Lawyers want a Florida officer fired for his involvement in a tragic attempted traffic stop that killed a 13-year-old Black teenager a day after Christmas.
Stanley Davis III, 13, was riding his dirt bike on December 26 in Boynton Beach, Florida, when a member of that police department attempted to pull him over, according to news reports.
Davis’ family and its attorneys, Ben Crump and Jasmine Rand, held a press conference on Tuesday demanding the officer be fired immediately. City and police officials have declined to name the officer. However, Crump has said it was Mark Sohn, an officer who has been with the department since 2002, who caused the crash that killed the teenager, WPLG reported.
Rand, at the press conference, said the officer, while on the job, has been involved in two other deadly crashes, NBC News reported. She claimed he has a “20-year documented history of terrorizing Black citizens in Boynton Beach,” according to NBC.
She also told WPLG-TV “This is one of the worst files that I’ve ever seen on an officer,”
Shannon Thompson, Stanley’s mother, said at the news conference, “He was acting in fear as the community feared this officer. The kids, they know this officer, so him coming in contact with this particular officer was a fearful moment for him,” Thompson said.
Rand said the officer was involved in two other fatal crashes – one in 2012 and another in 2016. One involved a 38-year-old man and another a 5-year-old boy, both of whom were Black. She also said the officer has been implicated in the restraining and beating of a Black man.
On December 26, the police department, in a press release, said that the dirt bike operator was “driving recklessly,” during the attempted traffic stop. The department said the officer was placed on administrative leave.
The officer says he has received threats to his and his family’s safety and has invoked a law that “gives every victim the right to prevent the disclosure of information or records that could be used to locate or harass the victim or the victim’s family, or which could disclose confidential or privileged information of the victim.” Police, in a press release, said the city attorney agrees that the law is appropriate in this case.
Crump and his team have already announced they would file a wrongful death suit against the police department.
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