THE INVESTIGATORS: Parish set to cough up more cash in BRPD strip search settlement

BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - The East Baton Rouge Metro Council authorized a settlement in connection with a teen shown on body cam video getting strip-searched by an officer with the Baton Rouge Police Department.

In body camera video obtained by the 9News Investigators, a Baton Rouge police officer can be seen strip-searching a 16-year-old and his older brother during a traffic stop in broad daylight back in 2020.

Body Camera Video Obtained By The 9News Investigators

The body camera video is uncomfortable to watch in parts, as officers grab the genitals of the 16-year-old and his older brother, Clarence Green. As Green tells the officer he’s not allowed to grab him in that way, the officer is heard saying, “I can.”

One of the officers can then be seen doing the same to the 16-year-old, pulling up his shirt and snatching down his underwear while they grab around.

This is the second time what the BRPD officer did in the video is costing taxpayers’ money. The parish paid out a $35,000 settlement to the family of the men back in 2021 to make a federal lawsuit go away. This latest settlement comes after the Parish Attorney’s Office tried to go after law professor, Thomas Frampton, who represented the two men who claimed they were violated by BRPD officers.

“The city of Baton Rouge will stop its efforts to put professor Frampton in jail and pay him $86,000 which is far better than the city continuing to spend money on a fruitless effort,” said attorney William Most, who represents Frampton.

In a ruling, a judge weighed in on the case saying, “The Court finds the overwhelming evidence in this case shows that the City/Parish acted in bad faith and in retaliation against Frampton for Frampton’s issuance of a press release and Video which cast BRPD in a bad light.”

The judge added, “The hypocrisy of the City/Parish’s position is astounding.”

”It’s extraordinarily strong language and it reflected the fact that it was completely obvious that the city had no interest in actually following the law but was simply trying to retaliate against this professor who embarrassed them because the city itself shared the same video that it was trying to put the professor in jail for sharing,” said Most.

The Parish Attorney’s Office tried to hold Frampton in contempt after he released the video to the media days before BRPD chose to hand over the footage. In their petition, Parish Attorney Anderson Dotson claimed the video was edited, did not accurately show what happened, and added that the city got a lot of negative feedback from the public because it was released.

WAFB reached out to the Mayor’s Office about the settlement. Spokesman Mark Armstrong released the following statement.

“The proposed resolution by the Parish Attorney’s Office is in no way an admission of guilt or liability but rather a way to be good stewards of taxpayer funds and bring this matter to a conclusion. Ultimately, the Metropolitan Council decided this matter. The administration and its agencies are committed to the highest professional standards and policies regardless of individual litigation.”

Attorney Most said the parish has done just the opposite.

“The Parish Attorney’s Office has been an incredibly bad steward of taxpayer money,” said Most. “The city has spent unknown sums of money on its own lawyers and now will pay 86,000 to professor Frampton. This is an enormous waste of taxpayer funds.”

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