Louisville police are accused of wrongful arrest and excessive force against a Black man

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January 25, 2024

From the Associated Press

Louisville police officers with their squad cars (Credit: Louisville Police official website)

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — A 21-year-old Black man has filed a lawsuit accusing officers in the embattled police department of Kentucky’s largest city of wrongful arrest and excessive force.

Officers with the Louisville Metro Police Department arrested Jahmael Benedict last year as he walked along a sidewalk in the vicinity of a stolen vehicle, attorneys said in the lawsuit filed this month in Jefferson Circuit Court. The suit asserts that officers had “no reasonable suspicion or probable cause” to make the arrest in connection with the stolen vehicle and a stolen gun found nearby.

“Yet they acted in accordance with the custom and practice of LMPD violating the rights of the African-American citizens of the Commonwealth of Kentucky — especially the African-American males — and ignored all of the reliable information and available sources thereof that was communicated to the said defendant police officers and the other LMPD officers at the location,” the lawsuit states.

The Louisville Metro Police declined to comment on pending litigation but said in a statement that officers are working to make the city a safer place to live and work.

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