Explosive Allegations
Brantley, a long jumper and a sprinter who hopes to play football one day, was all worked up when The Trentonian initially encountered him in the front office of his high school.
His grandmother and assistant principal tried to calm him down after he said he overheard two teachers ridiculing him for “resisting,” a conclusion they came to from viewing video of the arrest inside the lunchroom.
Brantley said the teachers claimed that he “got what I deserved.”
What they didn’t know was that a cop allegedly used a racial slur to demean Brantley’s friends while he was handcuffed in the back of police cruiser being driven to headquarters.
“As we’re driving, approaching the police station, he says, ‘Tell your n ***** friends to get out the way.’ Something like that. I’m like wow. I didn’t say nothing to that. He definitely used ‘n ***** ,’” Brantley said.
While being escorted inside the facility, Brantley claimed officers intentionally scared him by claiming they were going “kill” him.
“One of them, I don’t know which one it was, was like, ‘We should just kill him and get him out the way.’ In the back of my mind, I’m like, ‘I’m not complying no more. They’re about to kill me.’ … They could just shoot me and dump my body somewhere.”
Once inside, Brantley said, an officer took him into another room when he refused to provide his name and answer questions and slammed him against a wall.
Then, while handcuffed to a bench and still “blinded” from being maced in the face, Brantley said he was spat on.
“They didn’t let me wash my face until my grandmother arrived,” he said. “I was blind answerin’ questions and everything. I know what water feels like on your face. It was raw spit. It dripped down my face. I felt it. It was thick.”
Hickman implicitly believes her grandson’s story about what the police did to him. She said he’s never given her a reason to disbelieve him.
“He won’t lie to me about anything,” she said. “If I ask him is he having sex or is he smoking weed, he will tell me the truth. And I asked him. I wanna know. I’m a grandma. I wanna know what I’m up against. Like I told him, I don’t want you smoking here. … Tell me the truth. If you tell me the truth, I can come in your defense. But I gotta have the truth to fight for you.”