KANSAS CITY, Kan. (WDAF) – Dayton Borisouth said he was trying to do a good deed by helping his uncle jumpstart his car outside of a Walmart in Kansas City, Kansas, on June 1. He had no idea it would soon become the worst day of his life.
Borisouth, 24, finished helping his uncle and ran inside the Walmart to purchase a frozen pizza to take home to his wife and 2-year-old daughter. It should have been a quick visit, but it turned violent when a off-duty police officer working security approached Borisouth as he was leaving the self-checkout area.
“As I get up to the door, I see in the reflection, he’s heading towards me very rapidly,” Borisouth told Nexstar’s WDAF. “And right as soon as I step through that door, he pins me up against the claw machine and brick wall and he said, ‘You didn’t pay for that.’ I said, ‘Yeah, I did. The receipt’s in my pocket.’”
Instead of checking his receipt, Borisouth says the officer became aggressive, wrestling him to the ground and slamming his head into the floor.
“Get off me and read my receipt!” Borisouth can be heard saying in footage taken by other shoppers. At one point, he even throws the receipt on the floor — but it’s ignored by the officer.
Two more on-duty Kansas City, Kansas officers arrived for back up,” Borisouth remembered.
“The other officers come running in and I felt relief,” Borisouth said. “I was like, ‘They’re here to help me, they’re gonna help me solve this situation.’”
But things almost turned deadly when one officer placed his knee on the back of Borisouth’s neck, a restraint technique banned by many police departments after the death of George Floyd in 2021.
“When he did that, I didn’t think I’d be able to see my son ever,” said Borisouth, whose wife is pregnant.
In videos obtained by WDAF from three witnesses, Borisouth is seen being held face down on the floor by two officers. One officer can be seen grabbing Borsouth’s nose and threatening to break it if he doesn’t comply.
Shortly after, video shows the same officer who threatened to break Borisouth’s nose pressing his knee on the back of Borisouth’s neck. That’s when you can hear Borisouth scream out in pain.
“I screamed cause of how bad it hurt,” he said. “I don’t scream unless something hurts incredibly.”
Borisouth said it was at that point the he gave up trying to explain.
“I’m just terrified right now,” he said. “I was like, ‘I’m just gonna give up right now,’ and I completely threw my hands behind my back and was letting them handcuff me.”
Footage of the altercation appeared on social media, with many commenters demanding justice for what happened to the young father.
Nancy Chartrand, public information officer for Kansas City, Kansas Police Department (KCKPD) said the department conducted an investigation into the incident prior to the social media posting. Read the full statement from the Kansas City, Kansas Police Department online.
She said the investigation concluded that “one of the responding officers employed techniques that are not approved, nor trained, by the Department,” and both officers involved have been disciplined.
WDAF and Nexstar have reached out to Walmart multiple times, but have not received a response.
Use of force
WDAF sent Ed Obayashi, a California law enforcement officer and national expert on police use of force, footage of the altercation.
He said Borisouth is lucky he wasn’t killed during the encounter.
“That particular force option has been deemed illegal in many states, especially since the Minneapolis incident,” Obayashi said. “No department trains officers to deploy that particular method of control, especially in light of the George Floyd incident.”
Though the maneuver has not been officially banned in the state of Kansas, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a federal law prohibiting law enforcement officers from using chokeholds and carotid restraints, or any restraint which restricts blood flow to the brain causing temporary unconsciousness.
To date, several Kansas police departments still allow for the use of carotid restraints, specifically the “lateral vascular neck restraint,” in which an officer wraps their arm around a suspect’s neck, applying pressure to the sides of the neck to restrict blood flow to the brain.
But Obayashi said the bar to justify that level of force is incredibly high.
“The issue here though is I do not see a reason, a legal reason, or even a policy reason why an officer would apply pressure to an individual’s neck who’s sprung out very similar to Mr. Floyd under these situations,” he said.
KCKPD’s own website says officers are to “use force reasonably, proportionally, and appropriately to overcome the level of resistance offered.”
In fact, the department modified its policies in 2021 to align with the 8 Can’t Wait movement launched by Campaign Zero, which bans the use of chokeholds and strangleholds entirely, according to its website.
But witnesses told WDAF responding law enforcement escalated the situation rather than helping to deescalate it.
“I thought it was crazy cause honestly, he had no reason to get arrested, like he wasn’t committing any crime at all,” said Joscelyn Hernandez, who witnessed the incident along with her mother and two-month-old daughter. “Like in my mind, I would’ve done the same thing. I wouldn’t have wanted to be treated like that if I had the receipt and I wasn’t stealing it.”
WDAF submitted records requests to KCKPD for body camera footage and police reports, but have not heard back from the department.
Chartrand said in a statement the department’s review of the incidents concluded the security officer never should have taken things so far.
“When requested to present his receipt, the individual refused, became belligerent and continued out the door despite the officer’s verbal commands,” Chartrand said in a statement. “It is our determination that the officer should have disengaged at that time due to the circumstances.”
Borisouth, meanwhile, claimed the officer never technically asked to see his receipt.
“As I walked past him, he didn’t ask me for my receipt or nothing,” Borisouth said. “He said, ‘Do you have your receipt?’ He said, ‘Got your receipt?’ and I said, ‘Yes,’ and I continued to walk.”
Even if Borisouth was directly asked to produce a receipt, Kansas-city area attorney Katherine Corwin with DiPasquale Moore Injury Attorneys tells WDAF that customers never need to show a receipt at stores that don’t require a membership, “but it may be beneficial to do so” in certain situations.
“If they have enough probable cause, or reasonable suspicion to believe that you’re shoplifting,” Corwin said, “then they can detain you for a reasonable amount of time to reasonably investigate.”
Concerns of profiling
After sitting in the back of a police car for nearly an hour, Borisouth said officers eventually let him go, but not before writing him a ticket for hindering an investigation.
KCK police spokesperson Chartrand says the citation has since been dropped.
“Moving forward, we will work with all our retail partners to ensure that there is a clear, mutual understanding of our officers role while working in any off-duty capacity,” Chartrand said in a statement.
But Borisouth said he still doesn’t understand why he was cited when he didn’t even commit a crime in the first place.
“If you’re walking down the street in public and not doing nothing, just walking down the street in public on the sidewalk, and a cop walks up behind you and says, ‘Stop, put your hands behind your back,’ if you’re not doing nothing, are you obligated to do that?” Borisouth said.
Having walked away from the encounter with several injuries to his arms, wrist, back and neck, Borisouth said he felt targeted and profiled from the start.
“I said, ‘You’re profiling me,’ and [the security officer] laughed,” Borisouth said. “He said, ‘Profiling?’ and he laughed at me and I said, ‘Yeah dude,’ I was like, ‘I got blue hair and I’m shirtless. I would think I look kinda dingy,’ you know?
Borisouth and his family said all they want now is action and answers.
“Hearing him say [in the video] that he … that he just wanted to get home to his wife and kid [was disturbing] cause, you know, you’ll see all this kind of stuff on the internet like, over something dumb or over something that’s like, not right,” Viviana, Borisouth’s wife, said.
“Then, the first thing you see is the officer taking full force and then like hurting him and then like, kind of what happened to George Floyd, knee on the neck, saying he can’t breathe and then that’s it.”