Before the stop and search on April 20 of a Delaware-bound motorcoach carrying mostly Black student-athletes along Interstate 95 in Liberty County, deputies there already were fending off accusations of misconduct.
Allegations noted in civil lawsuits filed against the Liberty County Sheriff’s Office in recent years include deputies using a stun gun on a teenager at his school and tackling an unarmed man during a traffic stop.
“It’s pretty normal in Georgia,” said Gerald A. Griggs, attorney and president of the Georgia NAACP, of the lawsuits. “Many law enforcement agencies are faced with civil litigation, simply by the nature of the business they’re in. Our concern is it appears most of these lawsuits are by people of color. They may show a targeting or a racial profiling that happened. But, again, these are just allegations.”
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In May 2021, a Liberty County deputy named M. Gary Richardson settled a 2018 lawsuit. Richardson had apparently been assigned as a school resource officer at Liberty County High School in 2016, when he allegedly shoved a student into a wall and used a stun gun on him. The settlement was reached in mediation.
An open records request to obtain details on the settlement was denied on the grounds that neither Liberty County commissioners nor the sheriff’s office had a copy of the agreement, according to a county spokesperson. Messages left for the law office that represented the deputy were not returned. The attorney for the plaintiff has since died, and the school said it had no information on the settlement.
Timothy Grace, a Liberty County resident, filed a civil suit in March against two deputies and the sheriff’s office after he was tackled following a traffic stop in 2020.
Grace was a passenger in an SUV on Feb. 11, 2020. His brother-in-law, Anthony Rollins, was driving. One of Rollins’ co-workers, Ralph Scott, was in the back seat. All three men are Black.
Grace shared body camera footage from Deputy Larry Bell, who stopped the vehicle, and Deputy Matthew Ainsworth, who cuffed him.
The footage from Bell shows him approaching the SUV and asking the men in the vehicle to step out. Bell says he stopped the vehicle because it was weaving, and then said he smelled marijuana. He then patted down and handcuffed Rollins and Scott. Bell then tells Ainsworth to handcuff Grace, who is on the phone apparently speaking to his wife.
“Get off the phone,” Bell tells Grace.
Grace says, “I got a lawyer I’m going to call (unintelligible) right now,” while taking a step back with Ainsworth’s hand still on his wrist. Bell draws a stun gun as Ainsworth topples Grace backwards. Six seconds pass between Bell asking Ainsworth to handcuff Grace and Grace hitting the ground.
On the ground, Bell puts his hand and then his knee on the back of Grace’s head or neck, while Ainsworth tries to handcuff him.
The attorney for the sheriff’s office and the deputies last month filed a motion claiming the deputies had no civil liability, and a separate motion to dismiss most of the claims under sovereign immunity. The Liberty County Sheriff’s Office declined to comment. The Liberty County attorney did not return an email and multiple phone requests for comment. An attorney for deputies did not return requests for comment.
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Griggs said he was concerned about the procedure shown in the body camera footage.
“I don’t understand why the individuals were put in handcuffs if all they had was the smell of marijuana,” he said. “That allows you to search the vehicle and detain them, but when you place handcuffs on someone under Georgia law they’re under arrest. So my question would be what were they under arrest for at that point to necessitate the use of force of slamming the individual on the ground.”
Griggs felt that officers went directly from stopping to arresting, without clear cause.
“One, you didn’t tell him he was under arrest, and two, you didn’t delineate a crime that you had reasonable, articulable suspicion and then probable cause for the passenger to have committed,” Griggs said. “Georgia law is clear. If you don’t have a legal basis to arrest somebody, that person can resist that arrest. So I think Mr. Grace may have a strong case of his civil rights being violated.”
According to an incident report, deputies found two bags of ecstasy and some marijuana in the SUV. All three men were charged with trafficking methamphetamine and possession of marijuana with the intent to distribute. Grace also received a charge of obstruction. He denies that he had anything to do with the drugs and is fighting the charges. The other men in the car both took plea deals, according to court records.
This was not Grace’s first encounter with the sheriff’s office. He had a handful of arrests as a teenager and a few mostly misdemeanor charges later in life.
“I haven’t been perfect in my life,” he said. “I have been in trouble with the law before, when I was a kid.”
Grace’s attorney, Pierre Ifill, is a former law enforcement officer. Ifill said he was not sure if the stop involved racial discrimination, but that it matched a pattern.
“You had three Black males traveling in Liberty County, which has a history of disproportionate enforcement of the laws, and they typically use a lane violation as a precursor … to stop individuals, with most of those individuals being disproportionately African American,” Ifill said.
Grace filed complaints about the incident before the civil suit. An open records request for all of them included a complaint from Jan. 19 and a notice of litigation on Jan. 26, 2021. There is also a response to a missing complaint apparently filed by Grace about Ainsworth’s conduct.
“The video shows that at no point was Mr. Grace slammed to the ground by either deputy,” wrote sheriff’s office Maj. Dennis Davis in that response, dated March 16, 2020. “Mr. Grace did ignore Deputy Bell when he was told to get off the phone. Deputy Ainsworth used only the amount of force that was necessary.”
Ifill said he thinks Sheriff William Bowman, who was elected in 2020, is doing a good job, but the department needs more work.
“Additional training, community policing is definitely warranted so that these individuals know how to be a lot more sensitive when dealing with the public,” Ifill said.
Griggs says he wants better information about the training Liberty County deputies are receiving.
“We’re hopeful to be able to work with Liberty County Sheriff’s Office to resolve these concerns,” Griggs said, “but also lift up the victims whose constitutional rights may be being infringed on.”
