By Liz Oakes
The Cincinnati Enquirer

WOODLAWN - The Hamilton County Sheriff's Office said Wednesday it's looking into actions of village police following a $6 million lawsuit that alleges Woodlawn officers beat a 66-year-old man after he parked in a fire lane.

The village's Acting Police Chief Jack Bennett asked for the investigation after Clarence Barclay Campbell filed a lawsuit last week in U.S. District Court, according to sheriff's spokesman Steve Barnett.

Barnett said he could not go into more detail on the investigation.

Campbell's suit maintains he was kicked, sprayed with a chemical irritant and arrested Sept. 1 at a Kroger in Woodlawn.

The Glendale man was charged with resisting arrest, obstructing official business and menacing. He was acquitted in March.

The lawsuit alleges that the officers' actions represent a "continuing pattern and practice of civil rights abuses" by the department, and that the village has failed to "adequately train and discipline" officers.

The Campbell case is the second lawsuit against Woodlawn police in five years.

Jimmie Traylor sued the village, as well as Springfield Township and the village of Evendale, claiming excessive force and false arrest in a 1999 incident in Woodlawn.

Traylor's complaint said he was slammed to the ground after two Woodlawn officers asked the Lockland man to get out of his parked van with his 8-year-old son.

Traylor's lawsuit said he was injured severely enough that he needed to be hospitalized.

He was later found not guilty on charges of child endangering, resisting arrest and inducing panic.

The case was settled out of court two years ago.

Woodlawn agreed to pay Traylor $4,500 and Springfield Township and Evendale each contributed half of a $15,500 payment, according to a copy of the settlement agreement obtained by the Enquirer.

Bennett declined to comment, but Woodlawn interim Village Manager Walter Obermeyer said the two cases do not represent a pattern.

"They're not similar at all," Obermeyer, the village's former police chief, said Tuesday.

Sometimes, he said, "you have to use physical force in an arrest."

Ken Lawson, Campbell's attorney, said he grew up in Woodlawn and remembers the police officers as being friendly.

"You would never think anything like this would happen," he said.

Donna Campbell, 65, Clarence Campbell's wife and one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said they approached the village the day after his arrest and asked if the charges could be dropped.

They never heard back, she said.

She said they were told the actions were uncharacteristic of the department.

"The only reason we made a lawsuit out of this was to get their attention," Campbell said. "There is absolutely no reason for this officer to respond the way he did. He asked my husband to move (from the fire lane) and he did."

E-mail loakes@enquirer.com