Man files lawsuit against City of Minneapolis and two police officers
MINNEAPOLIS — A man has filed a federal lawsuit against two police officers and the city, accusing the officers of violating his constitutional rights.
Said Abdullahi's lawyer, Jeff Storms, shared a police body camera clip of the incident from last year.
In it, one of the officers shoves Abdullahi to the ground.
His suit says the push was "with the punitive intent of causing Abdullahi to fall to the ground and sustain harm."
"He wasn't looking at [the officer]," Storms said. "He didn't see him coming, and the officer pushed him very hard."
Storms equates the push to a "blindside block" in football.
"The biggest thing Mr. Abdullahi said to me was, 'I don't want them to get away with this,'" Storms said.
The lawsuit says Abdullahi asked someone for a jump for his car, and the man he asked threatened him with weapons and called the cops.
The suit states that, eventually, Abdullahi started filming and criticizing the officers when they were "hostile towards him."
In the video, before the shove, the second officer pushes Abdullahi and Abdullahi says, "Stop assaulting me," and says he wants to press charges.
"[After the shove] they arrested Mr. Abdullahi for no good reason and those charges were eventually dismissed, but he spent three nights in jail," Storms said.
The lawsuit cites the incident as an example of MPD's "well-documented history" of using force "in response to police criticism or otherwise lawful First Amendment conduct."
"It just creates further distrust at a time when the Minneapolis Police Department is publicly telling us it's working very hard to try to regain that trust," Storms said.
The city had no comment beyond saying it has not yet been served with the lawsuit.
MPD says it cannot comment on pending litigation.
