Man gets 2nd settlement in same civil rights case after new document comes to light
Three years ago, Warren Burgess settled a 2009 federal civil rights suit for $27,000.
Last week, he agreed to accept another $60,000 to settle the same suit over alleged racial profiling by Lakewood, Washington, police a second time, the Seattle Times reports.
The rare opportunity to reopen the case resulted from an anonymous letter that Burgess’ lawyer, Tyler Firkins, received last year in a City of Lakewood envelope, according to court records.
The letter enclosed a 2006 document in which a police training officer expressed concern about seeming targeting of minorities over sometimes-minor violations by the arresting officer in the Burgess case. And the letter claimed that the 2006 document had not only been intentionally withheld from the defense in the civil rights case but removed from the department’s electronic records.
At issue in the underlying case was whether Burgess, who is black, was treated differently than a white individual would have been under the same circumstances. He said police arrested him, instead of letting him drive away in his car from a domestic-abuse incident, even though he was the complaining witness. A trespass case against him was eventually dismissed.
Lakewood declined to comment about the latest settlement.
