Manager at Seven says Vikings' Johnson 'hostile' with police

Surveillance video from the downtown Minneapolis restaurant and nightclub where Vikings defensive tackle Tom Johnson was arrested last weekend shows Johnson being "hostile" with two off-duty officers who used pepper spray and a Taser, the club's manager said Wednesday.

David Koch, the manager of Seven Steakhouse Sushi Ultralounge Skybar, said he's reviewed the approximately 24 minutes of video that shows Johnson interacting with two off-duty Minneapolis police officers who he's employed as guards for several years: John Laluzerne and Patrick McCarver.

Koch said his staff asked Johnson to leave the restaurant and club shortly after it closed at 2 a.m. Sunday, and that Laluzerne and McCarver intervened after he declined.

The video — which Koch shared with police but declined to release to the Star Tribune — apparently doesn't capture all of the disagreement that took place inside the club and ended with McCarver using pepper spray. But Koch said it shows some of the action outside, notably the 288-pound Johnson shoving McCarver.

"He gets very hostile and at that point he pushes [McCarver] back pretty far," Koch said. He added that it's not clear how well anyone involved could see; both officers and Johnson can be seen trying to wipe their eyes, stinging from the pepper spray.

The next moments were captured by the security camera and on Johnson's cellphone. On the short video released earlier this week by Johnson's agent, McCarver can be seen and heard asking for Johnson's ID. The athlete says he's done nothing wrong and McCarver appears to swipe the phone away before the video cuts out.

The footage from Seven's camera doesn't show what happened next: one of the officers using a Taser to subdue Johnson before calling in a third officer to take him to jail. Johnson was cited for disorderly conduct and spent a short time in jail before being released on $78 bail.

Koch said Johnson did not appear to be impaired and said it wasn't clear what prompted the disagreement. He disputed a statement from Johnson's agent that the Viking had been asked to leave because of the boots he was wearing. Koch said neither the officers nor other staff members at Seven knew Johnson was a football player.

"He seems to be a very nice person," Koch said. "It just seems he felt he was being unfairly asked to leave the building, and that wasn't the case at all."

Johnson's agent could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

Koch said disruptions at Seven are rare and said the officers working at the club are well-liked by patrons. He said the pair used their "best judgment" when confronted with someone who didn't want to leave.

Minneapolis police officials declined to comment on specifics of Johnson's arrest, the video of the incident or to confirm if off-duty officers were involved.

Laluzerne and McCarver are listed as the arresting officers on the official police department report.

"We've done our part," police spokesman John Elder said. "We arrested a person and we determined the charges and put the person in jail and the rest now is up to the city attorney and the judicial system."

The two officers working at Seven were previously accused — and later cleared — of using excessive force in another case. In that situation, a man accused the two of pulling him over and arresting him in September 2006 as retaliation for a claim he made a month earlier about the two officers beating him.

In 2004, Laluzerne was put on leave after a video surfaced of an arrest he'd been involved in the previous year, in which it appears the officer kicked a handcuffed man who was lying on the ground. Prosecutors with the Bloomington City Attorney's Office eventually declined to file charges, saying they couldn't prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Laluzerne assaulted the man.

Erin Golden • 612-673-4790