Muslim cop fired by supervisor who predicted that he’d file “a towelhead terrorist lawsuit”, files lawsuit. There’s no way to tell from the allegations in a legal complaint who is telling the truth but if this cop’s tale is even close to accurate then I hope he wins big damages. But it does remind me of the law suit (true story) of a NYC lawyer who was rejected as a tenant because the landlord told her he didn’t rent to lawyers, they were too litigious. She promptly proved him right by suing him.
She lost her case – a judge ruled that lawyers were not a special class deserving protection under New York’s fair housing law, but unfortunately and not unexpectedly, the lawyers who comprise the NY assembly responded by adding lawyers to the protected class. Bah humbug.
In White Plains a suit has just been filed by the family of Kenneth Chamberlain, who was killed when he allegedly charged at cops who responded to his apartment when his life call alert necklace accidentally went off resulting in their visit. He wouldn’t let them enter his apartment and told them he just wanted to be left alone, but their procedures cause them to need to check out the interior of the address that placed the call. Mr Chamberlain had some emotional and mental health issues, had been drinking and was known by the police. When they police felt threatened, one shot and killed Mr Chamberlain. During all of this this, one officer (not the shooter) used the N-word.
Now the family has filed a 21 million dollar lawsuit against the city, citing excessive force, unlawful entry and improper supervision of the police. I don’t think that their case would be believable without the audible n-word used by that one officer when they were trying to get Mr Chamberlain to allow them to enter. I believe any chance of calming him down were gone once that was heard. This isn’t even just an accusation, The N-word having been used by Officer Steven Hart is clearly heard on the deceased Medic Alert recorder. Say what you want about the difficulties faced by police when responding to a call, but this action not only made it more difficult to get the deceased to comply, but has now unfairly negatively affected the way that the officer who shot Mr Chamberlain is viewed, and also puts the city in line for a lawsuit.
Shades of Mark Furman.
I don’t know if the term “towel head” was really used in the lawsuit you mentioned, but police need to know that the use of any slur puts criminal cases in jeopardy, as happened in the OJ case, or can put a city and other officers under scrutiny and up for lawsuits. It just doesn’t help any situation. I don’t know if Mr Chamberlain would have eventually complied with the requests to open his door, but surely there had to have been better communication skills learned during training.