A $30 million lawsuit filed against Baltimore police over a 7-year-old boy who was arrested while sitting on a dirt bike has been transferred to Howard County, angering the city’s branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
“What worries me is that people outside of the city do not have the type of difficult encounters with the police department that people living in the city do,” said Marvin “Doc” Cheatham, the president of the Baltimore chapter of the NAACP. “They don’t confront the same kind of obstacles that we do.”
Baltimore City Circuit Judge M. Brooke Murdock initially denied the police department’s motion to have the case tried outside of Baltimore. But after city lawyers filed a motion for her to consider, Murdock changed her ruling, without explanation, according to court records.
“It’s a very, very strange ruling,” said attorney Dwight Pettit, who represents the family of Gerard Mungo, the boy arrested while sitting on the bike in March of 2007. “She granted the city’s motion without comment.”
City lawyer Ronald Levitan argued that extensive media coverage of Mungo’s case had made it impossible for the city to get a fair trial in Baltimore. The Examiner initially broke the story last year, which was followed by at least 46 articles and media broadcasts that, Levitan said, negatively portrayed the police department.
In written arguments, Levitan blamed the media and local activists for creating “hostility” toward the police. Levitan also blamed community organizations like the NAACP and radio host Daren Muhammad for stoking the controversy.
“Community organizers, activists and religious leaders have spread their versions of the story, generating anger and resentment and seeking to foment discord and distrust of officers,” Levitan said in the failed motion. Levitan did not respond to a phone call seeking comment.
Pettit argued that pretrial publicity was not just limited to Baltimore.
“The publicity was not only national, but international,” he said. “Howard County is subject to the same media as Baltimore City.”
The $30 million wrongful-arrest lawsuit filed by Gerard Mungo Jr.’s family against the Baltimore Police Department alleges false arrest, false imprisonment, battery, assault and violation of civil rights. The family is seeking $5 million from six officers named in the suit.
Pettit said he’s now considering transferring the suit to U.S. District Court in Baltimore.
“Of course I’d rather be in Baltimore City,” he said of the Howard County venue. “But I’d try this case in a telephone booth.”
[email protected]
