A cadre of Austin Police Department (APD) officers who were indicted on allegations of police brutality at the May 2020 racial injustice protests that occurred in the Texas state capital have sued the City of Austin, the Travis County District Attorney’s (DA) Office, Black Lives Matter, the Austin Justice Coalition and other individuals and entities, Austin-based media outlets reported.
Austin ABC affiliate KVUE reported that the plaintiffs – namely, Joshua Jackson, Rolan Rast, Todd Gilbertson, Derrick Lehman and Alexander Lomovstev – seek monetary damages of $1 million.
KVUE reported that the officers argue in the complaint that they didn’t receive proper training on how to use less-lethal rounds and the city knew there was something wrong with those rounds.
The officials’ legal counsel, attorney Adam Meury with Texan Legal, added that protesters assaulted the officers, according to the station.
“They were assaulted, they were called horrible things, they had horrible things thrown on them, some of them called their spouses to say goodbye because they thought that they were not going to live through the night,” Meury told KVUE. “They thought that they were going to die out there in the service to their community.”
Meury insisted his clients were just doing what their job descriptions entail.
They served the community, safeguarded us and the result is they’re then attacked by that same community,” he said, KVUE reported. “And we need to see justice for these officers.”
The attorney also accused Austin Mayor Steve Adler, who is among the respondents, of encouraging people to riot though he was aware of the dangerous conditions.
According to Austin NBC affiliate KXAN, Meury said that the officers filed suit because some time has passed since they were indicted and the fullest extent of damages had become known to them.
“Before that their damages were different,” the attorney said, KXAN reported.
He further argues the city didn’t train his clients on how to use weapons while wearing gas masks.
“None of them had training on using these types of weapons while wearing gas masks,” Meury told the station. “Which is obviously difficult because, in this situation, they made the decision to put the CS gas out onto the interstate. And these officers are now having to use these weapons with these masks that block their field of vision and make it more difficult. Some of these officers were also not specialty officers and were not part of this special response team. So some of these officers had no training on how to use these less-than-lethal rounds.”
The Austin Journal reported that Travis County DA Jose Garza announced the indictment of 19 APD officers in February. The deaths of George Floyd and Mike Ramos in police custody prompted the protests.
