The Milwaukee Police Department will need to defend its controversial use of stop-and-frisk policies in light of a class-action lawsuit lodged by the American Civil Liberties Union, according to a report.
The nonprofit is representing Charles Collins, 67, and numerous others in the Wisconsin city, with a class-action case accusing the police force led by Chief Edward Flynn of racially profiling with quotas.
In an interview with Reason magazine, Collins cited one instance in 2014 when an officer pulled him over just to see his driver’s license and check for weapons.
“We’re not the ticket police,” the officer reportedly told Collins when asked if he had been speeding.
Collins claims Milwaukee police have stopped him without probable cause countless times. Flynn has overseen the department since 2008.
“As a brother or black man living in Milwaukee, it’s not an unusual thing,” Collin told Reason. “When I leave my home, I leave with apprehension. Not that it’s in your face, but it’s there. I feel there’s a good possibility that I’ll get shot or pulled over.”
Milwaukee Police Chief Ed Flynn has led the Milwaukee Police Department since 2008.
“It’s in me, you know what I’m saying? I can feel it.”
A teen boy is among the policy’s challenges. He claims he has been stopped by Milwaukee cops three times — once as a fifth-grader, again in seventh grade and most recently while walking to his high school. The lawsuit, expected to be filed as early as Wednesday morning, will detail a pattern of abuse with its “high-volume, suspicionless stop-and-frisk program,” court documents state. The city has already faced dozens of lawsuits challenging police tactic.
The lawsuit comes on the heel of the ACLU scoring a large round of donations while battling the Trump administration’s travel ban. Its attorneys will claim that Milwaukee’s policy violates Title VI civil rights, the Fourteenth Amendment and Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.
New York City has led the way in bringing down stop-and-frisk practices.
In 2013, a federal judge found the NYPD’s use of stop-and-frisk in predominantly black and Latino communities unconstitutional. Cops have conducted more than five million impromptu street interrogations since 2002, according to the New York Civil Liberties Union.
Angry crowds took to the streets for two nights to protest an officer-involved killing in Milwaukee in 2016.
The ACLU lawsuit will allege that Milwaukee’s use of the NYPD’s CompStat to monitor crime statistics has fueled a quota among officers, according to Reason.
High-profile minority deaths, such as Eric Garner in NYC and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., at the hands of law enforcement has created a heightened awareness of police abuse of power and sparked the Black Lives Matter movement.
A police shooting in Milwaukee sparked two nights of violent unrest in 2016.
Former police officer Dominique Heaggan-Brown fatally shot the gun-toting Sylville Smith, 23, after he fled traffic stop. The rookie cop was fired from the Milwaukee department following sexual assault claims. A man told police Heaggan-Brown raped him after a drunken night at a bar, watching the fiery riots on TV.
He was later charged with reckless homicide in Smith’s death. He allegedly fired the fatal shots after Smith was disarmed.
Source: www.nydailynews.com
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