On September 24, 2016, Aaron Watkins called 911 to report that his girlfriend had assaulted him. Two officers from the Olmsted Falls Police Department in Ohio responded to the call.
Officer Daniel Daugherty arrived first and spoke with Watkins. Sergeant Floyd Takacs arrived a short while later and saw Watkins motion to an alley. In the alley, Takacs encountered 34-year-old Christie Elko. As Takacs questioned Elko, their interaction intensified and became physical. Elko was arrested and charged with domestic violence and resisting arrest, both misdemeanors. Takacs said he injured his knee as he fell to the ground while making the arrest.
The charge of resisting arrest was transferred from municipal court to the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas. There, Elko was also indicted for assault of a police officer, a fourth-degree felony. (The domestic violence charge was later reduced to disorderly conduct, and Elko pled no contest to that charge in 2018. )
As Elko prepared for a trial, her attorneys sought to introduce evidence from Takacs’s personnel file to bolster their contention that he was the aggressor in the incident.
On September 21, 2017, Judge Joseph D. Russo ordered the state to produce the documents for his review on their evidentiary value.
A day later, Christie Elko filed a lawsuit in state court against Daugherty, Takacs, and Olmsted Falls. The complaint said that Takacs threw her to the ground and that Daugherty tased her “multiple times.”
“Plaintiff Elko struggled to breathe as she rolled from her face-down position, gathered her knees together under her long, confining dress, and tried to gain her balance while Defendant Takacs continued to stomp on her feet and kick her,” the complaint said. On October 24, 2017, the lawsuit was transferred to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio.
Elko’s attorneys would later say in a court filing that after Elko filed her lawsuit, prosecutors threatened to add more serious charges if Elko didn’t accept a plea offer.
A year later, on October 3, 2018, as the assault of a police officer case continued to move to trial, Judge Russo ordered the state to provide Elko’s attorney with Takacs’s entire personnel file. The state produced three pages of Takacs’s disciplinary record and a performance section that contained limited information about complaints and grievances filed against him.
On February 5, 2018, Elko pleaded no contest to resisting arrest, and the assault charge was dismissed. The court sentenced Elko to time served and waived her costs. Prior to the plea, Elko had spent about 14 days in jail.
On May 5, 2018, Elko’s attorney in her civil suit received a more extensive personnel file for Takacs, including 275 pages of complaints and disciplinary actions that had not been disclosed to Elko prior to her plea.
On June 21, 2018, Elko moved to withdraw her plea. “Here it is clear that material exculpatory evidence, and evidence that would have been used to impeach the State’s key witness at trial, was withheld from Ms. Elko, who made her plea without access to this evidence,” the motion said.
On July 2, 2018, the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office consented to the motion. It said Olmsted Falls had failed to provide prosecutors with these documents. “The fact that the Court and the prosecution were never provided with them in the context of this case is concerning and calls into question the fundamental fairness of the proceedings leading up to Elko’s plea.”
On July 17, 2018, Judge Russo granted Elko’s motion to withdraw her plea.
The state moved to retry Elko on both charges, resisting arrest and assault on a police officer.
On July 26, 2018, Elko’s attorneys, Peter Pattakos and Gina Crawford, moved to dismiss the charges. The motion said Elko had already been sentenced to time served after her initial plea and the state had not appealed that sentence. Prosecuting her again on a charge where she had already served her sentence would be a violation of a ban on cumulative punishments for the same offense, the motion said. In addition, the motion noted the State’s misconduct in withholding the evidence.
The state opposed the motion, and a judge ruled against Elko, allowing the case to proceed.
Elko’s attorneys sought to use Takacs’s personnel file at trial. The state opposed this request. In their motion, a prosecutor said, “The rules of evidence … do not allow for a ‘Sgt. Takacs, this is your life’ method [of] cross-examination, nor do they allow for a parade of witnesses to air a list of grievances spanning well over ten years of the alleged victim’s career in law enforcement.”
Elko’s attorney said the complaints were relevant because they refer to Takacs’s “well-documented habit of reacting with uncontrolled aggression toward those who question him or act contrary to his preferences as an Olmsted Falls police officer.” (Available records do not indicate whether the trial judge allowed these records to be used at trial.)
Elko’s jury trial began on September 3, 2019, in the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas, with Judge Russo presiding.
Elko testified that on the afternoon of September 24, 2016, she was helping in the kitchen of the bar below her apartment.
Watkins was also at the bar, drinking and watching football. Elko said that her 13-year-old daughter had arrived to spend time with Elko and meet Watkins. (By the time of the trial, Watkins and Elko had married.)
The three went upstairs to Elko’s apartment, Elko testified, and she and Watkins argued about Watkins’s drinking. Elko said that Watkins “got really mad,” “threw a fit,” and “stomped down the stairs” because she would not allow him to drive her car to a party.
After the argument, Watkins called 911. He gave the dispatch operator his location, but the dispatcher later testified that Watkins did not mention Elko by name. The dispatcher also testified that Watkins did not indicate that Elko was dangerous, other than to say that “she hurt him.”
Elko testified that she and her daughter later left to walk down the street to a delicatessen. She said that Takacs approached them while they were in the driveway next to the apartment. She said Takacs asked who she was, and “I told him I was Christie, and I lived up—I lived upstairs because we were right next to the apartment I lived in.”
“I was scared,” she said. “I had my daughter with me. She was behind me. I made sure to keep her behind me while I was speaking with him at—he came up very aggressively, because he was very close to my face. And just—he kept repeating after I already told him, so that was odd to me, too.”
Elko testified that it was her opinion that Takacs parked his police vehicle before reaching the alley to avoid recording his encounter with Elko on his dashboard camera.
Elko testified that Takacs stood “really close” to her face and continued to ask for her name. Elko said she answered, “Why the fuck are you being so nasty?” She testified that she continued to swear at Takacs, telling him it was a mistake to put his hands on her.
Her attorney asked, “When did he hurt you? Did he hurt you right here in the alley?”
“Yes. I had his fingerprints and bruises all the way down my arm. He held me so hard, it was—he was trying to like squeeze through me,” Elko said.
Elko testified she had an associate’s degree in criminal justice and was pursuing a bachelor’s degree in that field.
“I backed away,” she said. “I have always been taught to get in front
of a dashboard cam. And I honestly had no idea about the body cams. So, my biggest thing was I’m going to have to get him in front of this dashboard cam because I know—I know he’s going to hurt me, I know he’s going to harm me at this point.”
The jury watched the video from Takacs’s dashboard camera. It showed Elko backing away, swearing at Takacs, and telling him not to touch her. It then showed Takacs grabbing at Elko and telling her she was under arrest. The video showed Daugherty and Takacs maneuvering Elko face down on the ground. Daugherty held a taser against Elko’s body.
Elko testified that the officers “smashed” her into the police car, while they pushed, pulled, and hit her. On the video, she could be heard telling Takacs that he attacked her and that she never touched him. Elko said that the officers kept their hands on her and wanted to hurt her.
Daugherty testified, “We grabbed Miss Elko, and she was resisting after Sgt. Takacs had told her she’s under arrest, and we ended up having to take her to the ground to get control of her.” Later, he testified, “She was pushing and pulling away from us as we're trying to put handcuffs on her.”
Daugherty said Elko “was actively resisting getting into the back of the patrol unit,” and he went to one side of the car to pull Elko in while Takacs pushed from the other side.
The jury also watched video footage from one of the officer’s body-worn cameras. Elko could be seen in a dress, with her hands cuffed behind her back, and heard telling the officers, “I’m going to get in the car if you’d stop pushing me.”
Daugherty testified that he responded with force, but not excessive force. He said he took out his taser and placed it on Elko’s back, “but it was never activated.”
Takacs testified that after Elko told him her first name, she began to walk away from him.
“I finally had to put my hand on her to stop her from walking away from me,” he said. “And she immediately became angry and changed directions and turned and started walking sort of backwards at me … and I was following her, and she was pretty much in an angry state.”
Takacs said he placed his hands on Elko because she was not being responsive to his request for more information. According to the dashboard camera video, this contact occurred within five seconds of their interaction.
He said she struggled and resisted arrest, ending up face down on the ground with a knee in her back.
Takacs admitted during his testimony that he called Elko a “stupid fucking bitch.” He said he and Elko were excited and emotional, but her “actions necessitated my actions,” which resulted in Takacs scraping his knee.
On September 6, 2019, the jury convicted Elko of resisting arrest and acquitted her of assault on a police officer. She was again sentenced to time served.
On October 4, 2019, Elko appealed her conviction, arguing that Judge Russo erred in not instructing the jury that an officer’s use of excessive force provided a complete defense to the charge of resisting arrest.
On September 17, 2020, the Court of Appeals of Ohio vacated Elko’s conviction and ordered a new trial. The court said Judge Russo had failed to properly instruct the jury. “We agree with Elko’s position that ‘resisting arrest and resisting an officer’s use of excessive force in making an arrest are two different things.’”
On May 27, 2022, a judge granted a state motion to dismiss the case. .
Elko’s civil lawsuit against Olmsted Falls and its officers was settled on April 19, 2023, for $63,750.
– Sarah M. Atia, Stephanie Teresa Espinoza, Hannah Crystal Kammoun, Alison Mendoza, and Riley Nicole Wrought
Posting Date: 06-23-2026
