ST. LOUIS — The man who started the St. Louis chapter of CopWatch filed a lawsuit against the city of St. Louis and seven members of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department for a 2016 arrest he claims was illegal.
In 2014, David Whitt started the St. Louis chapter of CopWatch — a nationwide group that documents police activity. In a lawsuit filed this week, Whitt accused the officers and city of violating his rights by arresting him without probable cause and seizing and damaging his camcorder.
The lawsuit said Whitt was riding his bike along Wells Avenue on Aug. 8, 2016, when he saw five police cars and one man in custody. According to the lawsuit, Wells started recording the interaction when officers noticed him.
The lawsuit said an officer pulled his car between Whitt and the other officers and ordered Whitt to back up, which he did. The lawsuit said another officer then told him to back up again, which he did. He told officers he could still see the man being arrested, at which time the officer arrested him, according to the lawsuit.
Whitt spent 10 hours in jail before paying $50 bond to be released. The lawsuit said he was given a property receipt for his bike and camcorder, but did not get the camcorder back that day. Instead, police kept the camcorder until January 2017 and got a search warrant to review the videos on the camera.
The lawsuit said Whitt's video shows he was not committing a crime, and the city offered to negotiate a plea deal after signing an agreement that would clear the city of any liability. Whitt refused to sign the agreement, and the case was dropped in May of 2017.
The lawsuit says Whitt thinks it's "only a matter of time before his[sic] is arrested and prosecuted again for nothing more than exercising his First Amendment right to film police activity in public."
The lawsuit is seeking compensatory and punitive damages against the city and the officers and protection from being unlawfully arrested and having his camera seized in the future.
We reached out the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department for a statement but have not heard back.
