Suit Alleging Retaliatory Police Mislabeling as Repeat Violent Offender Can Go Forward |
Free Speech
Plaintiff claims his actual offenses were a curfew violation during 2020 protests and spitting on FBI agent.
Eugene Volokh | 1.2.2026 4:30 PM
From Haro v. Bryant, decided today by Judge J.P. Boulee (N.D. Ga.):
On June 4, 2020, Plaintiff was allegedly protesting police brutality and the use of excessive force when the Atlanta Police Department ("APD") arrested him for a curfew violation. During the arrest, Plaintiff spit on a Federal Bureau of Investigation ("FBI") officer, and as a result, he was additionally charged with battery on a police officer.
Approximately ten weeks later, in August 2020, Defendant—the former chief of the APD—created a joint task force with the FBI, the United States Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Georgia and others named "Operation Phoenix." Operation Phoenix was established to address the rise in violent crime in Atlanta during the COVID-19 pandemic.
On October 29, 2020, Defendant and the City of Atlanta co-hosted a press conference and contemporaneously co-published a press release to announce Operation Phoenix, identify its early results and arrests and explain the dramatic effect those arrests had on reducing violence crime. The press release, which was distributed to those at the press conference and........