Kendrick Bates says he was standing in his own front yard in Sour Lake, Texas, when two plainclothes officers pinned him against his truck and a hand closed on his throat. On Oct. 21, sixteen days after the stop, the city council announced that nobody had done anything wrong. Bates has now sued.
The city’s account is that both reviews it ordered found “the officers’ actions did not involve an inappropriate use of force and that no violations of Sour Lake Police Department policy occurred.” Police Chief Aaron Burleson and Officer Marcelo Molfino are back on full duty. The review was run by the Lumberton Police Department, a neighboring agency, and an independent police procedures consultant, and the council received it before voting.
Bates, who is Black, as Atlanta Black Star reported, says the officers followed him home on Oct. 5 in an unmarked pickup, never identified themselves and used no emergency lights. His wife, Hailey Shelburne, recorded the encounter. In the video an officer reaches into Bates’s back pocket, Bates says he does not consent to a search, and a hand goes to his neck. Shelburne can be heard saying, “Hey, get your hands off of his neck.” The officers cited Bates for running stop signs. He was not arrested.
“They immediately pinned me up against the truck, put their hands around my throat, and illegally searched my pockets,” Bates has said. The city’s position is that officers saw him “driving in a manner that presented a substantial threat to public safety.” Bates says he did not run the signs.
What the lawsuit says
The suit names Burleson, Molfino and the City of Sour Lake. It accuses the two officers of “forcibly restraining a nonfleeing, nonthreatening individual against his truck,” and claims excessive force, an unreasonable search and violations of the Fourth Amendment. Atlanta Black Star reports it was filed Oct. 20 in state court, a day before the council cleared the officers. Another outlet reported that organizers described a federal filing but that it found no record of one, so the court is not settled in the public reporting.
The city has declined to comment further because of the litigation. A former Port Arthur police chief, Mark Blanton, told KFDM that the officers “acted reasonably, well within the law” and that the hand on the neck was “a control measure also within the law.”
Bates says the video cost him more than a clean record. He told reporters he has faced harassment and death threats, and that he lost his job. Activists Quanell X and Candice Matthews held a press conference over the stop. “We all have a duty, no matter what your color is, to hold law enforcement to the highest standard,” Quanell X said.
Sour Lake, a small town in Hardin County, first said it was taking the incident seriously and moved the officers off patrol while it reviewed the stop. The review it chose, one run by a neighboring department plus a consultant it hired, is the one that ended with the chief’s return. The question now goes to a judge, who will decide which of the two accounts the video supports.
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