Forest Park City Council Members to file a lawsuit against the city over surveillance
Forest Park City Council members, Latresa Akins-Wells and Dabouze Antoine will be represented by Dr. Rod Edmonds to sue the city and Forest Police Department over surveillance of their homes and movements.
A press conference was held Tuesday morning at the law firm of Edmond, Lindsay and Atkins. Akins-Wells was visibly emotional and could be seen wiping tears from her eyes while Antoine wrapped his arm around her shoulder. Attorney Keith Lindsay of the Edmond, Lindsay & Atkins law firm and members of the Clayton County NAACP, including President Cheryl Synamon Baldwin were also present.
"We’re not here feeling good about the situation. It’s a horrible situation,” said Dr. Roderick Edmond, the council members’ attorney.
Former Forest Park Police Chief Dwayne Hobbs “had set up almost like a task force for the prior four years to survey, spy and really do a stealth surveillance of these two African-American city council people.” The firm handed out copies of an ante litem notice of intent to sue the city of Forest Park and the Forest Park Police Department, sent by certified mail to Mayor Angelyne Butler giving them 30 days to respond.
Akins-Wells said “at least 12” officers had been assigned to the task force, which has since been disbanded. Akins-Wells said, “It hurt me more than anything. That’s where I grew up. I went to elementary, middle and high school there ... and I’m fighting against this type of thing.”
The lawsuit could be filed sometime in the next six months, Edmond said, although he did not yet know whether it would be in state or federal court or both. “If there are federal issues, they will be brought in federal court,” Edmond said, adding that depended on where the evidence takes them.
The firm alleges that, “without reasonable suspicion, probable cause or any sort of warrant, Chief Hobbs, perhaps with the knowledge and support of other government officials in Forest Park, abused government resources to investigate two elected African American council members who challenged his leadership.”
“My heart is broken....if this is what they’re doing to elected officials, what are they doing to regular citizens?", said Antione.
Antoine also mentioned that one day before he took office, a Forest Park police officer came to his job at a local school asking to see his passport. The officer glanced at it and then handed it right back. "As a young African American man in the South, I am very sen sitive to racial profiling. When I wondered if I was being followed, it scared me. Was I going to be arrested? Were the police going to set me up to be convicted of something I did not do? I did not know for sure what was happening. It was a horrible way to live.”
The council members have said they feel that the department took racially-motivated actions under Hobbs referencing to traffic stops near Hispanic churches on Sundays and a investigation conducted by the Clayton News into allegations that the department disproportionately arrested African-Americans for minor marijuana possession.
The investigation found that over 80 percent of those arrests between 2015 and 2018 were of African-Americans.
“We have placed the Forest Park Police Department on notice. The specific claims in the lawsuits that we file will be dictated by the information available at the time and will expand during the discovery phase of the lawsuits. We expect the GBI investigation to provide much more context.", stated Edmond.
Clayton County NAACP president, Cheryl Synamon Baldwin said that she "received a call from a white citizen who did not want to tell me his name,” but that he had told her, “’Ms. Baldwin, I just wanted to let you know what they say about blacks being pulled over is true” and that he had seen this from his window.
Baldwin said the man did not want to identify himself out of “fear for his family.”
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