Former NBA baller & Atlanta transplant Allen Iverson has been in the news quite a bit these past few weeks.
If you recall, Iverson’s prized steel gray Lamborghini was impounded by Atlanta police reportedly for expired tags. It was even revealed in the police report that Iverson was hotter than fish grease during the incident and the reporting officer noted that the b-baller cursed her out for towing his expensive whip.
[READ: Allen Iverson Curses Atlanta Police… ]
Several people have come forward to dispute the details of the Atlanta police report surrounding the incident.
During my much needed vacation, I’ve had time to review all of the evidence as presented and have personally decided that Iverson & his friends were the true victims in this case.
Details below:
Antwuan Clisby (the friend who was actually behind the wheel) and Iverson were stopped last month for what seems to be no other reason than DWB…
What is DWB you ask?
DWB = Driving while BLACK.
It’s nothing new in this country and definitely not new in the City of Atlanta.
Believe me… I know!
When you are young, Black and driving around in a car most people can only dream about, authorities are prone to harass you by stopping your vehicle for random searches or checks.
Atlanta police did just that when they stopped Iverson & his friend last month.
The friend who was driving Iverson’s Lamborghini when it got impounded also says Atlanta police falsified the information in their report about the incident.
Antwuan Clisby says, contrary to the official police report, Iverson did NOT swear at a cop or ask her a boastful question about his fame.
Clisby, 35, was pulled over in Iverson’s 2007 Lamborghini Murcielago on March 30th and cited for failure to signal and for driving a car with expired tags.
Clisby, a friend of Iverson’s from Virginia,? was handcuffed after he grew “angry” during the March 30 encounter, according to a police officer’s report of the incident.
Officer S. J. Durham called for backup and, according to Clisby, five squad cars and eight more cops came to the scene, in the parking lot of the Ruth’s Chris Steak House and Embassy Suites Hotel on Peachtree Road in Buckhead.
The expensive luxury car had a dealer tag, so the officer ran the VIN number through her computer and found the tag had been expired for two years.? She called a tow truck to impound the car and according the her report, that’s when Iverson got upset and cursed at her.
Clisby said that didn’t happen and revealed to the AJC that neither he nor Iverson behaved as the officer reported.
“I’m not going to be rude when I get pulled over, because I’m not trying to get a ticket,” Clisby explained. He said Iverson did not swear and did not boast about his fame.
Clisby said he did ask the officer early in the encounter if Iverson, the passenger, could get out of the car and go to Ruth’s Chris, where he had a take-out order waiting.
Clisby said he made the request to shield his friend from the publicity. A crowd was gathering around the Lamborghini and people were taking pictures, he said.
The request was denied and instead, Iverson and Clisby were ordered from the car and searched. The two men were asked by one of the many officers on scene where they were “keeping the drugs and guns”.
A courtesy van driver for the nearby Embassy Suites hotel, was parked next to the Lamborghini and witnessed the entire incident. The driver, Ernest West, said Iverson has been a regular at the hotel and restaurant, so he recognized him immediately.
“He didn’t curse at all,” West told the AJC. “I mean, he was upset by the situation. But he didn’t curse.”
An Atlanta Police Department spokeswoman confirmed that Clisby called APD last Thursday, claiming Durham fabricated her report.
“We told him that he will have his day in court, and if there is something in that report that he feels is not true, he could testify and she would testify,” states Officer Kim Maggart.
Maggart said Clisby didn’t appear to appreciate the response, and started cursing at her and the other two police employees — one a sworn officer — who were participating on speakerphone.
She wouldn’t repeat what he said, but said he used words like those attributed to Iverson by Officer Durham in her report:
“Everything she stated he said in the police report is pretty much everything he [Clisby] said to us last night.”
[Sidebar: Can you blame him?] 😯
Clisby also denies that the tags were even expired.
Apparently Iverson bought the car in Georgia two years ago and left it undriven at his home in Philadelphia. He recently had it shipped back to his home in Atlanta after asking the same dealer to give him new drive-out tags while he got permanent tags.
The drive-out tags expired in early April, he said, days AFTER the car was impounded.
As proof, another witness corroborated that claim with a photo.
10 days prior to all of this, Andrea Dzeda and her husband, both visiting from their home in Austin, met Iverson and his friends at the bar of the Embassy Suites.
On their way out of the hotel, Dzeda snapped photos of Iverson’s gray Lamborghini with her cellphone.
In one photo, it clearly shows a car with a dealer drive-out tag that was dated April 3, 2011 — four days after Clisby was stopped and given the expired tag citation.
Iverson and Clisby have been publicly humiliated by the incident but will probably not see a resolution about the accuracy of the police report or the underlying traffic violation though.
Clisby said he won’t be fighting it in court because it’s way less expensive to just pay the stupid ticket.
I’m sure that’s good news to APD…