Last February, Matt Crawford and Max Mattoon, both 17-years-old, were on Virginia Commonwealth University campus shooting a skateboard video when a Virginia State Police Officer ran Crawford down with his police car.
The folks at Jenkem got their hands a slightly longer version of the video...
Crawford was standing on the sidewalk, and Mattoon was across the street. “I was standing on the ledge across the street filming and I saw this cop make a crazy illegal U-Turn, so I started filming it because I thought that it was funny. And then he just gunned it right into Tim,” said Mattoon. View the video here:
After Crawford was hit by the officer’s vehicle, the officer exited his car, and, according to Mattoon:
“The cop got out of his car and he was pretty nervous. Tim said he was fine, then the cop wanted to go talk to him in the alley. So Tim talked to the cop in the alley for a while. The cop was sketched out and that’s what he suggested, that’s where he said for us to meet him. Then he just left,” said Mattoon. Another officer arrived on scene to assist.
Virginia State Police public relations officer Dorothy Bernstein sent out a press release regarding the incident. In this press release, Bernstein mentioned the “edited video” and made sure to mention, “This is not the full length video.” The press release states, “The trooper did stop at the scene and followed proper Departmental procedures. The individual was assessed at the scene by emergency personnel for a minor injury but was not transported from the scene to the hospital.”
Although the release reports that medical personnel were on the scene, Mattoon said that neither an ambulance nor a medical person arrived.
Crawford said he had an “emergency room visit later that night to check for internal injuries at my parents request. I was fine when checked out and eventually the cops paid for that bill.”
The stories from Mattoon and Crawford, and the Virginia State Police are nearly identical aside from this variation.
Both VCU public relations and VCU police had little to say about the collision. “We found out about it yesterday. The version [of the video] that we saw was the one that was uploaded to YouTube,” said Michael Kelly, public relations for VCU Police.
VCU police don’t have their own copy of the footage because the incident wasn’t brought to their attention until the video went viral,, by which time it had already been taped over.
VCU Police have had no contact with the Virginia State Police. The incident was not reported to the VCU community because it did not fit the qualifications under the Cleary Act, which requires university authorities to report crimes to students.
According to Mattoon, Crawford is not pressing charges because “he wasn't hurt and he felt like it was a waste of time.”
It is unknown what repercussions the officer faced, as the press release from Virginia State Police ended by stating “This is a personnel matter and state police does not have further comment on this incident.”