By Dan Horn
The Cincinnati Enquirer

WCPO VIDEO

• WCPO Video of Clarence Campbell

A 66-year-old man claimed in a lawsuit Wednesday that Woodlawn police beat him, sprayed him with chemical irritant and arrested him last year for parking in a fire lane.

Clarence Campbell's suit in U.S. District Court seeks $6 million in damages and accuses police of violating his civil rights.

He spoke publicly about the incident Wednesday and handed out copies of a videotape that shows officers pulling him from his car. The officers appeared to strike him several times as he lay on the ground.

An officer is heard shouting, "Get out of the car! Get out of the car!" as he approaches Campbell. Once Campbell is on the ground - and out of the camera's view behind the car door - an officer's leg can be seen making a kicking motion.

"They threw me out of the car and hit me in the legs," Campbell said. "I wouldn't think to beat a 25-year-old like that, and I'm a little older than 25."

He said the trouble started a short time earlier as he waited for his wife in his car parked in a fire lane outside a Kroger store in Woodlawn. An officer approached his car and told him to move, but Campbell said the officer became loud and aggressive before he could comply.

Campbell said he drove a short distance to a parking area, and again stopped his car. At that point several fire engines pulled up nearby, quickly followed by police cars.

That's when Campbell says an officer yelled at him, sprayed him with chemical irritant, dragged him out of the car and began hitting him. He said the police hit him so hard he walked with a cane for several days and continues to suffer from nerve damage in his legs.

Woodlawn police charged Campbell with resisting arrest, obstructing official business and menacing, but a judge threw out the charges. "There was no reason to yank him out of that car," said Campbell's lawyer, Kenneth Lawson. "He wasn't doing anything."

Woodlawn officials, including the police chief and acting city manager, did not return repeated phone calls Wednesday. A spokesman for Kroger, which also is named in the suit, declined comment on the case but questioned whether the arrest took place on store property.

Campbell and his family said they hope the suit leads to discipline against the police officers and changes in the way police deal with the public.

"Nobody can fathom how a parking violation escalated to this degree," said Campbell's son, Brian. Email dhorn@enquirer.com