box perched next to him.

Donnells and Newberry rode down the street on bikes. They called out his name; the way he demonstrates, it's a mocking tone.

"So I say, 'Fuck you, bitch. May your mama die,' " Jackson says.

The cops turned around. Donnells dismounted, wedged himself next to Jackson on the stoop and started flailing his arms, elbowing Jackson and saying, "Yeah, what we listening to? What we listening to?"

Jackson insulted his mother again and blew smoke in Donnells' face "to make him choke, you know, anything."

By Jackson's account, Donnells rose and said, "You ain't nothin.' You ain't nothin.' Look at your friends across the street. Tell them to come help."

Jackson did just that.

"I said, 'Any of y'all got a gun over there? Shoot this motherfucker,' " he says. "And I meant it 'cause he hit me. And everybody seen it. He elbowing me. I'm sittin' like this, couldn't move."

Donnells then shoved his hip between Jackson's legs and unfastened his gun, according to Jackson. He quotes the officer: "Be a man, take it. Here."

Newberry joined in, according to Jackson, allegedly saying, "Yeah, be a man now, take it."

Jackson says he was stuck in place.

"So I wanted to take the gun, I wanted to pull it," he says. "See how small this stoop is? I can't get up."

Jackson says Newberry continued taunting him, saying, "You ain't a man. You a boy."

Jackson shoved past Donnells and ran across the street to a pay phone to call 911. Sgt. Roger Robbins responded to the scene.

According to Jackson, Robbins said, " 'What do you want me to do?' Just basically saying, 'There's nothing I can do for you.' "

'Well, take it'
Donnells' deposition gives his account of what happened. After Jackson hollered across the street, "I'm going to shoot these motherfuckers," Donnells says he "got up, positioned himself about four feet away from Mr. Jackson, and asked, 'Marvin, do you feel like you need to take my gun?'

"Mr. Jackson replied, 'I'll take it right now and shoot you in the back.' "

Donnells admits giving a troubling response, telling Jackson, "Well, take it. If you feel like that's what you need to do today, take it."

Donnells didn't respond to a question about why he felt comfortable sitting next to Jackson after he'd shown such hostility. Donnells admitted he told Jackson to take his gun at least twice. Asked why, Donnells said, "I, in my mind, was assessing the threat."

But he didn't feel threatened.

"I knew he had some issues going on," Donnells said. "I didn't feel threatened. I didn't think he could do it, and I didn't think he would do it. I really didn't."

The IIS concluded Donnells shouldn't have tested Jackson's seriousness. Jackson should have been arrested for aggravated menacing and taken to University Hospital Psychiatric Emergency Services, according to IIS. Robbins should have made the arrest after Donnells and Newberry failed to, investigators said.

Jackson has filed at least three previous complaints against police.

In June 1999 he complained about being arrested for a robbery at Arby's in Clifton Heights, when the suspect was a long-haired white man who turned out to be a woman. While he was in jail, his car was ransacked. Jackson said no one told him the robbery charge had been dropped until he sought information to get an attorney for a court appearance.

The matter went to the Citizen Complaint Resolution Process.

"Mr. Jackson accepted the explanation of why he was arrested," according to the official record of that process. "Mr. Jackson departed the meeting with no harsh feelings towards the police division concerning this entire incident."

But that's not how Jackson recalls the process.

"They just lied at the meeting," he says. "And I'm gonna be myself, my attitude was pissed off every time I went to one of those meetings. It's always, ain't nothin' gonna happen. And they put it in they own words what the resolution was. Ain't nothin' been resolved."

Jackson later had to petition to have the robbery charge expunged. He says he didn't know it was on his record until he was nearly fired for it.

In April 2001 Jackson filed a complaint after hearing that Officer Dan Kowalski had called him a "fag" while speaking to two other people. The man to whom Kowalski allegedly spoke confirmed he'd said it, but Kowalski denied it, so the Office of Municipal Investigations ruled it an "accusation/denial incident."

In February 2002 Jackson alleged that Newberry harassed and mishandled him while arresting him for an open container of alcohol while she worked off-duty security at his apartment complex.

He again went through the complaint resolution process, which didn't end well.

"The meeting ended realizing that satisfactory resolution with Jackson could not be reached," according to the disposition.

Jackson says he's been warned he could be charged with menacing.

"You got to be careful what you say to them but they can say what they want to say to us," he says.

He has another reason to believe he'll have further trouble with police.

In March, Jackson received a letter from the Social Security Administration saying his payments had stopped while he was imprisoned in Pennsylvania on a felony conviction. But Jackson wasn't in prison and wasn't in Pennsylvania. He cleared it up, but SSA told him it has nothing to do with police records. Now he's afraid his police record shows he's supposed to be in prison.

"Every officer, when they run me through, my name will pop up for something," he says. "You would think a person would just go cuckoo crazy. I don't need to be on the cuckoo floor. Basically I just want my respect."

Lt. Kurt Byrd, spokesman for the Cincinnati Police, says he's unable to confirm Jackson's record but such things wouldn't show up unless he'd been specifically listed as an escapee. Byrd did not return calls for comment on Donnells' and Newberry's records. ©