ATLANTA -- A federal lawsuit accuses the Atlanta police department of disregarding a court order changing some of the department's procedures.
The changes were ordered by a judge in light of a controversial raid on an Atlanta gay bar.
The motion for contempt essentially accuses APD of trying to pull a fast one with a court order that followed the 2009 raid on the Eagle Atlanta that put 62 customers in handcuffs. The accusation has some backup from a surprising source: An Atlanta police union.
Atlanta police took a lot of heat following their 2009 raid on the Atlanta Eagle -- and admitted afterward they'd botched it.
"I believe what occurred that evening should not have happened... and apologize to each plaintiff," Mayor Kasim Reed said in the December 2010 news conference.
In a lawsuit settlement afterward, Atlanta police agreed to change their procedures.
"They obviously detained people unlawfully. So everything we got was to help insure that police didn't do the same kind of thing again," said Dan Grossman, attorney for the plaintiffs in the Eagle case. He filed the motion for contempt March 17.
Before the Eagle raid settlement, the motion says the city had a procedure allowing police to "stop and frisk" individuals police deemed merely "suspicious." The settlement tightened the language, saying police could "detain an individual only when they have a reasonable, articulable suspicion that the individual is involved in criminal activity." That was in 2011.
The motion says in 2013, "the city removed the language it had added."
"The city took that language out when they thought we weren't looking," Grossman said.
Grossman's motion calls the city's switch a "flagrant example of bad faith." Atlanta's police union submitted a letter supporting Grossman's claim against APD, writing "adequate training on these issues appears to have fallen short."
An Atlanta police spokeswoman said Wednesday morning that APD would produce a response for 11Alive News Wednesday. By 5:15 pm, none had arrived.
