ACLU seeks potential plaintiffs to challenge police practices
27th July 2020 · 0 Comments
By Ryan Whirty
Contributing Writer
The ACLU of Louisiana announced last week that it is seeking citizens who have been attacked physically or emotionally by law enforcement officers to contact the organization as potential plaintiffs in lawsuits challenging such unconstitutional police practices.
Nora Ahmed, Legal Director of the ACLU of Louisiana, told The Louisiana Weekly that the legal effort will hopefully not be a class-action lawsuit challenging alleged police brutality, but a series of individual lawsuits ultimately aimed at stopping the systemic, race-based policing that has recently resulted in the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other unarmed Black citizens across the country.
Ahmed said the violence perpetrated by police against innocent civilians could encompass physical attacks and excessive force, such as beatings and shootings, or emotional harassment and infliction of fear by police engaged in racial profiling.
“It’s not just excessive brutalization,” she said. “It’s really just going after people of color for no other reason than the color of their skin.”
Ahmed said the ACLU is especially looking for cases that don’t necessarily include excessive physical force, but psychological and emotional harassment and attacks, such as racially motivated traffic stops, searches and seizures that violate the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments and any additional applicable laws.
“We’re trying to bring cases attacking the unconstitutional conduct that has happened for years without legal action being brought,” Ahmed said. “We’re effectively trying to say that cases [of police abuse] that don’t rise to the level of excessive force but still are unconstitutional are important, and we want to bring them to court.”
Ahmed said, for example, that the organization has even received reports in Louisiana of police officers using dogs to chase Black children in an effort to instill fear. Other examples include law enforcement using vehicles to stop individuals that could possibly rise to the level of excessive force.
Although such reports have not yet been verified, the ACLU wants to investigate to see if such offenses might actually be true.
She said the ACLU is hoping to work with private firms who have expressed interest in bringing legal actions by citizens against law-enforcement violence. The organization is hoping that by focusing on legal actions in one state, activists, citizens and civil rights law firms can “establish a litigation blueprint for altering police conduct across the country,” according to an ACLU press release.
“For the first time, we have seen a lot of large firms making statements about wanting to end police brutality, and we want to see if [the ACLU] can get them on board to come and help in Louisiana,” she said. “We want to see if they would like to come to the deep South and rise to that call [for justice].”
Ahmed noted that due to existing statutes of limitations and the time required to investigate and prepare each case, the incidents being sought must have occurred on or after May 1, 2020.
Citizens interested in pursuing legal action against unconstitutional police actions can contact the ACLU of Louisiana’s Justice Lab by emailing justicelab@laaclu.org, or calling (504) 522-0628 and leaving a message.
The campaign is termed “Justice Lab: Putting Racist Policing on Trial.”
ACLU Executive Director Alanah Odoms Hebert said in a statement that hopefully the legal campaign will prevent tragedies, such as the deaths of Floyd and Taylor, before they happen.
“Often police are only held accountable after we witness gut-wrenching images of people of color being subjected to intense brutality,” Odoms Hebert said. “But that is often far too late. Justice Lab aspires to hold police accountable for every instance of unconstitutional conduct to the extent the law allows.”
Ahmed agreed, saying that the Justice Lab campaign is hoping to attain financial compensation for the victims of police abuse, “but now it’s also really important to have a serious conversation with law enforcement about what we need to do to stop those [abuses] before they get to a murder trial.
“We want people to know that we’re interested in hearing their story,” she added.
This article originally published in the July 27, 2020 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
