Nearly six years after Marlo Brown was wrongly frisked and threatened by Louisville police, he’s finally getting some justice.
On Wednesday, the city of Louisville agreed to pay $70,000 to settle a lawsuit relating to an incident where officers stopped Browm, a Black man, while he was driving and accused him of having drugs, according to WDRB.
The entire incident was caught on one of the officer’s body cameras.
On a night in December 2018, Brown was simply driving around the city with his children when he was stopped by police for failing to signal while changing lanes. Officer Stephen Roederer can be heard telling his partner that Brown was “probably f***ing driving around buying dope.”
Noticing that his kids were in the vehicle with him, he called Brown a “f***ing piece of s**t.” Officer Jessica Dickey, Roederer’s partner, added, “This is probably going to be a really good stop.”
More from WDRB:
The officers frisked Brown, threatened to bring in a drug-sniffing dog, searched his vehicle and questioned his children. But they found nothing illegal, so they let him go with no ticket.
Although the City of Louisville agreed to pay brown $70,000 in a lawsuit where Brown says his rights were violated, the city government still won’t publicly admit to any error in the officer’s actions, according to WDRB.
In the last few years, Louisville has been one of the more notable cities in the country that has been criticized for how its authorities treat the city’s Black residents.
In March 2023, the U.S. Department of Justice completed an investigation on the Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD), where they found that the department and its officers “engage in a pattern or practice of conduct that violates the U.S. Constitution and federal law.”
They found that the LMPD often uses excessive force, conducts searches based on invalid warrants, conducts search warrants without knocking, and unlawfully discriminates against Black people (among other things).
One of the cases the U.S. Department of Justice cited was Marlo Brown’s
If you recall, the cops behind the unlawful entry and murder of Breonna Taylor in March 2020 were also a part of the LMPD.