Doc Gooden discusses his encounter with police terrorism, and the deadly chokehold that was put on him:

“I was joined by my nephew Gary, Vance Lovelace, my childhood friend Troy, and some other local athletes and celebrities. After the games, a bunch of us took some teenagers who were waiting for kidney transplants to a University of South Florida basketball game at the Sun Dome. We dropped the kids off, then Gary, Troy, Vance, a sum of other guys and I drove our own cars to Chili’s Bar and Grill for some burgers, wings, and beers.
We had some drinks. We were laughing, telling jokes, reenacting our favorite plays from the day, and taunting each other about our softball prowess. I didn’t think we were bothering anyone. But then I noticed that a couple of tables away, a sunburned fortysomething Tampa police officer kept looking up from his hamburger. He was in his uniform. His radio was on the table.

He caught my eye and motioned to me to keep the noise down. I nodded back to him.

‘Come on, guys,’ I said, addressing my friends. ‘Let’s cool it.’

‘What are you talking about?’ one of the guys asked.

I nodded toward the cop. ‘Him,’ I said.

The table erupted in laughter. ‘We’re not being that loud,’ my friend said. The table laughed even harder.

The cop said nothing else. He just got up and moved-　not farther away from us, but closer, with his back to us. Maybe he was eavesdropping on our conversation. He was still sitting there when we finished up, paid the bill, and drove off toward a party at another friend’s house-　a convoy of young black males in luxury sports cars.

We headed west on Fowler Avenue toward Nebraska Avenue, not a great area in Tampa. Gary was in the first car in a brand-new Corvette I had given him that year. Then it was Troy and me in my silver Mercedes 380SE with a license plate that said DOC, followed by Phil’s Datsun 280ZX and another Mercedes.

We came up to the intersection, hoping to turn left. Another car was ahead of us, waiting for the traffic to clear. On the far side of the light, a Tampa police cruiser was facing us, watching us approach the intersection. I don’t know if it was just a coincidence or if the cop from Chili’s had tipped someone off. But Gary nudged out into the intersection. The car ahead of him made the left turn but the light changed while Gary was still in the intersection. I think seeing the cop made him nervous about running the light. So instead of punching through, he backed up and waited for the light to change again. When it turned green again, we all made it through. That’s when the cop threw on his lights and siren and pulled up behind Gary.

But Gary had giant speakers in his back window. They made it hard to see and even harder to hear. I don’t think he knew the police car was there. Rather than keep pursuing Gary, the cop drifted back and pulled me over instead.

I’d had a couple of beers, but wasn’t even close to drunk. I’m sure I wasn’t over the legal limit. I didn’t have any drugs in the car. ‘I can’t believe this,’ I thought. I’d just spent a day doing some good at a charity outing, and now the cops are harassing me. Up ahead, I saw Gary pull his car over as well.

A burly young cop leaned down and rapid on my window with his flashlight. ‘License and registration,’ he said.

‘You already know who I am,’ I sighed. ‘What did you pull me over for?’

‘Be quiet and hand me your license and registration.’

This was already getting off to a bad start.

‘This is bullshit!’ I fumed. As soon as the words left my mouth. I could see a half dozen cop cars swarming in. ‘Why are you guys always harassing me?’ I said. ‘I’m tired of this.’

‘Listen,’ the cop said sharply. ‘Knock it off or you’re going to jail.’

‘For what? You’re harassing me.’

‘That’s it,’ the cop said, reaching for my door handle. ‘Get out of the car!’

He was angry now. I got out and saw a handful of cops walking toward us. ‘You had no reason to stop me,’ I said. ‘Explain what the stop is about.’

‘Again,’ the cop warned. ‘Knock it off or you’re going to jail.’

Gary and all my other friends were on the sidewalk now, watching from a distance. The cop saw them and asked, ‘They’re with you?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We’re all together. What the hell does that have to do with anything?’

‘Shut up!’ he said.

He reached for his cuffs. As he did, I made the mistake of reaching for his hand. It was just a reflex. I wasn’t trying to provoke him. But I shouldn’t have done that. I was thinking, ‘Hey, come on. You don’t need to lock me up.’

To his credit, that cop wasn’t the one to explode. But when the other officers saw that, he couldn’t stop them from rushing me. They knocked me to the grass next to the boulevard. I took a beating on the ground-　nightsticks, knees, and punches. One cop hit me in the head with an eighteen-inch flashlight. I tried to protect myself. I tried to fight back. But basically it was the Fourth of July going off on my face. The gold cap on my front tooth I got when I was a teenager? Gone. The tooth it covered? Gone.

In all, the report said later, twenty-two Tampa police officers were on the scene. Nine dove into the ruckus. When I tried to stand, I was pushed backward. Gary rushed up and was quickly cuffed and arrested. I was pushing and shoving to get the cops off me. By that point, there were so many of them, they were punching each other. One cop saw me pushing and yelled, ‘He’s going for your piece!’

That led to another flurry of punches as another cop pulled his pistol out and pointed it under my chin.

‘Say your prayers, motherfucker!’ he shouted.

I thought for sure I was going to die. I immediately stopped moving.

One cop got my left arm behind my back. He twisted it so hard. I cried out in pain. ‘Good!’ I heard one of them yell, ‘Break his fucking arm!’ I guess he’d forgotten I was a rightie.

‘Doc Gooden,’ one cop said, spitting out my name. ‘Local fucking hero. I’ll never watch another Mets game again.’

A middle-aged white couple out for an evening stroll happened on the scene. When they saw what was happening, they stopped and shouted at the cops.

‘Why are you guys doing that to him?’ the woman raged. ‘What’s going on here?’

My blood was all over my shirt, not to mention the cops and the grass. The couple pleaded with the officers to let go of me.

‘Get out of here, or you’re going to jail,’ one of the cops responded. ‘Get lost!’

The arm twisting soon gave way to something worse, a chokehold around my neck. The more I resisted, the less I could breathe. For a second, I felt like giving up. I thought, ‘Okay, well, this is how I’m going to die.’ Then, I got the idea of pretending I’d passed out. Maybe then they’d leave me alone. I went completely limp.

‘He’s out!’ I heard someone say. ‘He’s out! Get off him!’

At that point, the cops seemed to panic. Other officers pulled the chokehold cop off me. I lay on the ground, perfectly still, hearing more sirens and cops barking orders.

A sum of them picked me up, shackled me, and threw me in the back of a police car. As we started to move, I looked out the window. I discovered we were headed nowhere near the police station. Instead, we pulled into the empty parking lot at the Tampa Greyhound Track on Nebraska Avenue. ‘They’re going to kill me,’ I thought. ‘This is the perfect spot to get rid of me.’

I had never been more frightened in my life.

They pulled me out of the car and sat me on the pavement. My bleeding head was resting against one of the back tires of the police car. They started discussing strategy. Radios and walkie-talkies were chirping with activity. More sirens were coming our way. A paramedic truck arrived. Two black cops showed up. They weren’t going to kill me after all, I decided. They were just trying to make what happened look less black and white. The black cops rode with me to the hospital, where I got twenty stitches in my head, before they took me to jail. I was charged with disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, and battery on a police officer-　I never served a day on any of them. A few hours later, I was released on my own recognizance.

When my parents came to pick me up, my mom took one look at me and started bawling. It had taken a little more than a month for me to go from World Champion to ‘black-male Gooden, violent perp,’ beaten by the police in my own hometown. -From “Doc” By: Dwight Gooden