A family in a town near Philadelphia believes they’re being targeted by local police, and given how many times they’ve been arrested on their own property they may have a case.
According to CBS Philly, cellphone footage shows a man who has now been identified as Ramir Briggs being yanked over the railing of his family’s porch on Shannon Street in Chester Township.
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“We just getting home,” a distraught female voice could be heard saying in the video.
Keith Briggs says during the incident officers used a taser on him and put him in the back of a cop car. In arrest records they claimed that he had refused to disperse and was shouting expletives at them. And other members of the Briggs family were arrested two days in a row for doing nothing more than standing outside of their own home.
By the time someone got their bearings long enough to start filming the run-in four relatives had already been arrested for loitering. At that point police finally asked who lived at the home.
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“The Chester Township Police Department has failed my family. Instead of protecting us and serving us, they decided to attack us on multiple occasions,” said Rachel Briggs, one of the people arrested. “I never knew that police officers could decide on one of us being outside too long or arrest us again.”
“Who do they think they are to victimize a family like this and do this to someone in the community? Who do they think they are?” asked attorney Kevin Fitzpatrick who will be aiding the Briggs family in filing a civil lawsuit.
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According to the township’s loitering statute there are certain areas where loitering is prohibited. In those areas, the statute says “officers can question anyone they believe is loitering and ask them to leave.”
It remains unclear if the Briggs home is in one of those areas, but the family’s lawyer points out that even if it was, the township’s loitering statute was struck down in court back in 2012 after courts ruled that it was too vague.