VIDEO: Day after case draws national attention, attorneys detail suit that accuses Little Rock officers of lying to conduct drug raid

From left: Attorney Ben Crump, former Little Rock resident Roderick Talley and attorney Mike Laux speak at a press conference Oct. 15, 2018 at the Delta Presents Outreach Foundation in Little Rock.
From left: Attorney Ben Crump, former Little Rock resident Roderick Talley and attorney Mike Laux speak at a press conference Oct. 15, 2018 at the Delta Presents Outreach Foundation in Little Rock.

During a news conference Monday, attorneys detailed a suit filed by a man who accuses Little Rock police officers of using a false affidavit to knock down his door and raid his apartment for drugs.

The case was in the national spotlight Sunday after a Washington Post opinion piece documented Roderick Talley’s story and investigated the use of "no-knock" raids in Arkansas’ capital city.

In the lawsuit, officers face accusations of false arrest, illegal entry and violations of the Fourth Amendment, which protects citizens from unreasonable searches.

Talley, an African-American man, was arrested in August 2017 after an informant told Little Rock narcotic detectives that Talley had sold him cocaine, according to an affidavit. Authorities used that information to obtain a no-knock search warrant and blow the door off his unit at the Pleasant Ridge Apartments, the suit states.

He filed the complaint on his own behalf in 2017 and amended it in May of this year. His attorneys, Michael Laux of Little Rock and Florida-based civil-rights lawyer Ben Crump, said they will likely amended it again before a Nov. 27 deadline. It was unclear why his attorneys waited months after the filing to organize a news conference.

“When this happened, the only thing I wanted was justice,” Talley said. "I just wanted the officers to be reprimanded for what they did. When I attempted to get justice and all I got was closed doors, that’s what made me want to try and do more. How could I get their attention?"

Little Rock police spokesman Lt. Michael Ford said the department does not comment on pending litigation. City Attorney Tom Carpenter added that the policies of the Little Rock Police Department are in full compliance with Arkansas state law and federal civil rights law.

Carpenter also released a statement Monday on the Washington Post piece.

"It is not appropriate for the City to litigate cases in the news media," he said. "The City does not agree with all of the factual statements in the article. The City looks forward to the total truth on other issues being developed during the litigation."

Laux and Crump said the 31-year-old former Little Rock resident is just one victim in a pattern of unlawful searches based on untruthful affidavits in Arkansas' capital city. In a review of 133 affidavits dating back to 2014, 110 of those documents were served on African Americans, Laux said.

"There's a pattern and practice here of targeting individuals based on a certain racial class and social status," Crump said during the news conference at the Delta Presents Outreach Foundation in Little Rock. "What we've seen, these are just regular black people living in America."

Laux added that those affidavits are then being used to persuade Little Rock judges to issue a higher number of no-knock searches without explaining in specific detail why the circumstance merits more than a traditional warrant. Not only is the use of explosives in those procedures dangerous — Talley's apartment door landed on him as he slept on the couch — the raids sometime fail to uncover the contraband police are looking for, the attorney said.

Police did not discover any cocaine in Talley's home, but officers found a "green leafy substance," digital scales and plastic baggies that they said was enough evidence to charge him with misdemeanor possession of marijuana, according to the affidavit.

Charges against Talley were eventually dropped when footage from his personal security camera showed that — although a man did knock on his door while he was away from the residence — no drug deal occurred on the date the informant provided.

A few days later, the camera also recorded a police officer taking a photo of the door.

"I realized I would be able to do something that a lot of black men in America aren't able to do, and that's prove that the police lied," Talley said. "My mother told me to always stand up and fight for myself, so that's what I decided to do."

Laux and Crump are calling on the prosecuting attorney to review all previous cases in which officers involved in the Talley raid submitted affidavits based on possibly faulty information from an informant.

"If he hadn’t had that camera, [Talley] would be in an orange jumpsuit right now," Laux said. "Think of the thousands of black people and Hispanic people that say they are being targeted and nobody believes them. This is a very important matter to Mr. Talley, but this case has a wider scope and affects countless others.”

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