(Newswire.net — September 1, 2016) — The four year old lawsuit against Indiana’s South Bend Police gets its epilogue. The Court ruled each of 18 police officers that abused the 18-year-old African American high school student, mistaking him for someone else, to pay $1 dollar to plaintiff, the Washington Post reports.
According to the lawsuit, four years ago 18 police officers stormed in, without warrant or permission, to the Franklin’s home at about 2:30am. They were searching for Franklin’s brother Dan Jones who wasn’t in the house.
Franklin was sleeping at home when armed police stormed into his bedroom, dragged the teenager outside, handcuffed him and put in the back of a police car.
They realized they have a wrong man in custody, but arrested Franklin for for resisting his unlawful detention.
Franklin said the police woke him up by tazering him, slapping him, and asking questions later. He said that he was “too stunned to act clearly” and he did resist because he couldn’t figure out what was happening.
“I didn’t even know what was going on. I was just asleep. It was just all a big shock and disturbance,” he said.
Franklin and his family sued police and city officials, and waited four years to reach the verdict, which was anything but what the family hoped for. The city tried to settle with $18,000 but the family’s lawyer Johnny Ulmer said damages for such cases are usually between $100,000 and $300,000 and the family asked one million. The Judge finally ordered every police officer involved to pay one dollar, which is $18 bucks in total.
“What happened that night, the physical abuse that DeShawn suffered – they were slapping my clients in the face with the offer they put out there,” Ulmer said.
The community is outraged over the decision. Local pastor emphasized that the verdict clearly state that that “Your rights are worth a dollar.”
DeShawn Franklin’s nephew stated that blacks in America, have no rights. “How can we fight for something when the system was not made for us in the first place?” he said.
“No one would feel it’s appropriate for your constitutional rights to be valued at a dollar,” Franklin told media. “I can’t really say how much it would be worth, but no one’s life is really worth that amount of money. You got to still get up and try to make the best of every situation you have,” he added.