CNN CONNIE CHUNG TONIGHT - 1/9/03
Detroit Woman Claiming Police Brutality Speaks Out

CONNIE CHUNG, HOST: Good evening. I'm Connie Chung.
Tonight: If chopping off a woman's finger isn't police brutality, what is?

JONI GULLAS, LOST FINGER IN POLICE SCUFFLE: It was like something out of a horror movie.

ANNOUNCER: Shocking claims of police brutality: Why would a cop chop off a woman's finger?

GARY BROWN, DETROIT DEPUTY POLICE CHIEF: The department has no policies and procedures that would cause an officer to use a knife to make an arrest.

ANNOUNCER: Tonight: In her first nationally-televised interview, she tells her story to Connie.

GULLAS: No matter what you touch it hurts. I can feel right where it's cut off.

This is CONNIE CHUNG TONIGHT. Live from the CNN Broadcast Center in New York: Connie Chung.

CHUNG: Good evening.

Tonight, You're about to meet a woman who is joining us exclusively to tell of her grisly, unthinkable loss.

Imagine someone confronting you, struggling with you, and then slicing off your finger. Now imagine that your attacker was a police officer. That's what Joni Gullas says happened to her in Detroit.

GULLAS: First I thought I was getting carjacked, but it was a psycho cop instead.

CHUNG (voice-over): Joni Gullas was sitting in her van waiting for some friends to join her for a snack when a plainclothes police officer approached her car. Officer Anthony Johnson was investigating a string of burglaries in the area. He asked Gullas to get out of the car. She refused.

GULLAS: It was like something out of a horror movie. He just clocked me right in the face. And then I just looked down and saw my hand full of blood. And before I could think of anything, he was dragging me out of the car and he threw me on the ground.

CHUNG: Joni lost half of her ring finger in the struggle. Two days later, Detroit police officials gave their version of what happened when Joni Gullas was stopped.

GARY BROWN, DETROIT DEPUTY POLICE CHIEF: As a result of that stop, one officer struggled with the lady and cut her index -- not her index, but her middle ring finger, a digit of that off. It is my understanding that he was attempting to cut her sleeve off of her coat, so that he could get to her left hand and place it into a handcuff.

CHUNG: But police concede Johnson was using a personal knife and that use of a knife to make an arrest is not standard operating procedure.

BROWN: The department has no policies and procedures that would cause an officer to use a knife to make an arrest. We don't issue the knives. We don't conduct any training that would involve a knife.

CHUNG: Gullas' left arm is now in a cast and she's unable to use her left hand. She's hired an attorney and plans to sue the city of Detroit.

GULLAS: No matter what you touch it hurts, you know? Then just multiply it by 100. I can feel right where it's cut off.

CHUNG: The officer has been suspended with pay while the local prosecutor decides whether to file charges against him.

Joni Gullas and her attorney, Geoffrey Fieger, join us tonight from Detroit. Thank you for being with us.

GEOFFREY FIEGER, ATTORNEY FOR JONI GULLAS: Thanks, Connie.

CHUNG: Joni, how are you doing? I know you went through such an unbelievable ordeal. How are you?

GULLAS: I'm all right today. A little better.

CHUNG: Take me back to that night. It was 2:45 in the morning. What happened?

GULLAS: Well, I was just sitting there waiting for friends.

CHUNG: You were in a van, right?

GULLAS: Yes. Uh-huh.

And the lights came towards me and a man rushed up and a spotlight went on. And I couldn't see anything but a silhouette. And he was demanding my I.D. And so I demanded his.

CHUNG: Was he wearing a police officer's uniform?

GULLAS: No. He was plainclothes, plain car, spotlight.

And I couldn't see anything. And I just asked him to see his I.D. And he flipped his coat open and I saw silver. But I said, "That didn't mean anything to me." So, I just simply said to him, "Listen, I think I'm going to take off now." And he just punched me right in the face.

CHUNG: Well, he says what he did was, he reached in to turn off your ignition, because you had the motor running, right?

GULLAS: After he punched me in the face, he was inside, reaching in my car, to drag me out of the car by my head.

CHUNG: Oh, my goodness. What happened to your head there, Joni?

GULLAS: Well, that's where he pulled me out at.

CHUNG: He pulled you by your hair?

GULLAS: Yes.

FIEGER: He pulled her hair, Connie, out of her head. She has a large bald spot right here in the middle of her head.

CHUNG: Oh, my word.

FIEGER: And you can see it right here.

CHUNG: All right, so, he dragged you out of the car by your hair.

GULLAS: Right.

And I was on the ground. And then he jumped in my van to do whatever he was doing. And while I was trying to turn over to get back into a sitting position, he came over and jumped out and put a handcuff on this hand and then dragged me up by it. And while he was -- I assumed he was going to get the other one, but he just reached out and pulled my coat out and sliced and put me back in the handcuffs. And that's where I sat.

I didn't see anybody. There was nobody there. I just looked around and seen my hair and blood everywhere and didn't know what was going on.

CHUNG: Oh, my gosh.

GULLAS: Then, a minute later, fast after that, a uniformed car showed up. And they're the ones that told him to take the handcuffs off, because I was bleeding. I didn't even know my finger was gone until they said that.

CHUNG: And then you were taken to the hospital.

FIEGER: What's more egregious -- let me explain. And Joni might not explain this. She was kept shackled after her finger was amputated for the next 12 hours.

CHUNG: You mean in the hospital?

FIEGER: In the ambulance and in the hospital and in the police station, she was kept shackled for another, literally, Connie, almost another day.

CHUNG: You mean handcuffed and also her feet shackled? Is that what you're saying?

FIEGER: Shackled to a stretcher, shackled to the wall, shackled to the bed.

CHUNG: Oh, my goodness.

What do you hope to accomplish, Geoffrey, with this lawsuit?

FIEGER: Well, first of all, I hope to accomplish what we're doing here, alerting that -- the intolerable, barbaric, almost medieval behavior of the Detroit Police Department, which, by the way, is the No. 1 killer of private citizens of all the police departments in the United States.

There has got to be reform, Connie, within the Detroit Police department. The Detroit Police Department is virtually nonresponsive to these type of brutality incidents that have gone on for years. The prosecutions, if they ever occur, are lackadaisical. So, the only time that any justice is ever done is through the civil courts.

And, in this case, we'll bring a federal civil rights cause of action in the federal courts to adjudicate her rights.

CHUNG: Joni, what you discovered later, of course, was that your ring finger was actually severed, correct?

GULLAS: Yes.

CHUNG: And your middle finger also was injured?

GULLAS: Yes. It was cut, but they sewed -- but it wasn't -- they sewed -- stitched it up and it's there.

CHUNG: Joni, the officer, in his report, claimed that you were legally drunk and you weren't cooperating. Is there anything that you did, do you think, would have justified what he did?

GULLAS: Well, no, because, actually, the more he demanded, I think the more submissive I became, because I was terrified. I thought I was getting carjacked.

FIEGER: And that's absurd. He didn't test her. He didn't pull her over. There was no field sobriety test. There was nothing.

He came and attacked her from the very beginning, Connie. To suggest to justify amputating people's hands that subsequently, apparently, they claim they got a blood alcohol at the hospital and it was over the legal limit is nonsense. This man attacked her and then cut off her hand -- finger.

CHUNG: Absolutely.

Joni, one more question, because others might be asking this. When the officer came up to you -- and, certainly he was wearing plainclothes -- and the other officers who were with him also were wearing plainclothes.

GULLAS: I never saw any other officers. There was nobody else there that I ever saw.

CHUNG: I see. When he asked you to get out of the car, tell us why you didn't get out of the car.

GULLAS: Well, because I thought he was going to steal my car and carjack me and shoot me.

FIEGER: This was 2:00 in the morning on 8 Mile Road in Detroit, made famous by the recent Eminem movie. It's not an area where somebody who comes up in plainclothes and demands you get out of a car, you're likely to get out of the car safely. Personally, I think most people would tend to want to drive away at that point.

CHUNG: All right, thank you so much, Joni and Geoffrey. We so appreciate your being with us. We are going to talk to the police chief now. So, thank you, again, for being with us.

FIEGER: Thank you.

CHUNG: Joining me now from Detroit, police headquarters, is Chief Jerry Oliver.

Chief Oliver, thank you so much for joining us now.

JERRY OLIVER, DETROIT POLICE CHIEF: Thank you, Connie, for the opportunity.

CHUNG: All right.

What did Officer Johnson tell you and your investigators happened?

OLIVER: Well, essentially, the facts, perhaps, about some of the drama was essentially the same as was just described.

CHUNG: Well...

OLIVER: Let me hasten to say...

CHUNG: Yes, go ahead.

OLIVER: I want to quickly say that there are no policies -- I want to repeat this -- there are no policies, no procedures, no practices, no training that's given to Detroit police officers that support the conduct of this police officer in severing Mrs. Gullas' finger or cutting her sleeve.

So, this entire incident, as far as we're concerned, as the Detroit Police Department is an embarrassing situation that we have to deal with. And we are dealing with it. Unlike what was just said -- it was said that the Detroit Police Department has been unresponsive -- that is certainly not true. We have responded. Our professional accountability unit has responded. We are investigating this circumstance. We have submitted the case to the Wayne County prosecutor for any criminal charges that might be brought against this officer. And we have suspended this officer without pay from the Detroit Police Department. So, we are responsive to this circumstance. And I don't think that this is representative of the large number of men and women, the majority of the men and women of the Detroit Police Department that really go out every day and do a very, very good job in this city and, many times, in very adverse circumstances.

CHUNG: Chief Oliver, I appreciate...

OLIVER: This is a situation that is unfortunate.

CHUNG: Yes.

OLIVER: Go ahead, please.

CHUNG: Chief Oliver, I'm glad that you clarified that he was suspended without pay. We were told that he was suspended with pay.

Now, have you ever heard of anything like this before? It's really quite extraordinary that an officer is trying to cuff someone and cuts off a finger. Were you shocked yourself?

OLIVER: Well, absolutely.

I think all of us were shocked that a police officer would make that kind of decision under these circumstances as has been described. And it's not something that we train. It's not a procedural issue. And so we're left with the shock of it and the realization that we've got to deal with this issue within the organization and to rectify it.

CHUNG: Chief Oliver, this man is a nine-year veteran. And, as I understand it, there was another questionable act -- although he was cleared. And that was in '98, when he shot and killed a 79-year-old disabled woman. Are there any other incidents that you know of involving Officer Johnson?

OLIVER: Well, first of all, let me say that I joined the Detroit Police Department in February of last year with a mandate from the mayor, Mayor Kilpatrick, to help reform and to change the practices and the conduct of the Detroit Police Department.

I wasn't aware of the circumstances that happened. I've read about some of those circumstances that this particular officer were involved in. And I read about the disposition of those cases. I wasn't around to participate in those decisions. But I am here to participate in this particular decision as to how we will resolve this issue, how we will dispose of this issue.

And we will dispose of it in an attempt to regain the confidence and the respect of the Detroit citizenry and of the Detroit police officers, who work so hard to provide services every day.

CHUNG: Yes, sir.

Chief Oliver, when did you say you came on board?

OLIVER: In February of last year, the previous year, 2002.

CHUNG: I see.

So, when the Justice Department began investigating Detroit's practices, use of force, a couple of years ago, it had already begun before you got there.

OLIVER: That's correct.

CHUNG: Do you think you have a problem in a problem in your department now?

OLIVER: Well, we have, I believe, some issues that we've got to deal with.

We've identified approximately 150 areas -- let me go back and just say that the reason why the Department of Justice was asked to come into the city of Detroit by the previous mayor, Mayor Archer, Dennis Archer, was because it was clear to the community and clear to that administration that the Detroit Police Department needed reform.

I was brought in as police chief last February to do just that, with a mandate from the current mayor to do just that. There are about 150 areas having to do with use-of-force issues, the way in which we go about arresting individuals, issues having to do with prisoner housing, prisoner health, prisoner maintenance while they're in jail, issues of pursuits.

All of those issues are issues that we're dealing with within the department and we've had problems in the past. We are quickly putting those issues -- addressing those issues proactively and implementing the best practices.

CHUNG: Thank you so much. Thank you. Chief Jerry Oliver, thank you for being with us.