The Washington Lawyers’ Committee is targeting racially discriminatory police practices in Montgomery County. In May of 2016, our clients, an African American man and the grandmother of his child were stopped by MCPD while moving the grandmother to her new apartment. The police claimed that the stop was because of an unspecified windshield obstruction, which to this day has never been identified. It soon became clear, that it was a pretext for a racially motivated stop and illegal search. Our clients were held by the side of the road for an hour, part of the time in handcuffs, in an effort to coerce consent to a search. After a physical and canine search of the car, nothing was found and they were sent on their way with a fix-it ticket.

Body worn camera footage conclusively demonstrates that there was no reason to suspect wrongdoing and that MCPD officers prolonged the minor stop into an hour-long ordeal and highly public spectacle. The officers used tricks and pressure to get the driver to consent to a search, handcuffed him and his child’s grandmother for no reason, and subjected them to humiliating pat-down, canine, and other intrusive searches.  There were many opportunities for officers on the scene, including supervisors, to end the stop, as the Constitution requires.  Instead, each time they found nothing, the officers escalated their Fourth Amendment violations further.

The body camera videos show a superior officer training a junior officer to use methods that she characterized as “ridiculous” to try to induce the driver to consent to the search of his car.  They show the supervising officer asking a third officer who had just arrived to “un-fuck up” the situation when she realized her efforts had failed.  The videos show officers scheming to come up with some reason to justify searches of the car.  The complaint alleges violations of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments and seeks damages as well as injunctive relief.

Earlier this month, together with the ACLU of Maryland and pro bono attorneys, we filed suit alleging that the Montgomery County Police Department (MCPD) engages in a discriminatory pattern of stopping and searching people of color based on their race.  Our clients are two African-Americans who were subjected to this unlawful practice.