Sterling Brown, who was the victim of an incident of police brutality in January 2018, reached a settlement with Milwaukee Police Department today.
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Shams Charania of The Athletic reported that this new settlement offer was accepted by Brown and his legal team. The Milwaukee PD’s earlier settlement offer worth $400,000 was rejected by them in 2019.
The background of the Sterling Brown case
On January 26, 2018, Brown was on his way home from a friend’s place when he went into Walgreens for three minutes. When he did, he parked across two handicapped spots. It was late at night and the parking lot was empty, so he went for the minor violation anyway.
Instead of giving him a ticket immediately, the police officer at the site began a standoff with Brown. He invited his whole cop squad to the site, who were there within 20 minutes. What then transpired was that cops kneeled on his neck, stood on his ankle, and tased him in a parking lot.
In Brown’s own words from his Player Tribune article published in July 2020:
“Eventually they put me in the back of the cop car and took me to the police station, where I was thrown in a cell for a few hours. For what? Because I was a Black man with a nice car in the hood.”
Brown took the case to the courts, and Milwaukee PD had by then realized the error in their ways. After only initally suspending the offending officers for a fortnight each, they had to fire the policeman who tased Brown.
One can only hope that this case leads to the required change in policing across USA as Brown intends it to.
