Black Lives Matter-LA co-founder Melina Abdullah is trying to revive a lawsuit over the Los Angeles Police Department’s response to a “swatting” incident at her home in 2020, saying previously undisclosed evidence suggests the original 911 call may have been a “fiction” created by police.
In his original lawsuit, Abdullah alleged that police ignored signs that the hostage emergency reported by the 911 call was not real and surrounded his home with more than a dozen officers in tactical gear. Abdullah’s lawsuit said police informed his attorneys that the false report was made by a teenager living in Maryland, identified in court documents as “X.”
Lawyers for the city said police should not be held responsible for any damages because they were acting on what they believed to be a legitimate hostage situation. After five days of testimony last month, a jury said police should not be held responsible for any damages because they were acting on what they believed to be a legitimate hostage situation. Ruling in favor of the city and two police officers His lawsuit names Sergeant James Mankey and Officer Jose Perez.
during testsThe jury heard a recording of a fake hostage report by someone calling himself “Dale Brooks” or “Dale Brook.” Speaking in a pronounced Southern accent, the caller told the 911 operator he wanted $1 million or he would shoot three people he had taken hostage inside a home. He gave Abdullah’s address, but did not give his name.
But in a petition filed Monday, Abdullah seeks a new trial on the grounds that police withheld key information that called into question their investigation of the 911 call. Notably, the petition filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court alleges that police failed to disclose that the “swatting” call may have been made by “a group of juvenile gamers living out of state” rather than a single individual, and that the original juvenile suspect, “X”, has since left the country.
“If Plaintiff’s investigation of ‘X’ reveals that neither ‘X’ nor the other gamers were real people, this would constitute evidence that the LAPD knew the 911 call was a hoax and did not investigate carefully before sending the full force of the LAPD to Plaintiff’s home,” Abdullah’s attorney, Dermot Givens, wrote in a declaration supporting the motion.
Givens wrote that he first learned about it during cross-examination by a Major Crimes Division detective, and that while he repeatedly pressed the department for details about the investigation, he received no answers.
“Such evidence would have helped the jury reach a different verdict at trial, because it would have helped the jury determine that the LAPD knew the 911 call was a hoax, and even that possibly the LAPD fabricated the 911 call itself to harass plaintiffs,” Givens wrote.
Givens argued in the motion that by all accounts, investigators made little effort to locate and question the suspect. He said that raises the question of whether the incident was part of a larger campaign by the department to silence Abdullah, one of its fiercest critics.
Abdullah’s legal team argued that if they had known “X” had left the country, they would have contacted the Department of Homeland Security “to determine whether ‘X’ was a real person and available for interview about the 911 call.” They argued in Monday’s motion that this disclosure could have also changed the outcome of the trial.
“If the jurors had evidence that ‘Dale Brook’ was entirely a fantasy concocted by the defendants, the jurors might have reached a different verdict,” Givens wrote.
When contacted Tuesday, an LAPD spokesperson referred questions to the city attorney’s office, which did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
In response to the alleged hostage threat, police dispatched more than a dozen officers from the nearby Wilshire Division to Abdullah’s home along with a helicopter.
Abdullah sued the city over the incident in 2021, saying she and her three children feared for their lives when officers aggressively approached her home, some of them with guns.
The city argued in court that the police response had nothing to do with Abdullah’s killing. stature in local political circlesMankey said in testimony that he did not recognize Abdullah; body-camera video played during the hearing showed he searched for Abdullah on Facebook.
At the time, several city officials called for an investigation into the police response. The incident followed massive protests over the summer over the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, during which Abdullah emerged as an outspoken local critic of policing in general and the LAPD in particular.
In the past few years, a number of celebrities and public figures have been victims of so-called swatting incidents, in which a person or group of people intentionally reports a fake threat in order to provoke a heavily armed police force to a specified location.
Officials say criminals often go to great lengths to conceal their digital identity and location, making prosecution challenging.
Abdullah earlier Target of multiple swatting callsAuthorities say a group of teenagers… motivated by racial hatredTwo previous swatting incidents at his home were attributed to him. Abdullah and his lawyers said they were prevented from showing evidence about these previous incidents to the jury.
His lawsuit states that the activist was not aware of any investigation or findings into the incident, but “still fears another similar police incident.” His defense team has argued that the police helicopter hovering over his home and the presence of dozens of armed police officers outside his house were a blatant display of intimidation rather than an attempt to protect him.
