Fun Fact: Cops can't be sued for police-brutality if they take off their badges and wear gas-masks.

[DetlefK]

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/10/federal-judge-dismisses-ferguson-protesters-41-5-million-lawsuit-against-police/

A federal judge has dismissed a civil rights lawsuit that alleged police used excessive force against Ferguson, Mo., protesters and violated their civil rights.

U.S. District Judge Henry Autrey on Friday ruled in favor of summary judgment motions filed by police, police officials, St. Louis County and the City of Ferguson. The order appeared publicly in electronic court files Monday, the same day that lawyers for protesters filed a notice that they would appeal.

In his order, Autrey said that the protesters who filed the suit "have completely failed to present any credible evidence that any of the actions taken by these individuals were taken with malice or were committed in bad faith."

...

Other plaintiffs were unable to identify the officers that they claimed committed violations, Autrey found, or were not hurt during the encounters.


...

He called issues created by his clients' inability to identify police officers one of the "most disturbing aspects," saying that officers wore masks and took off their badges. "They obscure their identity and then because you can't identify them, then the officer goes free. That is not the way it is supposed to work."

[MagickMuffin]

1. They may not have badges, but check out the patches on their uniforms

I'm certain they don't say "Welcome to the PeeWee Herman Treehouse Club", but state they are in fact police.

[Travis_0004]

2. Seems lime it was dismissed because people just made up stories

Many of them have been proven to ne outright lies.

[Lee-Lee]

4. Yep. People made up takes of abuse and tried to sue

Is actually more a story of how video tape and good record keeping protect good officers from the kind of bullshit false allegations that happen every day in this country and make it harder to weed out the actual bad ones.

[Lee-Lee]

3. That's actually a tiny part of the whole ruling

Did you read the entire thing?

The biggest reason it was thrown out was that in order to sue individual government employees instead of the agency, be it cops or the zoning department, you have to prove that the individuals operated with intentional malice or gross negligence outside the scope of their duties.

Let's say for example a driver with the towns water department gets into an accident with the truck. If it's a normal "shit happens" kind of accident the water department employee can't be sued individually if he was acting in an official capacity. But if he exhibited malice or gross negligence, say he was drunk and 20mph over the speed limits then he can.

So since they couldn't show gross negligence or abuse of Constitutional rights it was thrown out. Of course the fact that the plaintiffs had sworn testimony saying they were abused and then video surfaced showing thier claims were simply not true went a long way toward discrediting thier claims that the officers operated with malice or abused their rights. Like the one that claims she was rushed and slammed down with a knee in her back and cuffed while being called racial slurs..... Only to discover a video of her being arrested blocks away from where she claimed with everyone standing up, no force used and no racial slurs. Or the one who claimed he was shot with less lethal weapons and injured but gave a totally different story to paramedics who transported him that night.

The fact that they just grabbed names of officers who were there to sue without any concrete evidence they were the ones was thrown out because they didn't have any positive ID for them in the lawsuit. Now I imagine that if the rest of the lawsuit had actual credibility and they were not basing it on lies that video evidence disproved the judge may have let it go forward and made the officers prove it wasn't them against the allegations. But since the whole thing was based on claims that were bullsjit anyway the lack of positive ID was just a tiny part of the dismissal.

This case, if anything, if a great example of of videotape and good record keeping can exonerate officers wrongfully accused of misconduct. Unless you are ok with people totally making up false claims and filing lawsuits based on them...

[pintobean]

5. I'm sure it had nothing to do with the lies

Tracey White, one of the plaintiffs, had alleged that she and her 17-year-old son were arrested inside of the Ferguson McDonald's. She claimed officers with rifles rushed in "like something out of a movie." She claimed that she was thrown to the ground and arrested when she protested the treatment of her son, who she claimed was arrested when she tried to give him the iPad she was carrying.

But videos showed that she was actually arrested a block away. "She agreed that video showed an officer placing hand ties on her, and that she was not on the ground, and that there was no knee in her back," Autrey wrote. "No racial epithets or slurs were used against Tracey White."

Or the refusal to pay ant attention to repeated warnings.

Autrey wrote that protesters were told to disperse, and when they did not and officers were ordered to begin making arrests, those officers gave repeated warnings before they started arresting protesters.