A black man from Lakewood, Washington, who settled a civil rights claim against a racist cop in 2009 for $27,000 has been awarded an additional $60,000 after a whistleblower leaked a police document to his attorney the police department illegally withheld during the original lawsuit.
Darren Burgess called police when his estranged wife’s aunt refused to get out of his car. Instead of dealing with the aunt, Officer Ryan Moody and another cop ordered Burgess to walk home. When he objected, they arrested him and roughed him up. Burgess sued in federal court for civil rights violations. In those proceedings, Moody denied Burgess’ accusations of racial profiling.
In fact, Moody’s training officer had expressed concerns in Moody’s evaluation about his racial profiling behavior. When Burgess sued, the Lakewood police department removed that document from Moody’s personnel file and also deleted references to it from the department’s electronic records.
Ordinarily, legal settlements can’t be renegotiated after they become final. But the rules governing lawsuits in both state and federal courts allow judges to vacate a settlement a party procured by fraud or misconduct, including hiding evidence that should have been disclosed in the legal discovery process. In this case, a federal judge ordered the case reopened after Burgess’ attorney complained to the court about the Lakewood police department concealing Moody’s evaluation.
This kind of conduct is reprehensible enough when private individuals or businesses do it. Police, as law enforcers, are held to a higher standard of honesty. But we know all too many cops, and the police departments they work for, all too frequently violate innocent citizens’ rights and then lie to courts about it. Officer Moody’s racist behavior on that call ended up costing Lakewood taxpayers enough money to pay the salary of an additional police officer for an entire year or more, by the time the city’s legal expenses are factored in. That money obviously would have been better spent on policing than settling a racism claim against a bad cop.
Yet, there is no penalty for Moody, or even the Lakewood police department. The taxpayers, not the cop or department, get stuck paying for Moody’s bad behavior — and the dishonest behavior of the department brass responsible for covering up the fact they’re knowingly and willingly keeping a racist cop on the force.
The Lakewood police, like America’s other police agencies, have been accountability-free. That needs to change. Incidents like this one should cost racist cops their jobs and should end their lying superiors’ careers. To drive that point home, judges should drag officials who conceal evidence from courts into court, hold them in contempt, and throw them in jail for a week so they know what it feels like to be treated as criminals. Because that’s exactly what they are.
Source of news story: Â Seattle Times
http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2024939959_lakewoodsettlement1xml.html
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