BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (CN) – A black man who was arrested and jailed after riding in a car that was stopped for a supposed traffic violation reached a $60,000 settlement with the city of Bakersfield, California, this month.
On March 17, 2017, Bakersfield Police officers stopped the vehicle in which Robert Mitchell was a passenger in a car along with three other black people, claiming air fresheners swinging from the rear-view mirror were a problem.
The officers – Ronnie Jeffries and John Bishop – also said the car’s tires were bald and that the driver had touched the dividing line of a turning lane when stopping the vehicle.
Mitchell refused to answer the officers’ questions and recorded the incident on his cellphone, maintaining that he’d done nothing wrong.
Officers subsequently ordered Mitchell from the car, twisted his arm behind his back and handcuffed him, according to a lawsuit Mitchell filed. He was arrested and taken to the Kern County Central Receiving Facility where he was jailed.
“Ultimately, no criminal charges were filed against Mr. Mitchell,” Mitchell said in his January 2018 lawsuit. “But the officers handcuffed him, forced him into the back of a patrol car, and separated him from his family to spend 12 hours in jail – all because he asserted his constitutional rights.”
Mitchell claimed the officers violated his First and Fourth Amendments rights.
He dropped his lawsuit May 1, after Bakersfield agreed to settle claims for $60,000.
“I should never have been arrested for asserting my constitutional rights,” Mitchell said in a statement Monday. “I hope that going forward no one in my community will be arrested for exercising their rights.”
The American Civil Liberties Union said in the statement that evidence obtained in the lawsuit revealed the Bakersfield Police Department fails to adequately train officers on the Fourth Amendment rights of the people they stop.
“The Bakersfield Police Department should immediately change its policies and training to ensure that what happened to Mr. Mitchell will not happen to anyone else,” ACLU attorney Adrienna Wong said in the statement. “Everyone, no matter their race or neighborhood they live in, has rights to liberty and privacy that police must respect.”
The ACLU salso said community groups have long criticized the Bakersfield Police Department’s Special Enforcement Unit – to which Jeffries and Bishop were assigned – for targeting black people and other people of color in the city.
The Bakersfield city attorney’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.
Mitchell was represented by attorneys with the American Civil Liberties Union Foundations of Southern and Northern California and the law firm of Kirkland Ellis.
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