A lawsuit filed in Montgomery, Alabama, sounds like the Trayvon Martin case all over again. Fortunately, in this case, the victim lived to seek justice.
Here is how it was reported at al.com:
A Montgomery police officer claims in a lawsuit that he was off-duty in plain clothes at a Montgomery mall last month when security officers assaulted him after ordering him to remove his sweatshirt hoodie.
Terence Scott, 26, filed the lawsuit April 11 in Montgomery County Circuit Court against ERMC, a Chattanooga, Tenn.,-based company that provides security for Eastdale Mall. The lawsuit also names one security guard and two other unnamed security guards as defendants.
Eastdale Mall is not named as a defendant in the lawsuit that seeks unspecified amounts in damages.
Security officers beating up an off-duty cop over a hoodie? More from
al.com:
Among the claims in Scott's civil lawsuit are negligence, assault and battery, wantonness, and that security guards used racial profiling against him and others.
Scott is black; the lawsuit does not specify the races of the security guards.
"Eastdale Mall has had a history of incidents involving African-American males being attacked, challenged, and/or bullied by security guards employed by defendant ERMC," the lawsuit states.
Julian McPhillips, attorney for Scott, said today that the incident was "shades of Trayvon Martin."