Cops Arrested Him for a Fictitious Traffic Violation Because He
Flipped Them Off
A federal judge allowed a lawsuit against the officers to proceed,
finding evidence of several constitutional violations.
On a Friday night in July 2018, Des Moines police officers Ryan
Steinkamp and Brian Minnehan saw Domeco Fugenschuh, a 22-year-old
black man, driving west on Hickman Road. Steinkamp and Minnehan, both
white, were assigned to a "special enforcement team" focused on
illegal guns, drugs, and gang activity. They had no reason to believe Fugenschuh was involved with any of that, but they decided to follow
him anyway because he "sat up slightly" and "turned his head to stare
at the officers" as he passed them.
After the cops followed Fugenschuh for several blocks, he expressed
his irritation at the unjustified attention by giving them the finger. Steinkamp and Minnehan did not like that, so they continued following Fugenschuh and pulled him over for an invented traffic violation.
During the stop, the officers handcuffed Fugenschuh, roughed him up,
searched his car, and arrested him for the alleged traffic infraction.
They also charged him with marijuana possession after the car search
turned up a bit of pot and a portable phone charger that they
mistakenly thought was a digital scale.
When Fugenschuh sued Steinkamp and Minnehan for a litany of
constitutional violations, they argued that they were shielded by
qualified immunity, which bars federal civil rights claims against
government officials unless their alleged misconduct violated "clearly established" law. Last Saturday, U.S. Chief Magistrate Judge Helen C.
Adams rejected that defense, ruling that a jury should hear
Fugenschuh's allegations because it might reasonably conclude that
Steinkamp and Minnehan ignored constraints that should be familiar to
every police officer in the country.
https://reason.com/2024/02/09/cops-arrested-him-for-a-fictitious-traffic-violation-because-he-flipped-them-off/
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)