Maybe he felt inspired, or just didn’t want the show to end. But a Braintree man in town for Cage Titans last weekend left the mixed martial arts event itching for a fight, police said.
Thomas Johnson, 58, threatened, menaced, and kicked Plymouth police officers trying to calm him down after they found him allegedly drunk, sprawled across the steps of Memorial Hall, his pants around his ankles, according to police reports.
By the time it was all over, the 5’4”, 275-pound Johnson had allegedly assaulted four police officers and threatened several others, police reports said.
Even after he fell and hit his head, Johnson threatened emergency personnel and hospital workers trying to help him, police charged.
Johnson pleaded not guilty in Plymouth District Court April 1 to nine charges, including four counts of assault and battery on a police officer, according to court records.
A Plymouth County prosecutor unsuccessfully argued that Johnson should be held without bail because he had been arraigned last month in Quincy District Court on charges of possession of cocaine with intent to distribute.
Plymouth District Court Judge Julie Bernard released him, though, ordering Johnson to refrain from using drugs or alcohol, and to undergo frequent alcohol testing.
Police spokesman Capt. Jason Higgins praised the officers for using restraint and “trying to do the right thing. “They tried to slow things down, to de-escalate,” he said, “but it doesn’t always work.
“This guy was on an alcohol-fueled adventure,” Higgins added. “Evidently nothing was going to calm him down.”
Johnson’s lawyer, Jennifer White, did not return calls seeking comment.
The episode might have turned out differently if Johnson hadn’t been so belligerent, police said.
At first, officers tried to help him, but after he hurled obscenities — and at least one object— at them, they changed their plan.
The March 30 episode started at around 9 p.m. when
Plymouth officer Connor Rossi, working a detail at the Cage Titans event, found Johnson on the steps of Memorial Hall, eyes bloodshot and speech slurred, with a woman who said the couple was waiting for an Uber.
“I advised Thomas that he wasn’t in trouble and that we just wanted to make sure he got home safe,” wrote Rossi.
Johnson responded by threatening to “beat my ass,” Rossi wrote.
When Rossi suggested he drink some water, Johnson threw the water bottle at him, police alleged.
By then two officers were at the scene, with more on the way.
Three officers tried to persuade Johnson to get into a cruiser voluntarily. At that point, he was wearing only one shoe, the police reports said.
“Johnson refused… and aggressively yelled to us that he will kill us all, and attempted to kick and headbutt us,” wrote Officer Thomas Malloy,
When three officers tried to lift his legs to place him in the cruiser, he allegedly kicked Malloy in the genitals, causing “extreme pain,” Malloy wrote.
Eventually, the officers were able to bring him to police headquarters, where he continued to rant and threaten them even after he was corralled into a cell, police alleged.
He tried to grab one officer’s gun belt, police reported.
He also charged at another officer, Zachary Sweeney, allegedly kicking him in the chest and leg.
When Sweeney raised his arm to Johnson’s chest trying to hold him back, Johnson fell and hit his head on the cell wall, briefly losing consciousness,
When he came to, he was as truculent as before — even as police called emergency medical services to bring him to Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital, police reports said.
While in the ambulance, Johnson allegedly threatened Malloy, who rode with him, though he acknowledged that beating up a cop is “frowned upon.”
At the hospital he continued his tirade, screaming profanities at the staff, Malloy wrote.
A detective came to the hospital to photograph his injury, but he wouldn’t let him, calling him “another bitch,” a police report alleged.
When yet another officer — Kevin Ciavarra, who was at least the eighth called into action that night— arrived at the hospital to relieve Malloy, Johnson tried to hit Ciavarra in the back of his head, a police report said.
An emergency room nurse warned Johnson that if he didn’t “change his behavior” he would be ordered out of the hospital, the police report said. He told the emergency room doctor tending to him to “f— off,” according to the report.
Cage Titans, a regional MMA group, runs several events a year in Plymouth, and they have been largely problem free, according to the police and Joe Goldberg, the director of Memorial Hall.
Mixed martial arts is a hybrid sport incorporating techniques from boxing, wresting, judo, karate and other disciplines.
In Plymouth, the combatants fight in a cage, and the events, which have been held at Memorial Hall for more than a decade, are usually sold out, Goldberg said.
The card includes both amateurs and professional competitors.
In 2017, one of the amateurs died following a Memorial Hall fight, which he had lost in a technical knockout.
Rondel Clark, 26, of Sutton, died in the hospital three days after his August 12 bout.
Andrea Estes can be reached at andrea@plymouthindependent.org.