After 7-year-old Gerard Mungo Jr. was pulled off his dirt bike and placed in handcuffs, the police officer who cuffed him to a bench at a Baltimore City police station gave the child a simple explanation for his ordeal, according to a lawsuit to be filed by his family today.
The officer said, “If it weren?t for your mother calling my boss, you wouldn?t have went to jail,” alleges the lawsuit seeking $40 million in damages for false imprisonment, false arrest, battery and assault.
Claiming irreparable harm to the boy as a result of the March 13 arrest that garnered national attention, Gerard?s attorney said the experience has been traumatic for the child.
“You have a young man that has anemotional impact that?s going to be with him for the rest of his life,” his attorney, A. Dwight Pettit, of Baltimore, said Monday in a phone interview.
The lawsuit seeks damages to compensate for pain and suffering inflicted not just on Gerard, but his family, Pettit said.
“You have a whole sequence of events that inflicted harm on the family: The arrest of his mother [Lakisa Dinkins] two weeks after Gerard?s arrest and police pointing a gun at his 14-year-old brother during his mother?s arrest,” Pettit said.
“You would think at one point the police would say they made a mistake and back off, but we have an atmosphere of a police state in this city.”
Baltimore police spokesman Sterling Clifford declined to comment.
“We don?t comment on pending lawsuits.”
However, former Police Commissioner Leonard Hamm had called the arrest “inconsistent with his philosophy,” just after it occurred.
The arrest of Gerard embroiled the city police department in controversy, and led to an apology by Mayor Sheila Dixon just days later.
“It is clear to me the arrest was wrong,” she said at the time.
Since then, Hamm was forced to resign in July, and his successor, Frederick Bealefeld, has pledged to rebuild the trust between the community and the police department at recent hearings.
