SALT LAKE CITY (ABC 4 News) – An Ogden man claims his legal meth caused a beating from police.
And now Ronnie Todd May is suing several Utah Highway Patrol troopers for excessive force.
"What they did wrong here is it was like a feeding frenzy to beat the daylights out of him,” says his attorney Robert Sykes.
Last month, a trooper pulled May over near 26th and Washington Boulevard.
The trooper learned the driver has meth.
In his police report he writes: "May stated that he was on prescription methamphetamine."
The Trooper apparently didn’t see any so he started searching May
Sykes obtained a copy of the arrest from the Trooper’s own dash cam surveillance.
May knew he had a pill of legal meth in a baggy. He claims it's a prescription to treat his narcolepsy.
In his report the trooper writes: "I observed a small plastic bag. The bag appeared to contain a loose granular white substance."
But May swallowed it.
The following is an exchange between the trooper and May caught on the trooper’s camera.
Trooper: “Spit it out, spit it out.”
May: “What?”
Trooper: “Spit it out.”
May: “What?”
“They wouldn't quit, they wouldn't stop tasering me,” May says. “They wouldn't stop beating me.”
But the trooper in his report writes: "May never stopped resisting. May used substantial force in attempt to break free of me. He was in an excited delirium state."
The trooper’s camera shows other troopers coming to help the officer out. They take him down and a trooper is seen punching May.
Trooper: “Spit it out. Spit it out”
May is seeking a quarter of a million dollar settlement from the troopers but he does admit he used bad judgment.
“I just slipped my shoes off and just took my medicine,” May says. “It (swallowing it) was the wrong thing to do now that I realize that.”
A spokesman for the Department of Public Safety says they can’t comment about the case because May is currently under investigation by Weber County prosecutors.
