County Facing Class-Action Lawsuit Over Racially Disparate Traffic Stops JANET BURNS

jburns@antonmediagroup.com explained the background and aims of the case, which he said was originally brought on behalf of Ms. Leith and her minor son.

Nassau County is facing a class-action lawsuit on behalf of all Black and Latino drivers in Nassau which alleges racial bias by the Nassau County Police Department in its execution of traffic stops.

The lawsuit, which seeks $40 million in damages, local policy changes, and oversight from a federal monitor to ensure reforms happen, is similar to one that began in Suffolk County eight years ago, and has required that county to both pay millions and better train its officers while releasing better data on how they enforce the law. A judge will later decide whether to certify the suit’s class-action status.

The suit’s lead plaintiff, Tivia Leith, originally filed suit against Nassau County last November following a traffic stop for which she was held 11 hours in police custody.

In response to a request for comment on the case, NCPD Detective Lieutenant Richard LeBrun said that the department does not comment on ongoing litigation.

Ms. Leith is being represented in the case by the Law Offices of Frederick K. Brewington, whose attorneys are well known on Long Island for civil rights work.

In a phone intervew with Anton Media Group, Frederick Brewington, Esq.

“After we looked at it, and after issues were raised by the defendants, the County of Nassau, at a conference with a federal judge, the determination to expand this case into a class action become fairly obvious to us,” Brewington said.

“We began to look at the numbers concerning traffic stops that had been made available through Nassau County. Their reporting is limited, and even with that limited view we saw that there was a disparate treatment of persons of color, of Black and brown individuals in Nassau County, with regard to the ratio of car stops to the total number of population, that was completely out of whack.”

“So, we made the determination that we needed to expand this to make sure that all those persons, like my client, who are impacted by Nassau’s determinations to disproportionately pull over Black and Latino people, are included, and that it would be aired in a courtroom where this issue can be addressed, because this appears to be an institutional, systemic issue.”

As Brewington noted, it was data from the Nassau County Police Department itself that indicated to his firm that something was amiss county-wide.

“Their data is incomplete, it does not give source information, it doesn’t give some of the data that’s necessary to do other statistical evaluations, but just looking at the raw numbers that they provided it’s pretty clearly that something needs to be said and done about the way that they’re treating drivers, passengers, and other folks related to car stops in Nassau County.”

“Ms. Leith’s experience was, in a word, haunting. She has issues with anxiety to begin with, and what this did to her, both in her mind and also in her gut, made her extremely concerned about whether or not she was ever going to make it home that night. She was held for eleven hours on an alleged warrant that did not exist, and the problem about that was that even with the issue of pulling her over, it appeared to be pretextual. The officer drove up next to her, saw that she was a Black woman, then drove behind her and pulled her over. In this situation, we can’t have police officers making the determination they want to pull people over on a hunch.”

In Ms. Leith’s case, Brewington noted, “She had her minor son with her. He had to watch his mother be placed in handcuffs, and then they threatened to take him into custody, and she had to plead [with police] to allow her to get someone to come pick him up so he wouldn’t be taken into police custody. That’s just outrageous.”

He continued, “They now claim the reason she was pulled over, which is pretty ridiculous, was that the light on her license plate was out. That charge was dismissed along with any other charges.”

“What we’ve really got to do is bring accountability into the picture, and see that, in this situation, police don’t just get a chance to say anything after the fact and expect people to go for it. That ‘okey-doke’ is long gone, and never should have been in the first place.”