Thurman King/Photo Courtesy of ABC 13
A 55-year-old Black man in Rockford, Michigan, had the fearful experience of being arrested in the driveway of his own home in March 2019. Police accused Thurman King of failing to stop at a four-way intersection. Still, his charges were later dropped following the released dash camera footage, which allegedly showed King stopping at the sign, MLive in Michigan reports.
“I know I hadn’t run the stop sign, and so I’m extra scared now. So, I started calling for my fiancée, in the house, you know, yelling for her,” King told ABC 13 about the ordeal.
Officers made King get on the ground, and at one point, he informed them that he couldn’t breathe.
According to ABC 13, one of the officers replied, “If you’re talking, you’re breathing, pal.”
King later faced a felony charge for “resisting and obstructing police,” but prosecutors in Kent County decided to throw all charges out. Over two years following the incident, Stephen Drew, King’s attorney, filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of King against the two officers who arrested him in 2019 and the Rockford Police Department and the city.
The lawsuit claims that King was subjected to an unlawful traffic stop, a false arrest and unlawful jailing. It also accused both the city and police departments of allowing racial profiling, according to ABC 13.
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Also, according to ABC 13, King was thrown to the ground and handcuffed during the incident.
Claiming things like this “generally don’t happen in a vacuum,” Drew told ABC 13 about his client’s experience.
“It’s very troubling that an officer is willing to put in writing in a police report something that by video evidence is absolutely false.”
“That can be due to a culture, and if it is due to the culture of the Rockford Police Department, then we would expect some accountability, but we’ll just have to see.”