DETROIT– A black man stopped by police during an early morning walk in a quiet community northwest of Detroit says the white officer who threw him against a police car handcuffed him and accused him of planning to burglarize , also told an important lie.
Brian Chaney says he asked for a supervisor during his arrest in Keego Harbor, Michigan, and police officer Richard Lindquist told him another officer present was in charge. The problem: That second officer was not a supervisor or even a member of the Keego Harbor Police Department.
Lindquist was never disciplined, and his supervisor says that while a suspect has the right to ask for a supervisor, what the officer did was okay.
“An officer can lie in the field if not under oath,” Keego Harbor Police Chief John Fitzgerald said in a statement in Chaney’s $10 million wrongful detention lawsuit.
But as American trust in police plummets, buoyed by cellphone videos and body cameras that can expose falsehoods, a profession once widely regarded as above reproach has seen its reputation suffer.
“It is widely accepted that the weakest and most vulnerable members of society are the greatest victims of coercive practices, such as unfair police practices and deceptive interrogation practices,” said James Craven, a legal fellow at the Cato Institute’s Project on Criminal Justice and a former criminal. defense attorney.
In a Gallup poll last year, 43% of respondents said they have a lot or a lot of trust in police, compared to 51% in 2021 and 64% in 2004. Gallup says 43% is an all-time low.
“We need police we can trust,” Craven said. “We must envision a police force built with integrity at its center.”
Several recent cases underline this need.
In May, a Washington DC police officer was arrested on charges that he obstructed an investigation and lied about leaking confidential information to the leader of the extremist Proud Boys group, Enrique Tarrio.
A white police officer and union leader in Portland, Oregon, was fired in 2022 for leaking a false report from a 911 caller claiming that a Black city commissioner had been involved in a collision. The department later recovered it.
A former officer in Louisville, Kentucky, admitted in court that she and another officer falsified information in a search warrant that led to the fatal 2020 police shooting of Breonna Taylor, a Black woman.
A 1969 U.S. Supreme Court ruling allows police to use deception and present false evidence during interrogations and investigations to induce suspects to plead guilty.
New York state has considered legislation that would ban police from lying to suspects during interrogations, while Illinois, Colorado and Oregon ban police from lying when interrogating juveniles.
Chaney, a licensed therapist and certified hypnotherapist from suburban Detroit, says in his lawsuit that he dropped his two teenage sons off at a gym in July 2021. He was walking for practice along a strip mall in Keego Harbor, about 30 miles northwest of Detroit, when Lindquist drove up behind him and yelled, “Get your hands out of your pocket!”
According to the lawsuit, Lindquist told Chaney, “I’m going to search you because you look like you have a gun and you’re going to break into cars.”
Lindquist called him a “dog,” shoved him into the back and pushed him against the police car, injuring his groin. His wrist was injured by the handcuffs during the ordeal that lasted more than 20 minutes, Chaney’s complaint says.
Chaney said Lindquist only let go of him after asking, “What are you going to do now, stick your knee in my neck?” referring to the murder of George Floyd by a white Minneapolis police officer.
Fitzgerald said in his July 18, 2022 statement that Lindquist was not disciplined over the lie about the regulator, characterizing it as “an attempt at de-escalation, temporary speculation.” He insisted that lying is not a policy in his department, but that “they are allowed to do so.”
Citizens who have been stopped can ask for a supervisor – in this case Fitzgerald – and officers must call him. Lindquist didn’t call and he didn’t think the officer gave Chaney his phone number, Fitzgerald said.
The chief declined to comment to The Associated Press, citing ongoing litigation, and several national and international organizations advocating on behalf of law enforcement did not respond to messages from the AP.
Lindquist no longer works for Keego Harbor police and the AP was unable to reach him. Attorneys representing Lindquist in Chaney’s case did not respond to requests for comment.
“You shouldn’t have the right to lie,” said Leonard Mungo, Chaney’s attorney. “That’s something we write into the moral fabric of the most powerful institution in our society, which has the authority to put you in prison.”
Detroit attorney David A. Robinson said the lies are disappointing.
“People have a lot of respect for the police,” said Robinson, who worked in Detroit law enforcement for 13 years. “A cop’s fall from grace is greater than that of an ordinary person when caught in a lie simply because of this perception.”
Robinson is black and most of his clients are black people who allege police violations of civil rights.
“From my experience in the profession, police officers often appear to take liberties in their reporting to justify force or support an arrest,” Robinson said. “It is therefore foolish to take an officer’s word at face value.”
Once someone realizes an officer has lied to him or her, trust is difficult to rebuild, said Robert Feldman, a professor of psychology and brain sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
“Basically, I think police officers lie because they can,” Feldman said. ‘They usually don’t get caught in lies, and even if they do, they get away with it. If you conclude that the police are not credible and are using deception, you become suspicious of everything they say.”
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Associated Press researcher Jennifer Farrar in New York contributed to this story. ___
Corey Williams is a member of AP’s Race and Ethnicity team.