Madeline Hemphill points to the bush along the Esplanade where she says she was “tackled” by a Chico police officer.
While ruling out officer involvement in a missing cell phone mystery, Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey also has disclosed details to ChicoSol that bolster a student’s claim of retaliation by Chico police.
Chico State senior Madeline Hemphill has maintained that five minutes or less elapsed between an initial confrontation with officer Steve Dyke and her arrest in front of her nearby residence. Chico Police Chief Mike O’Brien, in contrast, issued a press statement two days after the Aug. 27, 2016, incident indicating a gap of 28 minutes between the two encounters.
At ChicoSol’s request, Ramsey looked into the time discrepancy. The district attorney said dispatch records reveal that Dyke, at 2:07 a.m., drove away from a sobriety check that Hemphill had been filming on the Esplanade with her phone, while Hemphill and her roommate, Nicole Braham, were arrested just three minutes later, at 2:10.
