(Reuters) - A National Basketball Association player on Tuesday filed a civil lawsuit in federal court alleging Milwaukee police used excessive force in a January arrest that he claims officers unnecessarily escalated from a simple parking violation. FILE PHOTO: Brooklyn Nets center Jarrett Allen (31) and Milwaukee Bucks guard Sterling Brown (23) reach for a rebound during the first quarter of NBA basketball game in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S., January 26, 2018. Mandatory Credit: Jeff Hanisch-USA TODAY Sports /File Photo According to the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Milwaukee, Sterling Brown, a guard for the Milwaukee Bucks who is black, was wrongfully arrested and mistreated because of his race by a police department with a history of excessive force against black people. The suit claims one of eight police officers named as defendants in the suit pulled his gun and another used a stun gun on Brown after he was already subdued and being held on the ground by several other officers. In addition to the eight officers, the city of Milwaukee and its police chief, Alfonso Morales, are defendants in the case. Local media has reported that most of the officers involved are white. The suit seeks unspecified damages. Brown’s attorney, Mark Thomsen, told Reuters on Tuesday that Brown was not motivated by money in filing the suit, but rather seeks a change in the way Milwaukee police treat young black men. Morales was named chief in February, but the suit claims he did not handle discipline of the officers well as the stiffest penalty was suspension for three of the officers, varying from two to 15 days. Morales has previously apologized for the arrest. A call and an email to the Milwaukee Police Department were not immediately returned on Tuesday. The suit alleges Brown parked in a handicapped parking spot outside a drug store about 2 a.m. on Jan. 26, and was approached by a Milwaukee officer who shoved Brown and subsequently called for backup. The player was never charged with anything in the incident. Officers surrounded Brown as they questioned him and one pulled out a gun after two policemen noticed what appeared to be targets from a gun range in the player’s car. Brown, a 23-year-old reserve player on the NBA team, was unarmed. “It’s simply outrageous that someone would pull their gun” in this situation where Brown posed no serious danger to any of the officers, Thomsen told Reuters. The suit says that Brown, who was 22 at the time of the incident, “was kneed in the groin by one of the officers” before being thrown to the cold pavement during a night when the wind chill temperature was 26 degrees Fahrenheit (-3 degrees Celsius). Brown was already on the ground held by officers when he was shocked with the stun gun in the back, the suit claims. The suit also claims that several of the officers switched off body cameras to conceal their actions and some of them conspired to synchronize their stories after the incident.<doc-sep>Milwaukee Bucks player Sterling Brown is suing the city and its police department following an arrest that turned violent despite Brown’s cooperation with the cops. Among other allegations, Brown’s lawsuit claims that the initial stop and escalation — over double parking in handicap spaces at a Walgreens — were unnecessary and not allowed under state law, and that the force used to arrest him was excessive. The black 23-year-old argued that racial bias played a role in the stop and arrest. An investigation by the Milwaukee Police Department has already found that the cops involved “acted inappropriately,” leading to a short suspension for three of the officers, according to HuffPost. In body camera footage of the January arrest, Brown seemed to pose no threat to the officers, yet multiple cops were deployed to the scene and used a stun gun on him — all over a parking violation. The video begins with an officer standing by Brown’s car, preparing to write a ticket because the vehicle was parked across two handicap spaces. Brown then arrived and argued with the officer, but ultimately they came to a standstill when the cop said that he needed to wait for backup. Within minutes, multiple police cars arrived at the scene. Several cops — at least six at one point — surrounded Brown, and he talked with them. Brown had his hands in his pocket for much of the conversation, which officers did not seem to mind at first. But after a while, an officer ordered him to take his hands out. Suddenly, and with no sign of aggression by Brown, the cops got extremely aggressive, grabbed Brown, and pushed him to the ground. As Brown was on the ground, an officer yelled, “Taser, Taser, Taser!” The officer then used a stun gun on Brown. At no point did Brown appear to pose a threat to the officers, based on the video. Brown was initially arrested for resisting or obstructing an officer, but he was not charged with any crime after review of the body camera footage. “My experience in January with the Milwaukee Police Department was wrong and shouldn’t happen to anyone,” Brown said in a statement in May, when the video was released. “What should have been a simple parking ticket turned into an attempt at police intimidation, followed by unlawful use of physical force, including being handcuffed and tased, and then unlawfully booked.” The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel found that “although the Milwaukee Police Department’s use of firearms has dramatically declined in recent years, there has been a rise in the use of Tasers” — suggesting some sort of substitution effect. Stun guns were originally marketed as nonlethal, but they were relabeled “less lethal” after their use resulted in deaths in some cases. Milwaukee has a long history of struggles with police and racism. A 2013 ranking, for example, deemed it the most racially segregated metropolitan area in America. In 2016, riots broke out in the city after a police officer shot and killed 23-year-old Sylville Smith — leading City Alder Khalif Rainey at the time to remark that the city’s struggles with racism had led to a “powder keg.” The attention around Brown’s arrest put a spotlight on police use of force in America, particularly against black Americans. There are vast racial disparities in how police use force. And these kinds of incidents, in which a dispute over a parking ticket can escalate into a violent arrest, are a big reason police have lost so much trust and legitimacy within the black community. The racial disparities in police use of force Consider the use of deadly force: Based on nationwide data collected by the Guardian, black Americans are more than twice as likely as their white counterparts to be killed by police when accounting for population. In 2016, police killed black Americans at a rate of 6.7 per 1 million people, compared to 2.9 per 1 million for white Americans. There have also been several high-profile police killings since 2014 involving black suspects. In Baltimore, Freddie Gray died while in police custody, leading to protests and riots. In North Charleston, South Carolina, Michael Slager shot Walter Scott, who was fleeing and unarmed at the time. In Ferguson, Missouri, Darren Wilson killed unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown. In New York City, NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo killed Eric Garner by putting the unarmed 43-year-old black man in a chokehold. One possible explanation for the racial disparities: Police tend to patrol high-crime neighborhoods, which are disproportionately black. That means they’re going to be more likely to initiate a policing action, from traffic stops to more serious arrests, against a black person who lives in these areas. And all of these policing actions carry a chance, however small, to escalate into a violent confrontation. That’s not to say that higher crime rates in black communities explain the entire racial disparity in police shootings. A 2015 study by researcher Cody Ross found, “There is no relationship between county-level racial bias in police shootings and crime rates (even race-specific crime rates), meaning that the racial bias observed in police shootings in this data set is not explainable as a response to local-level crime rates.” That suggests something else — such as, potentially, racial bias — is going on. One reason to believe racial bias is a factor: Studies show officers are quicker to shoot black suspects in video game simulations. Josh Correll, a University of Colorado Boulder psychology professor who conducted the research, said it’s possible the bias could lead to even more skewed outcomes in the field. “In the very situation in which [officers] most need their training,” he previously told me, “we have some reason to believe that their training will be most likely to fail them.” Police need to own up to these problems to do their jobs These types of statistics, along with cases like Brown’s, explain the distrust between police and minority communities. But more than simple distrust, these issues also make it more difficult for police to do their jobs and stop crime. There’s a longstanding criminological concept at play: “legal cynicism.” The idea is that the government will have a much harder time enforcing the law when large segments of the population don’t trust the government, the police, or the laws. This is a major explanation for why predominantly minority communities tend to have more crime than other communities: After centuries of neglect and abuse, black and brown Americans are simply much less likely to turn to police for help — and that may lead a small but significant segment of these communities to resort to its own means, including violence, to solve interpersonal conflicts. There’s research to back this up. A 2016 study, from sociologists Matthew Desmond of Harvard, Andrew Papachristos of Yale, and David Kirk of Oxford, looked at 911 calls in Milwaukee after incidents of police brutality hit the news. They found that after the 2004 police beating of Frank Jude, 17 percent fewer 911 calls were made in the following year compared with the number of calls that would have been made had the Jude beating never happened. More than half of the effect came from fewer calls in black neighborhoods. And the effect persisted for more than a year, even after the officers involved in the beating were punished. Researchers found similar impacts on local 911 calls after other high-profile incidents of police violence. But crime still happened in these neighborhoods. As 911 calls dropped, researchers also found a rise in homicides. They noted that “the spring and summer that followed Jude’s story were the deadliest in the seven years observed in our study.” That suggests that people were simply dealing with crime themselves. And although the researchers couldn’t definitively prove it, that might mean civilians took to their own, sometimes violent, means to protect themselves when they couldn’t trust police to stop crime and violence.<doc-sep>“The city hasn’t done virtually anything yet,” Brown’s attorney Mark Thomsen told reporters Tuesday morning, speaking in front of Milwaukee’s city hall. ” . . . I’m convinced the only way to get this building’s attention and the citizens’ attention is to file a federal civil rights suit. I’m hoping all of America is watching because Sterling Brown knows this is not just a problem in Milwaukee. I wish and I hope that Milwaukee becomes a model of how to turn it around for the country.”<doc-sep>
MILWAUKEE (AP) -- The Latest on a lawsuit filed against Milwaukee and the city's police department by NBA player Sterling Brown alleging excessive force (all times local): 11:15 a.m. The attorney for Milwaukee Bucks player Sterling Brown says police officers violated his client's constitutional rights when they "set up, circled and then attacked" him outside a Walgreens store in January. Attorney Mark Thomsen spoke at a news conference Tuesday morning outside City Hall, shortly after filing a federal lawsuit against the city of Milwaukee and its police department. Thomsen urged city leaders to acknowledge that Brown's constitutional rights were violated and approve their claim. Brown was accused of a parking violation outside the drug store. Police videos show Brown remained calm and did not resist, yet the situation escalated, officers surrounded him and one used a stun gun on him. Thomsen says the city's policies don't prevent such conduct by police who arrested Brown that day. Brown was not charged following his arrest. The police chief has apologized for his officers' actions. ------ 10:55 a.m. A federal lawsuit against Milwaukee police alleges officers tried to reframe what happened when they used a stun gun during the arrest of Bucks' player Sterling Brown after a parking violation in January. The lawsuit Brown filed Tuesday says a group of officers instructed a colleague writing an incident report to describe the basketball player as resisting and obstructing them. Videos released by police and obtained by WISN-TV show Brown never threatened the officers and appeared calm while he waited for a parking citation. One officer involved in the arrest later sent a tweet mocking Brown, saying, "Nice meeting Sterling Brown of the Milwaukee Bucks at work this morning!" Brown wasn't charged with anything. The lawsuit naming the city, police chief, and eight officers alleges excessive force and unlawful arrest. ------ 10:12 a.m. Milwaukee Bucks guard Sterling Brown is suing the city and its police department because officers used a stun gun on him during his arrest for a parking violation in January. Brown's attorney Mark Thomsen filed the lawsuit in federal court Tuesday alleging excessive force and unlawful arrest. Brown had been talking with officers while waiting for a citation for illegally parking in a disabled spot outside a Walgreens. Officers swarmed Brown and took him down because he didn't immediately remove his hands from his pockets as ordered. Police Chief Alfonso Morales apologized to Brown last month when body-camera video of the arrest was released. Brown wasn't charged and three officers were disciplined, with suspensions ranging from two to 15 days. Eight other officers are undergoing remedial training in professional communications. To read the full lawsuit complaint, click here.