A Keller police officer tackled and handcuffed a 12-year-old who was playing with a Nerf gun in his neighborhood, according to a lawsuit filed by his mother.
Tiffany Paradise and her attorneys filed a lawsuit on behalf of her son against several Keller officers in the Fort Worth Division of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas on Aug. 3. Paradise is represented by Scott Palmer and James Roberts with Scott Palmer PC
Keller Police did not respond to requests for comment.
“It’s had a pretty big impact on the little boy,” Roberts said. ‘He had to go to the consultation office. He is afraid to play near him. He was a 12-year-old boy having fun around his neighborhood, and now he doesn’t want to anymore. It has, in effect, stolen its innocence.”
According to the lawsuit, Paradise’s 12-year-old son—named HW in court documents—played near his backyard in Keller with an orange and blue Nerf gun in August 2020. Unbeknownst to him, someone nearby called the police and reported seeing a Hispanic man nearby, possibly with a black gun. Keller police officer Matthew Wheeler responded to the call and went to the neighborhood.
When Wheeler arrived, he saw HW — who is white — and got out of his car and ran toward him, the suit claims. Wheeler yelled at HW to raise his hands, according to the lawsuit, and the kid dropped his toy gun. HW fell to his knees and raised his hands, the suit says, and Wheeler tackled him to the ground.
Wheeler put his knee on HW’s back — which the suit said was “clearly exaggerated” and caused HW “pain and injury” — and handcuffed the confused boy. When Wheeler was on top of HW, according to the suit, Wheeler asked him, “Why are you running, man?” to which HW replied, “I’m sorry I didn’t know you were coming for me.” Wheeler replied, “Don’t (expletively) lie to me,” the suit says.
Wheeler and two other officers, also named as defendants in the lawsuit, walked with HW to a curb and had him sit down at 6:25 p.m. the Nerf gun near HW
At 6:30 p.m., the officers read him his Miranda rights, although according to the lawsuit it would have been clear at this point that the 12-year-old child with a Nerf gun was not the Spanish man the police were looking for. Police should have released the boy immediately, but instead kept him in handcuffs for 14 minutes, the suit says.
“Police response should change depending on what they find,” Roberts said. “This is a 12-year-old boy with his arms up, on the floor, and he was scared, he was terrified.”
The boy was held in handcuffs with his legs crossed “like a hardened criminal,” until his mother arrived at 6:39 p.m., according to the suit. It wasn’t until Paradise asked to release her son from the handcuffs that he was released, she said. When Paradise arrived, HW was “scared, crying and hurt,” the suit says, and had scratches and tears on his face.
Bodycam recordings
After HW was detained by police, HW’s father called Keller cop Blake Shimanek to ask about the body-camera footage of his son’s arrest, the suit says. Shimanek told HW’s father that he watched the video and that it may be difficult for HW’s parents to watch because of Wheeler’s use of violence against their son, the suit says. Shimanek told HW’s father that he did not believe the use of force was inappropriate.
In the same month, HW was apprehended by police, Shimanek, a Keller Police Sergeant at the time, sprayed with pepper spray and arrested a father who was filming his son’s traffic stop. Marco Puente filed a lawsuit against Shimanek for excessive force, and the case received national attention.
When HW’s parents found out that Shimanek had used force against Puente, they decided they had to see the bodycam footage for themselves “because they no longer trusted Shimanek’s views on what the use of force was and wasn’t appropriate.” Shimanek was eventually convicted of official crackdown in the Puente incident and resigned from the police force in February 2021.
However, Keller police told HW’s parents that the video was no longer available. According to the indictment, the video had been destroyed. According to the indictment, it is Keller Police’s policy to retain video footage of the use of violence against minors. Keller’s police did not immediately respond to questions about their body camera retention policies.
A Keller Police Sergeant told HW’s parents in a letter that an Internal Affairs investigation found no evidence that Wheeler’s use of force was excessive. However, according to the lawsuit, the sergeant said in the letter that the internal investigation included a review of reports, calls for service and interviews, but not a review of video footage.
The lawsuit alleges that Wheeler’s use of force against HW was clearly excessive, even according to Wheeler’s own incident report. In the incident report cited in the lawsuit, Wheeler wrote that HW was “afraid but obedient” to his orders and was handcuffed without incident.
The lawsuit alleges parts of Wheeler’s report were fabricated to attempt to justify the use of force. In the report, Wheeler wrote that as he ran toward HW, the boy “dipped his right hand toward his waist on the right.” According to the suit, HW didn’t do anything like that – when Wheeler told him to get on the ground, HW put both hands in the air.
