Yet within the hour, somehow two cops had placed Lyndon Gray — a music teacher wearing a black T-shirt and jeans — into a chokehold and thrown him into a police cruiser. The teacher for at-risk kids is now suing the department, saying MPD officers nearly killed him — all, he alleges, because he was black and in the wrong place at the wrong time.
"The only thing Gray had in common with the suspect was that he was an African-American male," Gray's suit reads. "In fact, forty-seven percent of the population in the area is African-American."
Astoundingly, Gray contends in his suit that MPD had already caught the teal-clad burglar — a man named Timothy Dorch — and
"We later confirmed through surveillance video that my client was not involved in the crime," Pierre says. "They arrested him just because he asked for help."
Gray is suing the department and four officers — Shawn Covert, Charles Chester, Kevin Harrison, and
The Miami Police Department does not comment on open lawsuits filed against it. But according to the suit, Gray worked as a volunteer saxophone teacher at the Motivational Edge, a nonprofit youth-outreach program located next door to the Family Dollar. (Gray also has a media production degree from Howard University and runs the nonprofit Erace the Hate, which promotes nonviolence and racial tolerance.) In the wee hours of that January 2016 morning, Gray's car was parked in front of the two buildings — a friend dropped him off by his vehicle around 2:15 a.m.
But as he was about to unlock his car door to go home, he says, an MPD officer holding a gun exited the Family Dollar and shouted at Gray to cross the street. He says he
"Defendants informed Gray that he fit the description of someone in the area who had just committed a crime," the suit says. "Defendants made this misrepresentation despite the fact that Gray was wearing a black shirt and solid color blue jeans (i.e., no patterns)."
Gray says he tried to explain what he was doing on the block at 2 a.m. and that he was a music teacher simply trying to get to his car. He says the officers responded by telling him he was being detained. Gray says he attempted to reason, but after he received no response, he told them: "This stuff is the reason why the police are in the news. I didn’t do anything.”
He claims his comment set the officers
For decades, chokeholds have been widely discouraged by police-reform advocates, who say they are overwhelmingly applied against black suspects and can be fatal. The New York City Police Department famously banned chokeholds in 1993, after then-Police Commissioner Ray Kelly blamed the practice for needless deaths. But the illegal use of chokeholds never stopped. In 2014, an NYPD cop choked Staten Island resident Eric Garner, a black man, to death for selling loose cigarettes on the street. Garner's death was filmed, and his cries of "I can't breathe!" before dying have become a rallying cry for Black Lives Matter activists.
Miami cops have also accidentally maimed or killed people using chokeholds. In 1993, the city paid out a $7.5 million settlement after a group of MPD cops beat Antonio Edwards, a black man. Then-Officer Carl Seals choked Edwards, who passed out from oxygen loss. The officers provided no medical treatment on the scene; Edwards lapsed into a coma and never awoke.
Thankfully, Gray survived his alleged ordeal. But he says he was still kept handcuffed in a cop car for hours despite the fact that MPD officers had already arrested Dorch, the real suspect, around 3 that morning. Gray wasn't released from MPD custody until 9:30 that night. He was charged with disorderly conduct and resisting an officer without violence. The Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office later dropped all charges.
