February 21, 2022February 21, 20222275

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West Chester Township, Ohio – A Black man in West Chester, Ohio is suing two police officers and a grocery store after he says he was racially profiled and illegally detained for shoplifting.

Eric Lindsay has filed a lawsuit against a Meijer grocery store and West Chest police Officers Tanner Csendes and Timothy Mitkenbaugh, alleging that the officers racially profiled him and detaining him illegally, while police were looking for a shoplifting suspect in the store.

Lindsay says he went to the Meijer store on his way home from work Jan. 29, 2021. Shortly after entering the store, he was stopped by police who told him he fit the description of a reported shoplifting suspect. 

According to the lawsuit, the police officers stopped Lindsay – the only Black man in the store at the time – even though he didn’t match the description of the suspect they were given. Store employees told police that the shoplifting suspect was a white man in his 30s, wearing a green or gray Carhart coat with a red hoodie underneath. Lindsay is a Black man in his 60s who was wearing a puffy orange coat on the day of the incident.

In the body camera footage, Lindsay can be heard telling the officers he walked in the store after they walked in and that his coat’s color doesn’t match the suspects description. Undeterred, both officers continue to question Lindsay as the possible suspect, accusing him of concealing items in the jacket.

After detaining and questioning Lindsay, the officers learned another officer has the shoplifting suspect in custody. One of the officers and the store’s manager later apologize and say it was all a big mix-up, according to the lawsuit.

“In the same being as so many national instances where African-Americans have been confronted by law enforcement for engaging in their daily lives and doing nothing illegal, this case is about the unsupportable and illegal profiling, detention, accusing, and interrogation of an African-American customer by Police Officers and the complicit actions of the retail store where it occurred,” the lawsuit states.

Lindsay says the “unconstitutional detention” left him feeling humiliated and embarrassed. 

“They walked past a dozen or more shoppers, don’t speak to a single one, and go to him and start bothering him,” attorney Fanon Rucker, who also said Lindsay was the only Black man in the store and “is the last person they should have stopped.”

West Chester police spokesperson, Barb Wilson, declined to comment, saying the township doesn’t speak on pending litigation.

A federal jury in Georgia on Tuesday found the three men convicted of killing Ahmaud Arbery guilty of hate crime and other charges.

After a day of deliberation, U.S. District Court Judge Lisa Godbey Wood said Tuesday morning that the jury — made up of eight white people, three Black people and one Hispanic person — had come to a conclusion and would read its verdict shortly.

The jury found father and son Greg and Travis McMichael and their neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan guilty of all the federal charges they individually faced, including hate crimes, attempted kidnapping and the use of a firearm to commit a crime. The conviction came one day before the second anniversary of Arbery’s murder.

The McMichaels and Bryan chased Arbery, 25, through their coastal Georgia neighborhood in trucks. The three men spotted Arbery running by their homes in February 2020, and cornered him and Travis McMichael fatally shot him with a shotgun.

The McMichaels and Bryan were free for several weeks after the shooting. They were arrested only after the video that Bryan recorded was released and the case was taken over by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

They were convicted of murder and given life sentences in the state trial. The federal hate crime trial centered on the history of the three men and their racial bias, a motive that prosecutors in the state case largely avoided, even though Arbery’s killing gained national attention at the same time that the U.S. reckoned with issues including racism and bias in policing.

“Two years ago today, none of us knew of Ahmaud Arbery. But two years ago tomorrow, his story shook the conscience of our nation and world,” said NAACP president Derrick Johnson. “Ahmaud Arbery was lynched in broad daylight, and today’s verdict brings us one step closer to justice.”

The hate crime verdict is an emotional victory for Arbery’s family, who spoke out against a proposed plea deal for the men.

The McMichaels attempted to plead guilty to the hate crime charges prior to the trial, but the plea agreement was rejected by the judge after Arbery’s parents, Wanda Cooper-Jones and Marcus Arbery, protested that the men would be able serve their time in a federal prison instead of a state one, calling the deal “disrespectful.”

After the trial, Cooper-Jones said she was thankful for the prosecution, but she also noted that the Department of Justice “did not hear my cry” as they continued to push forward with a plea deal that she did not support.

“What we got today, we wouldn’t have gotten today if it wasn’t for the fight that the family put up,” she said. “What the DOJ did today, they was made to do today.”

Federal prosecutors spent a week working to establish that Arbery’s murder was driven by the three men’s racial bias and their animus toward Black people.

Witnesses called included an FBI analyst who had combed through the three men’s social media and messaging history, where she found messages, videos and memes that appeared to show that the three men held strong prejudices against Black people.

The defense said the messages and social media posts were taken out of context.

Friday was the final day of testimony and perhaps the most jarring for the jury, as prosecutors called neighbors and former co-workers of the McMichaels, who all testified that the father and son made troubling racist jokes, rants and statements and were open about their negative feelings toward Black people.

Throughout the case, the defense maintained that the three men may not be likable, may have said troubling things and did not dispute the essential facts of the case. But they insisted that they were not driven by prejudice to chase and kill Arbery.

On Monday, the jury heard closing arguments in which prosecutor Christopher Perras said that the three men were driven by their “pent-up racial anger” and that Travis McMichael “was just looking for a reason” to harm a Black person.

The prosecution also focused on the McMichaels’ operating as vigilantes and their view that they were above the law. At one point in the closing statement, Perras noted that Greg McMichael did not call police when Arbery ran by; he called his son and picked up his gun.

“There’s a big difference between being vigilant and being a vigilante,” Perras said.

Article source: https://www.nbcnews.com/

February 23, 2022February 23, 20222872

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Minneapolis, Mi. – A food delivery driver was awarded a $100,000 settlement after a Minneapolis Park Officer was seen on body camera video pulling his gun on her during a routine traffic stop.

Jenice Hodge, 42, was working for a food delivery service on July 12, 2019 when she was pulled over by Minneapolis Park police Officer Calvin Pham. The officer explained to Hodge that he pulled her over for not wearing a seatbelt and for having her cell phone in her hand while driving. 

Within 60 seconds of the stop, as Hodge goes into her wallet to retrieve her license, Pham suddenly pulls his gun out of his holster and orders her out of the car.

Hodge said she was scared and confused.

“I didn’t even have my driver’s license out of the sleeve and I had a gun pointed at my head,” Hodge told KSTP.

Body cam footage shows a confused and scared Hodge with her hands through the car’s sun roof, repeatedly telling the officer to “calm down” as he told her to get out of the car.

“Step out of the car now! I will rip you out if you do not step out of the car now!,” Officer Pham tells Hodge as he rests his gun on his chest.

Pham calls for back up over his radio as Hodge can be heard telling her husband, who was on her cell phone, where she is. Pham suddenly becomes more aggressive, pointing his gun at Hodge, and yelling at her to, “Get the fuck out of the car!”

Hodge exits the vehicle with her hands raised saying, “I don’t have anything. Why are you pointing the gun at me?”

Pham pushes Hodge to the ground and arrests her.

The officer later wrote in his incident report that he believed “Jenice may have a gun” after he noticed a permit to carry card in her wallet. However, nowhere in his report did Pham make any mention of seeing a gun.

Pham also said in his report that he saw Hodge reach into her purse, reach her hand “near her waistline and in between the seat and center console,” leading him to believe she was trying to conceal something or was reaching for a weapon.

Hodge told KSTP that she does have a valid permit to carry but she did not have her gun with her that day and denies reaching anywhere except in her wallet to retrieve her driver’s license.

Hodge said she feared for her life during the traffic stop and thought about a similar traffic stop that led to the shooting death of Philando Castile.

“That was the first thing that ran through my mind,” Hodge said. “I’m going to die the same way that this young man died.”

In October 2021, the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board voted to pay Hodge $100,000 to settle her lawsuit.

The following month, Officer Pham resigned from Park Police. His separation form doesn’t list a reason for why he left the department, according to KSTP.

The traffic stop involving Hodge was not mentioned in Pham’s personnel files.

His law enforcement license is currently inactive, according to the Minnesota Peace Officers Standards and Training Board.