Buy Photo Carl Cooper is the owner of Marathon Plumbing Repair Service. (Photo: Amy Lynch / IndyStar file photo)Buy Photo

Carl Cooper pursued a lawsuit against the Carmel Police Department because he wanted to be a role model for his children, his attorney said.

The Indianapolis man, who owns a plumbing business, was driving through Carmel in October 2013 to meet a friend at McDonald’s when he was pulled over.

He was handcuffed by Carmel police officer Steven Cash, according to a lawsuit filed by Cooper in December 2014. After that, multiple officers drew their weapons and pointed them at him. Then he was released.

Cooper, a black man, believes he was racially profiled while driving through the mostly white Hamilton County city.

Carmel police said it was simply a case of mistaken identity caused by an error with a crime database.

The city of Carmel settled the lawsuit March 8 for a modest sum of $8,000, paid to his lawyer, Scott Barnhart.

For Cooper, though, it wasn’t about the money.

“He wanted to do what was right and demonstrate to his children who view him as a good person and leader that he was doing the right thing,” Barnhart said.

Barnhart, an Indianapolis attorney who handles civil rights cases, has witnessed more egregious violations that involve death or serious injury.

Barnhart and Cooper, though, felt strongly about bringing the case in the hopes of spurring change for the problem of racial profiling, which experts say creates distrust between police and minority communities, and can cause traffic stops to escalate into violence.

"There are people out there that this happens to frequently, but often people are not in a position to go to a lawyer to challenge this. He felt an obligation and a civic responsibility as an African-American man to be able to do that," Barnhart said. "If you don't bring these kinds of cases, for the 100 of them that happen along the way, what does that tell the officer?"

In a letter to Cooper from Chief Tim Green, which was part of the settlement, Green stood by his officer’s judgment in making the traffic stop, but said the incident was “unfortunate.” Green emphasized that Carmel police officers receive ethics training and “bias based cultural diversity” training.

In a statement sent to IndyStar, Green wrote: "This was not a case of racial profiling. The vehicle in question was identified on the national crime database as stolen. While the officer was trying to verify this information, the vehicle in question pulled into a fast food parking lot and our officer followed our protocols for incidents involving stolen vehicles. Our officer was able to discover that the national crime database was in error while still at the fast food location. Our officer explained the error to the plaintiff who was released at that time and no further action was taken."

Carmel, though, has faced racial profiling claims in the past.

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In 1997, the Indianapolis chapter of the NAACP brought a federal, class-action lawsuit against the city of Carmel that argued Carmel police had a practice of stopping cars because of the driver's race. The case stemmed from a traffic stop in 1996 in which a Carmel officer stopped David Smith, an Indiana State Police sergeant, when he was driving to his Carmel home.

The officer told Smith he pulled him over because he had three antennas on the rear of his car. The lawsuit contended the claim was an excuse to pull over the car because it was clear Smith was black.

The city settled the lawsuit in 1998. Part of the settlement barred officers from stopping cars because of the race of the driver.

In August, the city settled a lawsuit that paid plaintiff James E. Beckett $7,500. Beckett, a black man, accused Carmel police officers and Hamilton County sheriff’s deputies of coming to his home in December 2012, pointing guns, ordering him out of the house, and telling him: “If you move we’ll blow your head off.” They handcuffed Beckett and four other people at the house, the suit says. Three of them also were black.

It turned out that the officers had the wrong house.

In Cooper’s case, Officer Cash ran the plates on Cooper’s car, though he committed no traffic violation, the suit alleges. When he ran the plates, an alarm sounded that indicated the car was stolen out of Washington state, Carmel police say.

The suspect's name that came up in the national database in connection with the stolen car was Terry Cooper — a white man with a different birthdate than that of Carl Cooper.

Cooper claims Officer Cash should have known that it was a mistake. In depositions, Barnhart said, Carmel police officers said the system often malfunctions.

But even though the name didn’t fully match — nor did the birthdate, or race — Cooper was handcuffed and put in the back of the police car. He cooperated with officers, but they still drew their weapons, the suit says.

Eventually, officers realized Cooper had nothing to do with the case in Washington. It was a database mistake.

Barnhart argues, though, that police should have known about the mistake right away. Did they need to handcuff Cooper?

“As an African-American male, does he have to be concerned being in the city of Carmel?” Barnhart said.

William Oliver, a professor of criminal justice at Indiana University in Bloomington, said some states, such as California, New Jersey and Oregon, have established traffic data collection systems to monitor whether officers are racially profiling motorists.

Oliver cited a study conducted in Maryland in the 1990s that examined traffic stops on I-95 in Baltimore. The study found that though officers found evidence of contraband at roughly the same rate for both white and black drivers, black drivers were detained more often.

“These incidents have the potential to escalate into violence,” Oliver said, noting the well-known 1995 case of Jonny Gammage, a motorist who was killed by police — asphyxiation from pressure on the chest and neck — after being pulled over in a Pittsburgh suburb while driving a Jaguar vehicle owned by his cousin, Steelers player Ray Seals.

Carmel police, though, maintain that the traffic stop was legal, and that even though the computer system malfunctioned, the officer acted appropriately based on the information he had available.

Jim White, a public safety lecturer at the Indiana University School of Public and Environmental Affairs and a former Indiana State Police trooper, said all officers are educated about racial profiling and racial bias at the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy, and said it can be hard to prove whether or not an officer made a stop in good faith.

“To make a stop, all an officer has to have is reasonable suspicion,” White said.

In a court document, though, Cooper wrote of the frustration of being handcuffed, with guns drawn, when he did nothing wrong.

“He ran my plates and came up with nothing. He ran my license and came up with nothing,” Cooper wrote of Officer Cash. “He ran my name in a national database and found a person on the West Coast with a warrant for a stolen car. He told me most officers would never pull a person over for that reason because you would get many false hits, but remember, you’re in Carmel.”

Call IndyStar reporter Madeline Buckley at (317) 444-6083. Follow her on Twitter: @Mabuckley88.

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