One fact in the case differs from most other lawsuits against Baltimore officers: The plaintiff, Jamal Butler, said during a trial last year that the officer did not physically assault ...
A summary of Butler' s lawsuit against then-Officer David Reeping — who has been part of two other settlements — is listed in the Law Department's online database of police lawsuits. In 2014, Butler told a jury that Reeping said he was under arrest "for being a black smart ass" while standing in front of Crazy John's on East Baltimore Street.
Butler's lawsuit included allegations of battery, false arrest and false imprisonment. Butler testified that the arrest, which has since been expunged, remained in his personnel file at the Pentagon and could hinder his ability to get jobs with higher security clearances. He earned about $29 an hour.
The city settled the case for $24,000 in February 2014. In the towing scandal, officers illegally channeled the owners of broken-down and damaged vehicles to Majestic Auto Repair in Rosedale in exchange for cash, according to federal court records.
Reeping said he arrested Butler because he refused to either go inside a business or keep moving. A city law forbids loitering on that street.
Mark Puente, an investigative reporter for The Baltimore Sun, has been nominated three times for a Pulitzer Prize. He covered St. Petersburg City Hall and real estate for the Tampa Bay Times. He previously was a crime and investigations reporter for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, where he won the Al Nakkula Award — the only national journalism award devoted to police reporting. His 2014 “Undue Force” series on allegations of police brutality in Baltimore won the Institute on Political Journalism’s Clark Mollenhoff Award for Excellence in Investigative Reporting and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism's Paul Tobenkin Memorial Award for reporting on racial or religious hatred, intolerance or discrimination in the United States. A University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill graduate, Puente grew up in Detroit and Cleveland and spent 14 years driving a tractor trailer before going to college.