via U.S. News
District of Columbia police have inappropriately targeted young, black motorcyclists by hitting them with their squad cars to confiscate illegal bikes, according to a class action suit filed in federal court on Friday.
Dirt bikes and all-terrain vehicles are illegal to ride or operate in D.C., but can be purchased in a number of D.C. metropolitan area stores.
The eight plaintiffs in the D.C. suit are led by Terry Thedale Cain, a black D.C. resident who says that police officers followed him on his bike in July 2012 before physically clipping his leg with a cruiser.
“It was clear the police intended to hit me while I was on my bike,” Cain writes in a declaration to the court, and alleges that an officer physically assaulted him after he got off the bike.
The complaint also alleges that police department supervisors are aware of and condone the practice.
MPD told U.S. News it would not comment on pending litigation.
“This is an extreme cat and mouse game that’s been going on for years,” says David Shurtz, the Arlington, Va.-based attorney on the suit. “If they are wholesale targeting, as a police department, young black males in a poor section of town with deadly force – that is racial profiling.”
