One of the KPD officers involved in the shooting of Juan Lorenzo Daniels is the subject of two excessive force lawsuits

by Betty Bean

The predominantly African American crowd at last week's City Council meeting turned out early and just kept coming, despite the pre-election foolishness of moving the peoples' business out to the Whittle Springs Middle School auditorium. An elderly white woman hung back from the entrance, and when County Commissioner Diane Jordan arrived, the woman began to cry.

"I want to tell you what happened to my family," she said.

Pauline Woods told a harrowing tale, which she later repeated publicly, about a Knoxville police officer whom she called Bobby Solomon. She said he answered a domestic disturbance call at her home Nov. 11, 1995, and manhandled her husband, a 74-year-old cancer patient. She said Solomon cursed her, held a piece of a toy gun he'd found in her husband's car to her head and told her the toy could cause her to get her head blown off. Her son, Charles, was arrested, charged and convicted of public drunkenness, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest after he came to the defense of his parents. The Woodses have filed an excessive force lawsuit against Solomon.

This officer is Robert Solomon, the "veteran negotiator" who was involved in the Oct. 17 shooting of Juan Lorenzo Daniels. Daniels, who had a police record, allegedly lunged at officers with a knife.

Solomon also faces a January trial date in federal court where he has been sued for false arrest and excessive force by five members of the family of John W. Schubert Jr.

The suit says Solomon and another officer came to their Buffat Mill Road home Feb. 26, 1995 to take custody of 13-year-old John Christopher Earl Schubert. John W. Schubert Jr. said they had misconstrued the document they were carrying, but when he stepped into his kitchen to find his custody order, the officers entered his home without permission.

The father tried explaining that their document "was merely a guardianship instrument designed to enable the child to reside on a temporary basis with another person for the purpose of attending school in a different district." Their order gave guardianship of the child to his grandfather, who was apparently disputing the father's custody rights. The suit says "the officers insisted that they be permitted to search the home and take possession of the child."

Meanwhile, a 4-year-old, John W. Schubert III, came to the head of the stairs on the second-floor "and the officers believed that was the child they were looking for."

Solomon, the suit says, "announced his intention to proceed upstairs and take possession of the child. Mr. Schubert insisted that if the officers were going to search his home, they would have to obtain a search warrant and that they did not have permission to be in his house..."

At that point, the suit says, he was "...beaten severely ... with the officers' fists, nightstick, flashlights and other instruments..." and charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.

The 13-year-old they were looking for came out of his second-floor bedroom to talk to the officers.

"Before the child could so much as speak to the officers, the assault occurred and continued to the point where all the children observed their father forced to the floor, beaten until he was bloody and arrested before their eyes."

The suit also says Solomon and the other officer "shouted and screamed at all those present in the house, made baseless and groundless accusations and threatened to take Rita Schubert (John Schubert Jr.'s wife) and the children to jail and deprive the parents of custody of all the children..."

Solomon's attorney Dennis Francis had no comment. The Schuberts are represented by Maryville lawyer Joseph Costner, who earlier this year won a substantial judgment against the city of Knoxville in behalf of a homeless man who was beaten by police in a shopping center parking lot.

Costner says all charges against Schubert were dropped.

"This was the case of a teenager in his father's house and he wanted to be there. And you can't charge somebody with disorderly conduct in their own home."