Juan Moreno, working as a flagman directing cars away from workers on the side of a street, is accusing the Atlanta Police Department of racial bias for arresting him based only on the word of a woman who ran over him because she was allegedly on her cell phone and didn’t see him.
According to the federal lawsuit filed Tuesday, Moreno was using a flag to direct drivers around workers trimming trees away from Georgia Power lines on May 3, 2011, when the woman, Teresa Lyle-Barksdale, hit him. The suit said she asked Moreno if he was in this country legally in an “attempt to intimidate him” and then called 911 to report “a fight with a weapon (in an) attempt to avoid the consequences of her actions.”
The suit said the responding officer, Craig O. Gonsalves-Barreiro, frisked and arrested Moreno, a citizen, without getting his version of events first. According to the suit, the officer told Moreno “damaging someone’s car was a crime.”
Moreno was held in the backseat of the car for about an hour and for half that time the windows were up and there was no air conditioning, he said in the suit.
The suit said APD violated his civil rights, humiliated him and did nothing to try to verify the driver’s version of what happened. Moreno also said in the lawsuit the police report on the incident was incomplete, with critical details omitted, and that APD tried to hide it by ignoring his requests for documents under the Georgia Open Records Act.
Moreno also sued Lyle-Barksdale but that case was settled.
“I’m going to try and get justice for Mr. Moreno,” said Lawrenceville attorney Drew Mosley. “It’s not about a physical injury. It’s about a civil rights injury.”
APD did not respond to requests for comment.
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