A Louisville officer told a woman he was 'coming to help' her. He kneeled on her neck.
It was finally the end of a long, rough day.
Cha’Precious Trabue, then 22, spent all day at her grandma’s house in Louisville, Kentucky’s West End trying to change her car’s radiator; shuttling back and forth to auto parts stores, she leaned on YouTube videos to figure out how to fix it.
After the sun set March 1, 2019, she used the lights on her grandmother’s Impala to illuminate the area while she worked. With her car running again, she reversed her grandma’s car into the alley so her own vehicle wasn’t blocked in.
Before leaving, she decided to change her daughter’s diaper in the back of the Impala as it sat parked in the alley. While changing the 19-month-old toddler, Louisville Metro Police Department Officer Noah Straman slowly pulled up in a police cruiser, putting on his flashing blue lights before approaching her on foot.
“Hey guys, you doing alright?” he asked her.
“Yeah, I’m changing my daughter,” Trabue responded. “Can you back up?”
Straman asked if she lived there. She told him she did.
“I was coming to help you because I figured you were broken down,” Straman explained.
That, he would tell internal affairs investigators later, was a lie, a ruse to gain Trabue’s trust. Straman believed he was in a “high-crime” neighborhood and that based on his training, “there was a good chance” Trabue was a distraction for criminal activity.
Trabue told him she had been trying to fix her car, which was parked behind the house off the alley — and she didn’t need any help changing her daughter.
She initially didn’t think too much of the interaction; an officer asked if she needed help, she said no. She had thought of becoming a police officer before and her dad was a corrections officer, so her mind did not immediately go to worst-case scenarios when she saw law enforcement.
But when the officer stayed and kept peppering her with questions, Trabue asked: “Is it a problem?”
“Kind of, yeah,” Straman responded.
“I mean, what’s the problem? I’m trying to change my daughter,” Trabue said.
“Well, we didn’t know that. You were just sitting in an alley blacked out,” the officer said.
While they spoke, a second officer, Clayton Poff, approached the driver’s side. After Trabue sat down in the driver’s seat, Poff began asking for identification. She told him he’d have to wait.
“I’m not going to wait. You don’t understand how this works,” Poff said. “You’re parked in an alley. You’re blocking a roadway.”
After giving Poff her ID, she reached into a diaper bag to resume changing her daughter. Poff then said "You're not going to be getting in bags" before grabbing her and ordering her out of the vehicle. Straman and another officer, Jasmine Collins, came to the driver-side door to help Poff pull her out.
Poff told the officers to take her to the ground, later justifying the use of force by saying she was actively resisting. However, an internal affairs investigator concluded much of the resistance he was feeling was from accidentally grabbing his fellow officer, Collins, who can be heard in body cam video footage saying “that’s my hand!” amid the struggle.
Once Trabue was on the ground, Straman pressed on her neck with his left knee while her baby cried and she pleaded for them to stop.
“Get off of my neck, please sir,” she can be heard saying in body camera footage obtained by The Louisville Courier Journal, part of the Paste BN Network. “You’re hurting my whole head.”
According to the Department of Justice, which highlighted the case in its March report on LMPD to highlight how members of the police force violate the Fourth Amendment, Straman kneeled on her neck for 30 seconds.
Shortly after Straman got off her neck, Trabue said her head hurt and became unresponsive. An ambulance was called, and Trabue was involuntarily committed to a hospital for a mental evaluation. She was charged with resisting arrest, obstructing governmental operations and obstructing a highway, though all charges were later dropped.
Straman told LMPD investigators he executed “a control technique that was taught to me” and said he was trained to “control the head.”
Under LMPD policy, "choking techniques" like neck restraints are only permitted when deadly force is authorized. According to an LMPD spokesperson, that policy has been in place since 2008.
At the time of the stop, Trabue’s brother was also in the car and refused to identify himself to officers, who handcuffed him and threatened to arrest him as a “John Doe” — an unknown person — which they said would ensure he was in jail for at least ten days.
Although officers quickly figured out that he had no warrants, they kept him handcuffed and locked up in a police cruiser for an additional 26 minutes.
Straman told investigators he could have charged the brother with not wearing a seatbelt, despite the fact that the vehicle was parked and people are not typically arrested on standalone seatbelt violations.
When Trabue’s grandmother tried to recover the diaper bag and clothes before the car was towed, Poff refused to let her get them, saying the car was part of an investigation. According to LMPD's internal affairs investigation, the high that day was 39 degrees Fahrenheit and the baby was wearing only a diaper.
Speaking on the phone to an unknown party about the arrest, Straman said Trabue and her brother were “being real donkey” and “acting donkey.” However, these statements were never investigated.
In the end, police blocked the alley with their vehicles for at least 48 minutes according to body camera footage.
“I just thought her behavior was unreasonable,” Straman told investigators about Trabue. “No normal person would act the way she was under just normal circumstances with, ya know, no real indication to not wanna deal with the police.”
Her behavior, Straman told them, made it clear that she was a danger to herself and others.
An LMPD internal affairs investigator found Straman violated four policies and Poff violated nine. However, in July 2022, then-Chief Erika Shields determined Straman violated two and Poff violated four. Poff received a ten-day suspension. Straman, who kneeled on Trabue’s neck, received eight days.
$45M in Randy Cox case: Largest settlement in US history over police misconduct reached
Their discipline came more than three years after the incident. Both officers are still members of the LMPD.
In its report on LMPD released in March, the DOJ criticized how the force routinely failed to implement meaningful consequences on officers involved in wrongdoing. They also criticized how the chief did not follow the recommendations of investigators.
The DOJ highlighted the incident that targeted Trabue to show how LMPD officers "arrest people who have not committed any crimes, citing them for offenses — such as disorderly conduct or menacing — without establishing elements of the offense."
The incident is among the most egregious examples of misconduct identified by The Courier Journal that reflect the DOJ’s criticisms of how LMPD fails to impose discipline on officers.
Justice Department report: Minneapolis Police Department uses 'unreasonable force' after George Floyd's death, Garland says
Speaking to The Courier Journal this month, Trabue, now 27, said the incident has had a huge impact on her life.
She didn’t go back to her grandmother’s house for two years, finding it too triggering.
She said she finds it hard to sleep at night and when she does sleep, she sometimes has nightmares about that night.
“I look at everything differently now,” she said.
Reach Josh Wood at jwood@courier-journal.com and on Twitter at @JWoodJourno