State police hit with racial bias lawsuit
17th October 2016 · 0 Comments
The family of an Indiana college student who visited New Orleans last fall filed a federal lawsuit on Oct. 7, exactly one year after the family alleges that three Louisiana state troopers assigned to the French Quarter violated the constitutional rights of 17-year-old Lyle Dotson.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in New Orleans, accuses Louisiana State Police of using excessive force and unjust harassment in the law enforcement agency’s encounters with African Americans. The lawsuit accuses LSP Col. Mike Edmonson and Troop B commander Donovan Archote of demonstrating “deliberate indifference” to the unconstitutional and racially biased arrests of at least four Black people, including Dotson, a student at Indiana’s Ball State University who visited New Orleans last fall along with other students to study southern architecture.
The trip was led by Dotson’s father, a Ball State University professor of architecture who was reportedly on the phone with his son at the time of the incident.
Nola.com reported that the lawsuit says the younger Dotson was on the phone with his father in the French Quarter when he was approached by three state troopers who “wrongfully arrested, physically assaulted and detained” him. The three state troopers named in the lawsuit are Calvin Anderson, Tagie Journee and Huey McCartney.
According to the lawsuit, the three state troopers approached Dotson without identifying themselves as law enforcement officers as he stood on the corner of Toulouse Street. It alleges that Journee and Anderson grabbed the teen’s hands while McCartney ordered him to identify who he was talking to on the phone.
According to the lawsuit, the troopers told Dotson that they were not arresting him but were detaining him, although the state troopers initially refused to tell him why he was being detained.
The suit claims that when asked for their badge numbers, Troopers Anderson and McCartney said their badge numbers were “1234” and “5678” and that Trooper Journee identified himself as “Michael Jordan.”
The lawsuit says Dotson was pushed against a building and searched by the troopers without being informed that he had the right to refuse being searched. It says that only after the teen was searched several times was he told that another trooper named in the lawsuit, Rene Bodet, thought Dotson was a Black man who had been following Bodet “for an extended period of time.”
According to the lawsuit, a Black male is seen on video surveillance walking up and down Bourbon Street but the suspect did not resemble Dotson.
“The only thing that the two men had in common was that they were wearing red bottoms and black tops, and that they were African-American men,” the lawsuit said.
Nola.com reported that McCartney bent down and took several pictures of Dotson with his personal cellphone while the teen was handcuffed and on the ground. When the teen tried to lift his knee to block his face from the phone’s camera, he was allegedly told by the troopers that they would claim he kicked them if he did not let them take his picture.
Dotson was ultimately taken to the NOPD’s 8th District, where he was met by his father who had filed a missing persons report after not being able to find him. Dotson was taken to Orleans Parish jail where he was charged with battery on a police officer. The state troopers accused Dotson in the incident report of kicking Trooper McCartney twice.
After about 10 hours behind bars, Dotson was released on bond and the charges against him were eventually dismissed and expunged.
According to the lawsuit, Dotson’s name was included in a Nov. 10, 2015 Louisiana State Police press release detailing 40 people arrested for drug activity in New Orleans.
“Lyle Dotson did nothing other than stand on a public street in the French Quarter,” the lawsuit said. “Rather than uphold their obligation to make the French Quarter and the City of New Orleans a safe and pleasant destination for visitors, the Louisiana State Police’s unconstitutional and racially-driven policies, practices and customs achieve precisely the opposite, endangering and injuring individuals visiting New Orleans.”
The lawsuit lists three other incidents involving Black males in violent encounters with Louisiana State Police.
One of them involves a pair of 17-year-olds — Sidney Newman and Ferdinand Hunt — whose families say they were assaulted by plainclothes state troopers in the French Quarter after a Carnival parade two days before Mardi Gras Day in 2013.
The teens said they were waiting for Hunt’s mother, an 8th District NOPD officer, to bring them a meal when they were attacked by the state troopers. Newman was reportedly tackled to the pavement by the nine troopers, who disbanded after Officer Hunt returned to the scene of the incident with food for her son and his friend. LSP Col. Mike Edmonson reportedly viewed video surveillance of the incident and, while he called it “unsettling,” said the troopers used “minimal force.”
Rather than attend a community forum on racial profiling by police, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu held his own event at another church on the same day and at the same time to promote his NOLA for Life initiative.
Both families have filed formal complaints against Louisiana State Police with the U.S. Department of Justice.
In August 2015, New Orleans trumpeter Shamarr Allen was driving to his home in the Lower Ninth Ward after a late-night gig when he was stopped by state troopers looking for a jail escapee. During the incident, caught on dash cam, the troopers pulled their guns on Allen and pushed him to the ground..
In September of 2015, New Orleans barber Michael Baugh was sitting in his car after a day of work at his CBD barbershop when he was approached by two state troopers looking for a car with several Black men who were reportedly waving a gun out of one of the car’s windows. Although he explained that the troopers had the wrong guy, Baugh was roughed up by the troopers and required medical attention.
Baugh filed a federal lawsuit against the Louisiana State Police last month.
The Associated Press reported that Attorneys Jim Craig and Emily Washington of the Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center at New Orleans, and New Orleans attorney Elizabeth Cummings represent the Dotsons.
The Dotsons are seeking compensatory and punitive damages in addition to attorneys’ fees.
This article originally published in the October 17, 2016 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
