Marlo Brown, a Black man, will be paid $70,000 by the city of Louisville to settle a discrimination lawsuit that was filed after Louisville police officers pulled him over on suspicion of “driving around buying dope.”
Per WDRB, the officers during the December 2018 traffic stop also threatened to request for a police dog to be brought to the scene if Brown did not allow them to search his car. Brown’s children were in the car at the time.
The U.S. Department of Justice made mention of that traffic stop when it investigated the Louisville Metro Police Department. The Department of Justice stated that multiple stops, searches, and detainments that were executed by the LMPD were unlawful.
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“LMPD coerces people into acquiescing to searches instead of obtaining voluntary consent,” the investigation stated. “In one incident we reviewed, officers told a driver whose young children were in the car that they would call in a police dog if he did not consent to a search. These factors may affect whether consent is voluntary or the product of police coercion.”
The officers who carried out the stop and search on Brown were identified as Stephen Roederer and Jessica Dickey. The traffic stop was initially executed because Brown had not signaled while switching lanes. But one of the officers then suspected Brown had committed not just a traffic violation.
In the body camera footage of the incident, Roederer was heard telling his riding partner Dickey that Brown was “probably fu**ing driving around buying dope,” WDRB reported. Roederer also described Brown as a “fu**ing piece of shit” after realizing the Black driver was with his children.
“This is probably going to be a really good stop,” Dickey also said. Besides threatening to call in the dog, the officers searched Brown and his vehicle and also spoke to his children. The officers, however, did not find any contraband and ultimately allowed Brown to go without issuing him a ticket.
The lawsuit claimed that the officers did not have any evidence to show that Brown had committed any crime – so his constitutional rights were violated when they detained and searched him and his car.
In a statement, Brown’s attorney, Ashlea Hellman, said that her client and others “bravely” came out to sue the department “to bring attention to the pattern of unconstitutional stops that were prevalent within LMPD.”
“We want the streets of Louisville to be safe, but attempting to accomplish that through the profiling of certain individuals creates a growing risk to all of our liberties and civil rights,” she added.
“Unconstitutional stops belittle people’s self-esteem and character, make them feel less of a citizen and less of a person, and only further break down the already strained relationship between law enforcement and the communities these policies affect.”
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