When Akron Police Officer Thomas Shoemaker arrived at a chaotic family argument in Kenmore on a January afternoon, he encountered 24-year-old Dierra Fields and some relatives who were yelling at each other in the house’s living room.
Shoemaker’s body camera captures the scene as he enters through the front screen door behind Fields’ father. Almost immediately, he moves forward to help the father break up a brief scuffle between Fields and a relative.
The scene on camera becomes a flurry of arms and legs before the encounter ends about 12 seconds later with the father, Fields and the relative falling to the ground. Sgt. Timothy Shmigal soon arrives on the scene.
Shoemaker can be heard shouting, “Stay down.” The father remained on the floor, suffering from what police called a “medical emergency” (he would later be fine) as family members continued to yell at each other.
It was loud and tumultuous in the home, with lots of shouting back and forth. Fields wanted to wait in her car with her two kids, but Shoemaker told her she had to stay in the house or she’d be arrested. She appeared to be calm by the time the officer approached her as she leaned forward against the back of a large chair.
“You’re not under arrest, you’re being detained in handcuffs,” Shoemaker said.
He cuffed her left wrist.
“I could be detained in my car,” she said, as she had been asking.
As he stood behind the Black woman, the white officer briefly lost hold of her wrists as Fields turned her head and torso toward him to question why he was handcuffing her.
Fields told Signal Akron she thought both of her wrists were already cuffed – she didn’t intentionally pull away or know the officer would lose his grip. Shoemaker wrote days later in a use of force report that he thought Fields could flee or hit him in that moment.
The officer immediately grabbed each of her biceps from behind and pulled her in. He bent his knees, pulled Fields to his right side, sprung up and propelled the 5’3” woman in the air, slamming her face-down on the ground to his left. Or, as Shoemaker would later write, “I grabbed her shoulders, pulling down on her left shoulder and pushing on her right shoulder, causing her to fall onto the floor.”
“I just remember feeling scared,” Fields told Signal Akron about the takedown. “I’m in the home I live in, you don’t expect the police to come in and do that to you where you live. I couldn’t breath well. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling at all. It was a scary feeling. I’m not a big woman, I couldn’t have hurt him, so I just felt really defeated. Then he picks me up and pulls me out of the house. You would have thought that I assaulted him, or cussed at him. I didn’t do anything to him. I was just really confused. I was still asking a lot of questions.”
Shoemaker moved her face-down to a nearby couch and finished cuffing her. The episode was captured by Shmigal’s body camera – he stood about three feet away.
“I’m not even doing nothing,” a shocked Fields yelled. “Man, I didn’t even do anything… You know damn well I didn’t do shit. Why did you just slam me like that?”
The officer pulled her out the front door of the house to an APD SUV, uncuffed her, and placed her in the back seat of the vehicle.
Attorney: Resisting charge helps account for, validate the use of force
Akron attorney Imokhai Okolo called what happened next “collusion” by the police “to figure out how to cover their ass.” Shoemaker, after talking with his sergeant, cited Fields for a single charge of resisting arrest and released her.
“That’s a pure CYA [cover your ass] conversation,” Okolo, Fields’ defense attorney, said. “‘I just body slammed this woman on two body cameras.… How do I justify this extreme level of force I just used on this woman if I don’t have anything valid?’”
The incident police responded to was a family argument that should not have resulted in an arrest, Okolo said. The charge alone means Fields, a single mother of two with no prior criminal record, is no longer able to drive for Doordash — the company booted her off its platform.
“How many of us have argued with family members at home?” Okolo said. “Absent the body slam, there’s no reason for these police officers to have to do all this paperwork and make this a bigger deal than it needs to be. But because you have used physical force on an individual, that makes this a serious situation and now you have to adequately account for this situation. And if you can’t, that’s a problem for [the officer], that’s a problem for the department, that’s a problem for the city.”
The January incident was not the first time Shoemaker was recorded using force on a Black person in Akron.
In 2022 during the protests following Jayland Walker’s killing, Shoemaker was caught on video throwing uppercut punches to the face of activist Michael Harris, who was bent over and restrained by other officers. Shoemaker was a defendant in the federal civil rights lawsuit the City of Akron settled for $747,000 in February.
City of Akron prosecutors are pursuing the charge against Fields in the Akron Municipal Court. A trial is set for April 25, and Fields wants to clear her name.
“I take pride in who I am as a person,” she told Signal Akron about why she wants to go to trial, shortly after she rejected a plea deal on March 27. “Of course when something is not true, you don’t want that to be put on you in any way. I take my career, schooling, everything like that very seriously. I have two children. It’s not just me that this affects.”
Okolo said prosecutors recently offered a deal where Fields would plead to a single disorderly conduct charge, which would then be sealed.
But when Fields rejected the deal late last month, prosecutors tacked on an additional obstructing official business charge to the original resisting arrest charge. In a March 27 affidavit, Shoemaker wrote the probable cause for the new charge was that Fields “repeatedly interfered with an investigation into a domestic incident.”
Okolo said prosecutors had previously agreed to drop the case against Fields if she agreed not to sue, “which is unethical, in my opinion.”
The only reason prosecutors are pursuing any charge at all against Fields, he said, is to avoid or reduce any civil liability the city would face from Shoemaker’s use of force against her. They care more about protecting police than protecting justice, Okolo said.
“One hundred percent there’s no charge” against Fields if Shoemaker hadn’t body slammed her, he said. “One of the ways you can beat an excessive force case on the civil side is to claim that they resisted arrest.”
He pointed out the Supreme Court’s ruling in Heck v. Humphrey, which declared that people convicted of certain crimes can’t file civil lawsuits against police officers if the claim implies their criminal conviction is invalid.
That case was among the reasons U.S. District Court Judge Sara Lioi recently dismissed a federal excessive force lawsuit filed by a Copley man who had snow shoved in his face, nose and mouth by an Akron police officer during a 2021 arrest. Because the man pleaded no contest in Akron Municipal Court to a resisting arrest charge from the same incident, the judge tossed his lawsuit against the city.
“That’s the purpose of why the prosecutor’s office does this,” Okolo said. Simply put, he said they want a conviction of something, either through a plea deal or trial, to avoid getting sued.
Okolo called out Akron Mayor Shammas Malik, who oversees the police department that used force on and arrested Fields, and the law department that is prosecuting her.
“Is this the vision of [Malik’s] Together For Akron? Is this the vision of the law director when she submitted her application? The head of the criminal division, is this his vision of justice? It can’t possibly be – so what are we doing here? Is what happened to Dierra protecting the community from criminal activity?”
Police find incident ‘objectively reasonable’
Signal Akron reached out to the mayor’s spokesperson with a detailed list of questions for the prosecutor’s office. Though prosecutors didn’t respond to the questions, Malik responded with a long statement and released more body cam footage from the incident than Okolo originally provided to Signal Akron.
The videos, he said, “depict a chaotic and stressful scene. The use of force is hard to watch.”
Malik said, “Akron Police Department supervisors and the Office of Professional Standards reviewed the use of force, per established procedure. Their review found the use of force to be reasonable and within policy in the context of the situation.”
Signal Akron obtained files detailing how police investigated the incident, including the initial incident report written by Shoemaker, the officer’s more detailed use-of-force report, and records of the internal investigation that cleared Shoemaker.
In his initial incident report immediately following the encounter, Shoemaker omitted that he slammed Fields to the ground: “Officers attempted to detain Dierra in handcuffs due of her aggressiveness towards [her relative] and her desire to leave the scene. She pulled away from officers and was arrested for Resisting arrest.”
Four days later, in a use of force report, Shoemaker elaborated:
I determined Dierra’s continued aggressive behavior towards [her relative] and her repeated statements that she wanted to leave, it would be best if she were detained in handcuffs and placed in a cruiser. I stepped behind Dierra and advised her she was going to be detained for investigative purposes, and that she was not under arrest. I placed a handcuff on her left wrist when she suddenly pulled her right hand away and turned towards me. In the past, I have personally had multiple people pull away and turn in a manner similar to Dierra. The individuals that acted in this manner have attempted to hit me and/or flee. Based on Dierra’s actions coupled with my prior experiences, I decided to take Dierra to the ground to finish handcuffing her. I grabbed her shoulders, pulling down on her left shoulder and pushing on her right shoulder, causing her to fall onto the floor. Once on the floor, I placed her on the couch facedown where I finished cuffing her. Dierra was escorted to a cruiser without further incident.
Sgt. Jason Belacic conducted the department’s internal investigation of the use of force. He found the takedown “objectively reasonable” and praised Shoemaker.
“I believe that Officer Shoemaker’s actions were not only justified, but reserved as well,” Belacic concluded. “It would have been very easy for someone in the same situation to lose their patience and react in a way that would reflect poorly on the Akron Police Department.”
Belacic was a defendant in a federal use of force lawsuit in 2011, accused of illegally entering a woman’s home and roughing up a woman whom police would cite with obstructing official business. The claims against Belacic were dismissed after the plaintiff’s attorney missed the two-year statute of limitations.
Results of internal review will go to new independent police auditor
Malik, in his statement, said results of the APD’s internal review of the use of force against Fields were sent to Independent Police Auditor Anthony Finnell on April 2. FInnell, he said, also requested body camera footage from the incident.
Finnell was offered the role of the city’s first independent police auditor by the new Citizens’ Police Oversight Board on March 15. At the CPOB meeting last week, Finnell said he’s been provided with 170 use of force reports since he started the job on March 25.
The CPOB, which was created after Akron voters overwhelmingly voted for it in November 2022 in the wake of Jayland Walker’s killing, recently had its first set of rules approved by Akron City Council. In December, after Akron’s Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7 – the police union – objected to the CPOB’s desire to conduct investigations into use of force at the same time as the APD, City Council rejected the board’s initial rules proposal.
Less authoritative, FOP-sanctioned rules were approved by City Council in February, dictating that the CPOB can review the APD’s use of force only after the department’s internal investigations are completed.
The next step, Malik said in the statement, is for the auditor to review the incident and provide his analysis to the CPOB. “The board will then have an opportunity to weigh in on the incident and the use of force and share any findings or recommendations with my administration and the police department.”
Akron Mayor hopes CPOB’s input will lead to “robust community discussion”
Malik, who helped write the Issue 10 amendment that created the board, said he wanted to “see this process play out and work as it was intended.” He said he hopes the board’s input and feedback on the incident involving Fields “will help facilitate a robust community discussion about what we want to see from policing here in Akron.”
He said his administration is “committed to accountability and transparency” and “will continue to share developments around policy and culture change in the weeks, months, and years ahead.”
Because of the auditor’s review and the pending criminal charges against Fields, he said his comments on the incident will remain limited for now. “I anticipate sharing more of my own perspective once the auditor’s review has been completed and the criminal case is completed,” he said.
Though the CPOB can’t intervene directly in the criminal case or recommend changes in the charges against Fields, it could determine that the APD internal review that cleared Shoemaker of wrongdoing was incorrect.
In the meantime, Fields just wants to be vindicated at trial, which Okolo said is scheduled for April 25.
“This has left me in an unimaginable position,” she said. “I have been relieved from DoorDash because of this arrest. I have been denied housing because of the arrest… I’m living off a prayer – I really don’t have the resources, the time, to do this. But I have to.”