do it now help me God step out the car car you can spray get out of the car you're gonna get sprayed [Music] nothing wins the hearts and minds of the public like pepper spraying or even threatening the pepper spray someone's Grandpa from the scene of a fender bender welcome back to the civil rights lawyer Channel where I bring you teachable moments not just for civilians but for police officers too you would think that police academies would cover protecting and serving somewhere in their course load but apparently that time gets spent on the benefits of qualified immunity the intricacies of dental and pension plans as well as stop in ID 101 I find it interesting that they teach police officers how to be obnoxious yet effective Witnesses in the courtroom by turning and looking at jurors every time they answer a question every single time were you working that afternoon I was working that afternoon yes they're literally that worried about meaningless Optics and theatrics in the courtroom but at the same time completely tone deaf when presented with the terribly bad idea of how the most brutally use violent physical Force against someone's harmless Grandpa who is clearly terrified of germs much less the police this morning February 1st 2022 57 year old Benjamin Quarles was running errands in downtown Minden Louisiana after dropping off his wife for a medical appointment she was a dialysis patient Mr Quarles is a school bus driver with no criminal record as he approached an intersection while driving he stopped at a red light and while stopped there his car was struck from behind by an 18-wheeler dump truck the impact pushed Mr Quarles car into the intersection but he had violated no criminal or traffic laws Mr Quarles stayed inside his vehicle shortly afterwards to police officers from the Minden Police Department arrived at the scene body cam footage captured what happened due to his wife's condition Mr Quarles was apprehensive about the officer's germs and as the officers approached him he communicated to the officers that he wanted to keep his distance from them for cops this is sort of like rolling up your window most of the way but not all the way at a traffic stop they just love that this is a direct affront to this their Authority in their eyes they see it it as disrespect instead of actually communicating which is what they're supposed to be doing in these situations they instead escalate and retaliate the puck step out the car or you can spray get out of the car you're gonna get sprayed the officers yelled to Mr Quarles that he was under arrest and to step out of the car Mr Quarles moved his left leg from inside the passenger compartment of the car and placed it on the ground outside the car he looked at officer McLaren and asked help me get out of the car the officers refused Mr Quarles then with his foot still outside the car grabbed his cell phone off the console before getting out of the car but at that moment Mr Quarles was pepper sprayed by Officer Hammontree and yanked out out of his car by the two police officers together Mr Quarles was forcibly thrown to the ground then officers McLaren and Hammontree left him lying on the ground there handcuffed and injured with his mask soaked in pepper spray he was left there on the ground until the ambulance arrived wrong is transported to a local hospital emergency room for treatment the entire time that he was in the hospital Mr Quarles was guarded by two Minden police officers How brave of them protect and serve that's their motto Mr Quarles was then put in a cage for a period of time until his brother came and bailed him out when he got his car back he found that it had been ransacked presumably because it had been searched by the officers obviously looking for the hidden cash and drugs they didn't find the cash in drugs but they did apparently find a 30 dollar Circle K gift card as it was missing from the car after the officers had finished with it at the time that this happened Mr Quarles was the victim of a traffic accident that was someone else's fault he had committed no crime the subsequent accident report determined that he had done nothing wrong the accident was someone else's fault the two officers never even bothered to determine whether Mr Quarles was injured in the accident they just escalated and retaliated due to this perceived disrespect of their non-existent authority to act in the way they were acting there can be no doubt that due to the show of force by the officers telling Mr Quarles that he was under arrest using force on him pulling him out of the car pepper spraying him that he was subjected to a warrantless arrest at that point a warrantless arrest requires probable cause that Mr Quarles had committed some crime there was no allegation of any crime having been committed before that point the officers charged him with a violation of Louisiana's resisting an officer's statute I.E resisting arrest at his initial court appearance on March 2nd 2022 that charge was dismissed on the motion of the prosecutor the charge was most likely dismissed because the officers did not possess any probable cause to believe that Mr Quarles had committed any crime prior to him being seized the chicken cannot come before the egg it's always necessary to resolve criminal charges before filing section 1983 civil rights lawsuits there are several reasons for this depending on the circumstances a conviction of one one or more of the criminal charges arising from the incident can bar a successful 1983 suit for instance if the claim was for false arrest meaning a warrantless arrest was performed in the absence of probable cause one would not want to plead guilty to the facts that you're alleging did not exist it can get complicated but that's the general idea behind it this is one of the first things that I generally have to tell people is you have to deal with these criminal charges first and get them resolved in your favor sometimes getting rid of the criminal charges is really easy such as here sometimes it's not so easy in this case a section 1983 civil lawsuit was filed and was just recently amended it appears that the government is fighting hard against it there's a pending motion to dismiss what should the government have done they should have apologized and compensated this man for violating his civil rights if they didn't have the evidence to even take the criminal case to trial or even Beyond one hearing they should comp and see him it's the right thing to do then there's the injuries that they inflicted on him they should compensate him for that why use ex the use of excessive force by police officers against an arrestee or anyone really is a Fourth Amendment violation they are liable for damages assuming they're not awarded qualified immunity at some point there will be a ruling in this case on qualified immunity probably after depositions are taken so that there's testimony for the court to analyze I'll try to keep an eye on this one as I'm curious to see what happens here I'll definitely be rooting for Mr Quarles as always thanks for watching you'll find more detailed information on the blog at the Civil Rights lawyer.com I'll post a copy of the lawsuit that I pulled off of Pacer please make sure to subscribe if you enjoy this type of content which is really the best way to learn law you use specific facts and then you try to apply the law to it and let me know in the comments if you would apply the law differently here or if you see the facts different for those of you who are police officers how would you have handled this differently are you capable of interacting with the public dynamically and with common sense and compassion or do you just have to follow the policy even where it doesn't fit the facts freedom is scary deal with it I'll see you next time [Music]