Taniyah Pilgrim and Messiah Young were in their vehicle in downtown Atlanta on May 30, 2020 when they got into traffic during the protests sparked by the death of George Floyd five days earlier.
The lawsuit alleges that the students’ car stopped due to heavy traffic, but they were approached by six officers from the Atlanta Police Department and asked to open the door and get out of the vehicle. When Pilgrim turned to get out of the car, she was charged twice in the passenger seat.
An officer then broke the window on Young’s side, and Young was also trumped twice while in the driver’s seat, the lawsuit added.
“I am reminded of it every day of my life, so something just has to be done so that people never experience this again,” Young said at a press conference on Thursday.
The students said they were out to pick up food when they encountered the protests. Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms had declared a citywide curfew at 9 p.m., but the students said in the lawsuit they were unaware of it. The incident occurred around 9:40 p.m. that night, the lawsuit said.
Young was charged with evading police, but the charges were dropped the next day. Pilgrim was never charged, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages and names several individual officials, the City of Atlanta and Mayor Bottoms as defendants.
Atlanta police did not respond to a request for comment. A mayor’s office spokesman said the lawsuit had not been served so they were unable to comment.
When attorneys played the body camera footage of the incident, Young turned away and said the images were too exciting for him. Pilgrim dabbed his eyes.
“Going through this was as terrible an experience as the fear I got that night every day … the nightmares I still have to experience almost every single night,” said Pilgrim. She added that “life has taken a total turn” for “something we did not ask to be involved in”.
The lawsuit states that four of the six Atlanta Police Department officers involved have been fired. And they were all charged with aggravated assault, simple assault and criminal damage to property following the incident. Two of them had resigned and returned to the force.
Young’s father said the incident had a lasting impact on his son and that he is now “like the walking dead.”
At the time of the incident, Pilgrim had said in an interview with CNN last June, “It was the worst experience of my life” and “I thought I might get killed”.
Pilgrim is attending Spelman College and Young is attending Morehouse College, two historically black colleges in Atlanta, the lawsuit states.
The student lawyer said the city “did not take responsibility”.
“It’s really overwhelming to think that they could be treated this way and their lives would change so dramatically and no one comes in and says we have to get this right.” Attorney Mawuli Davis said.
Chris Stewart, another attorney working on the case, has worked with the families of Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Rayshard Brooks, among others.
Stewart has promised to file a lawsuit against the city of Atlanta every week in June. “The city of civil rights is the city of injustice in these cases,” said Stewart.
source https://collegeeducationnewsllc.com/two-college-students-pulled-from-car-by-police-during-last-summers-protests-in-atlanta-file-lawsuit/
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