Georgia Man Sues Glynn County Police After He Was Arrested for Refusing To Give ID
A Georgia man is suing the Glynn County Police Department after he was arrested for refusing to give them his name. The arrest lacked probable cause, an officer later wrote in an incident report.
Brunswick, Georgia, resident David Smiley filed a federal civil rights lawsuit on January 2 alleging that two Glynn County police officers violated his Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizures when they arrested him on the night of December 5, 2023, for loitering and prowling.Â
Smiley’s complaint is backed up by an authoritative source, the police incident report of his arrest, which says a supervisor “took a second look at the report and advised we had no probable cause.”
Smiley’s arrest and brief jailing is a relatively minor incident, but it is yet another alleged example of a common violation of a core civil liberty: the right to go about your business without having to show your papers to a nosy constable. Even in states that have “stop-and-identify” laws allowing police to demand identification, officers generally can’t do so unless they have reasonable suspicion of a crime. Last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled that two Alabama police officers lacked probable cause to arrest an Alabama pastor who was watering his neighbor’s flowers and refused to give them his ID. In Oklahoma, two officers tackled a father who was taking a morning walk with his son after the father correctly asserted that he wasn’t required to show identification. In 2022, a pair of Florida sheriff’s deputies were demoted for arresting a legally blind man who lawfully refused to give his ID.
“We filed this action to protect other citizens against police misconduct regarding unlawful searches and seizures and to redress the very constitutional rights of Mr. Smiley that were violated,” says Roland Mumford, an attorney representing Smiley. “I hope this cause of action creates awareness to the public of the very rights that citizens enjoy that they do not have to produce identification to police absent reasonable articulable suspicion of a crime being committed or consent provided.”
Body camera footage of Smiley’s 2023 arrest shows that he was cleaning the light fixtures on the exterior of a grocery store with a broom at 12:30 a.m. w
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