DETROIT - The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan announced today that its“bicycling while black” lawsuit, filed eight years ago on behalf of 22 teenagers, has finally been settled in an out-of-court agreement.
The $160,000 settlement comes after a federal court ruled that there was enough evidence of racial discrimination and illegal searches by the Eastpointe Police Department to take the case to a jury trial.
“This settlement is a
very positive step forward for the City of Eastpointe, as well as for our
clients,” said ACLU of Michigan Executive Director Kary Moss. “Racial profiling
has been a long-standing problem in this country and it is critical that we
address it within our own backyards. We hope that this agreement we are
now announcing will serve as a model for other communities as well as a
deterrent to the humiliating practice of racial profiling.”
Each of
the youth involved in the case had been stopped by an Eastpointe police officer
while riding their bikes. The legal challenge to the racial profiling
practice began after a 1996 memorandum instructed officers to investigate any
black youth riding through Eastpointe, a predominantly white city. The
children represented were pulled over, questioned and searched. Bikes were
sometimes confiscated and later auctioned off by the police department. The
bicyclists also said police used racial slurs and told them to get their “black
asses” back to the other side of Eight Mile Road. Some bicyclists were even
physically escorted across the road, which is the notorious dividing line
between predominantly black Detroit and mostly white Eastpointe.
"Teenagers
stopped from riding their bikes in Eastpointe had their constitutional rights
violated,” said Charles Chomet, an attorney with the law firm of Kelman Loria
who filed the case in 1998 and served as co-counsel to the ACLU. “I am pleased
that at long last this injustice has been recognized.”
Police logs and reports in Eastpointe identified over 100 similar incidents between 1995 and 1998 in which black youth, ages 11-18, were detained. Eastpointe has denied that any of the stops were improper.
In June 2005, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the district court decision, which had ruled in favor of the officers. The appellate court indicated that the pat-down searches, hand-cuffs, the seizing of the bicycles and subsequent detention in the back seat of a police car are unreasonable and unconstitutional.
In the three-judge panel opinion, Judge Boyce F. Martin, Jr., wrote, “…we are both frustrated and concerned with what appears to be consistent disregard for basic Fourth Amendment principles by the Eastpointe Police Department and its officers ... Counsel may shout ‘officer safety’ until blue-in-the-face, but the Fourth Amendment does not tolerate, nor has the Supreme Court or this Court ever condoned pat-down searches without some specific and articulable facts to warrant a reasonable officer in the belief that the person detained was armed and dangerous.”
After the lawsuit was filed, the department has also instituted racial diversity training for all officers.
“I am very happy that
I can finally close the chapter on this part of my life. It was a really
tough time for me as a 13-year-old and I just hope that no other child has to go
through this,” said Marcus Simpson, one of the represented bicyclists. Marcus
was 13 at the time his bike was seized by police and will soon graduate from
Bowling Green State University.
ACLU of Michigan Legal Director
Michael J. Steinberg and cooperating attorney Mark Finnegan argued this
case.
The Appeals Court decision is online at: www.aclumich.org/pdf/briefs/bikingwhileblackappealsdecision.pdf