Jury orders Milwaukee to pay damages in illegal police searches
By Gina Barton of the Journal Sentinel Updated: 6:31 p.m.
A federal court jury ruled Thursday that Milwaukee police violated a man's civil rights by illegally strip searching him and must pay more than a half million dollars.
In issuing the decision, jurors weighed whether to believe the account of an officer involved in the searches or that of an elderly woman who watched through her kitchen window.
Apparently, they sided with the woman.
The officer, Michael Gasser, says neither he nor his colleagues did anything wrong when they searched Hardy in March 2012.
The woman, Dorothy Lee Smith, says she saw 40-year-old Leo Hardy of Milwaukee handcuffed behind a police wagon, with his pants around his ankles.
Attorneys for both sides focused on those two witnesses, as well as on the statements of Hardy himself, during their closing arguments Thursday in a civil rights suit brought by Hardy. The closing arguments came after three days of testimony in federal court in Milwaukee. The case went to the jury Thursday.
The civil rights trial is the first of potentially dozens involving improper strip and cavity searches by Milwaukee police. The searches occurred between 2008 and 2012 in district stations and on the streets of District 5.
More than 60 people have sued the city and the Police Department, contending such searches violated their civil rights. The civil suits seek damages but do not list specific dollar amounts.
A similar spate of lawsuits in Chicago has cost that city's taxpayers more than $100 million.
On Thursday, one of Hardy's attorneys, Russell Ainsworth, asked jurors to impose enough in damages to "send a message" to the city and the Police Department that strip and cavity searches in public are wrong.
"In our system of justice you cannot discipline police officers; you cannot ask that they be fired; you cannot ask they be suspended," Ainsworth told the jury. "The only way you can make Leo Hardy whole is by awarding money damages. We ask that you consider the humiliation that Mr. Hardy felt when he was standing on the street, with Officer Gasser's hands in his pants."
Hardy, of Milwaukee, contends Gasser — who received immunity from prosecution for providing information against a fellow officer in a different strip-search — reached into both the front and back of his pants. Hardy testified he fled when Gasser squeezed his penis.
After Hardy was caught and placed under arrest, a second officer, Michael Valuch Jr., searched him twice more, pulling down his pants on the street, Hardy alleges.
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