Updated as of 12/11/2023 at 3:30 p.m. ET
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Thirty-six was the age of Jawan Dallas before he died following an encounter with Mobile, Ala. police, $36 million is what his family is seeking the wrongful death lawsuit filed on his behalf.
In a press conference Monday, civil rights attorneys Benjamin Crump, Harry Daniels, Lee Merritt and John Burris announced the filing. The suit comes after the demand to view the body camera footage which still has yet to be shown to the public. Upon viewing the video, Crump claimed Dallas was tased 13 times.
“There is no question the video is bad. It makes the police officers look like people murdering an unarmed Black man. That’s why they don’t want to release it and sweep this under the rug,” Crump said.
The suit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Alabama in Mobile, alleged the police department practiced unconstitutional policies specifically around obtaining ID. In the state of Alabama, citizens are allowed to refuse providing their ID to police if they are not suspected of committing a crime.
In Dallas’ case, the attorneys argue he was suspected of being a criminal before the police even realized he wasn’t the suspect they were looking for, resulting in the deadly encounter. For their actions, the suit slams the officers for “falling below” the response of a “skilled or proficient” officer.
As part of the suit, Merritt said they demand not only accountability but also a policy change for the department.
The family of Jawan Dallas is calling on an Alabama police department to release the body camera footage in a fatal police interaction that took Dallas’ life. An attorney for the family demands to know why the cops even approached the man in the first place.
In their initial report, the Mobile Police Department claimed the responding officers were investigating the report of a burglary in a mobile home community in Theodore, Ala. on July 2. The description of the suspect is that of a Black homeless man wearing red pants headed to Lot 27, per Alabama Political Reporter. In that lot, the cops found Dallas and his friend sitting in a car and demanded to see Dallas’ identification, an order he refused (which is legal in the state of Alabama).
Police claim he then tried to flee the scene leading to a scuffle in which the cops deployed the taser on him twice. They said Dallas notified the cops of his asthma but it wasn’t until 20 minutes later when he began experiencing a “medical emergency” that he was transported by EMS to the hospital where he died.
Attorneys Harry Daniels, Ben Crump, Lee Merritt and John Burris viewed the body camera footage of the incident last week with the Dallas family, per WKRG. In the 45-minute video, Daniels said Dallas was just a bystander and the police had no reason to even approach him.
“He did nothing wrong in the first place for the police to even engage him. Let’s not lose sight of what it is. An innocent citizen who had nothing to do with anything was killed by the Mobile City Mobile Police Department,” Daniels told The Root.
Daniels also said that, for roughly two minutes, Dallas was tased not twice but over a dozen times in addition to being beaten. While repeatedly trying to voice his medical condition, he was told to “shut the f-ck up” by the officers, according to Daniels. In the video, the attorney also said Dallas is heard screaming, “I don’t want to be George Floyd” and saying he couldn’t breathe.
The autopsy, obtained by The Root, ruled Dallas’ death as an accident, saying the interaction with the officers exacerbated his pre-existing condition along with the drugs in his system. Body camera footage isn’t considered public record under recent state legislation. There’s no telling if we’ll ever see what really happened to Jawan Dallas.
Meanwhile, the two officers involved remain on duty.
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