VIEWPOINT

Traveling teen mistakenly taken down by local police. ACLU has filed a lawsuit

Barb Ickes Feb 11, 2020 Updated Feb 13, 2020

Stepping off a bus at an East Moline rest stop, the out-of-town college student had no idea what was about to hit him. ... Jaylan Butler and his teammates from the Eastern Illinois University swim team were at the end of a long day. After competing in a conference championship swim meet in South Dakota, they spent the bulk of Feb. 24, 2019, traveling back to Charleston, Ill., in a rented coach with their school logo plastered on the sides.

The parents of one of Butler's teammates lives in the Quad-Cities, and arrangements were made to meet up with them at the rest area just over the Illinois border past the Interstate 80 bridge. ... "The bus was hot," Butler recalled. "We got out to stretch our legs."

Though it was hot inside the bus, the temperature outside was in the teens as the hour approached 8 p.m. Butler, wearing his EIU team jacket, was heading back onto the bus when his coach suggested he take a selfie in front of Illinois' "BUCKLE UP, IT'S THE LAW" sign. The team had been taking pictures throughout the trip and posting them to social media to update parents and others on their location.

"As I took the picture, there was a line of police officers ... they came to a screeching stop in front of me," Butler said. "At that moment, I only knew a couple things to do that my dad always told me." ... As a young black man, he had been taught by his dad to never give police a reason to think he would cause trouble. He remembered the lessons, and he dropped his phone, raised his hands, and got on the ground. ... He could not imagine what the police wanted with him. But they weren't messing around.

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