The police officers who arrested a Black pastor while he watered his neighbor’s plants can be sued, a federal appeals court ruled Friday, reversing a lower court judge’s decision to dismiss the pastor’s lawsuit.
A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that the three officers who arrested Michael Jennings in Childersburg, Alabama, lacked probable cause for the arrest and are therefore not shielded by qualified immunity.
Qualified immunity protects officers from civil liability while performing their duties as long as their actions don’t violate clearly established law or constitutional rights which they should have known about.
Jennings was arrested in May 2022 after a white neighbor reported him to police as he was watering his friend’s garden while they were out of town. The responding officers said they arrested Jennings because he refused to provide a physical ID. Body camera footage shows that the man repeatedly told officers he was “Pastor Jennings” and that he lived across the street.
ACAB, of course, but there’s more nosy, racist neighbors out there than police. Back when I worked in residential, we had the cops called on us (black coworker) because we delivered a TV
2 cop cars rolled up on us as we loaded the broken TV into our company-branded van in our company-branded shirts. Thankfully the truth of the situation was obvious. The woman who called said she saw two black guys climb the 3 story building and break in through the window on the roof deck…but I had the security logs showing I unlocked their door using their home automation controller. Not to mention that my coworker was a short, round guy. The man can barely climb a ladder, let alone scale a building.
Like I said, they were cool about it but it still wasted half an hour of our day. My coworker said he knew exactly who called…a little old white woman across the street he spotted mean mugging us.
In a better world, the cops would have laughed it off with you and then went right to the woman who reported it and charged her with… something? She didn’t file a false report, and she isn’t interfering with a case. Maybe interfering with the officers in their duty or something? She clearly lied and wasted everyone’s time.
That is false reporting. The problem is then you have to prove that she knowingly lied, and the police/DA are rarely interested in taking the time to do that. It doesn’t “get criminals off the street.”