Two very different stories about a police confrontation in Evanston surfaced Wednesday: A doctor says he was handcuffed for no reason--but police say they were doing their job.
On Monday night, Dr. Gregory Hall walked out of the library on Chicago and Main Street in Evanston.
"All of a sudden I hear police cars, sirens," he told NBC 5.
Several Evanston police officers, with their weapons drawn, detained him and placed him in handcuffs, he said.
"I screamed out loud," Hall recalled. "I said, you're hurting me ... It's too tight."
Deputy Evanston police Chief Jay Parrott said what the police did was necessary.
"Because he was moving his hands and wasn't complying with officers directions, they decided to handcuff him for safety purposes," Parrott said.
Local
Police say they were looking for a suspect connected to two violent incidents-- including an armed robbery at a thrift store-- about a block from where Hall was detained.
Officers only had a witness description of the suspect.
"You have to remember they were responding to a robbery with a handgun that just occurred," Parrott said. "So when officers are stopping him, the assumption--and it's a reasonable assumption--(is) that person may be armed with a handgun.
Body camera footage that was not released to the public but shown to NBC 5 shows Hall was handcuffed for less than 10 minutes as officers ask him for identification but he refuses to identify himself.
Hall believes the confusion would have been eliminated if officers would have confirmed with the library that he had been in there the whole time.
"Now I need to go for an MRI for any ligament damage as well," he said.
Parrott called the way the incident unfolded "unfortunate."
"But I think the officers from a police policy stand point and legal stand point, the officers were acting reasonable based on what they knew at the time," he said.
