BROOKLINE, Mass. (AP) — A black man has filed a federal lawsuit against accusing police officers in a Boston suburb of making racist jokes, racially profiling and wrongfully arresting him.
The lawsuit filed Thursday by Chiuba Eugene Obele, 29, of Boston, alleges that the Brookline Police Department has a “pattern of routinely and systematically ignoring allegations of police misconduct, particularly if the civilian is a person of color.”
A spokesperson for the police department didn’t immediately respond to a phone message on Friday.
Obele says in October 2017, a white police officer aggressively questioned him and searched him for weapons after Obele accidentally triggered the alarm at his girlfriend’s home. Obele says in the lawsuit that other than his skin color, “there was no basis to suspect” he had committed a crime.
Obele says days later he called police to report threats made against him by a tenant who lived with Obele’s then-73-year-old white girlfriend. Obele says a different white police officer who responded made crude and racist jokes about the age difference between Obele and girlfriend and refused to charge the tenant.
In the lawsuit, Obele accuses another police officer of wrongfully arresting him later in November 2017 after the tenant accused Obele of assaulting him. Obele said the officer “refused to let Mr. Obele retrieve footage from home security cameras, which would have corroborated his innocence.”
(Copyright (c) 2024 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)