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Black Store Owner Reports Robbery, Gets Punched By Officer

An Alabama liquor store own­er has sued after a police offi­cer respond­ing to a rob­bery call at his store punched him in the face and broke his jaw in March 2020. The Decatur Daily reports that Kevin Penn sued the city of Decatur and police offi­cer Justin Rippen on March 11 in fed­er­al court. Penn is Black and Rippen is white. The suit alleges the inci­dent is an exam­ple of sys­tem­at­ic use of “exces­sive force” by the Decatur Police Department that the city often ignores.
The law­suit alleges Penn’s con­sti­tu­tion­al rights were vio­lat­ed by ille­gal seizure, false arrest and exces­sive force, seek­ing mon­ey damages.
City Attorney Herman Marks said Thursday his depart­ment hasn’t yet received the law­suit and declined com­ment. Decatur Mayor Tab Bowling said he regrets a law­suit has been filed but referred ques­tions to Marks.
The law­suit alleges the city reg­u­lar­ly receives com­plaints that offi­cers “react with unjus­ti­fi­able vio­lence and false charges when a cit­i­zen speaks up or oth­er­wise asserts his rights as an American citizen.”
The suit also accus­es offi­cers of “using com­mon charges like obstruct­ing gov­ern­men­tal oper­a­tion, dis­or­der­ly con­duct and resist­ing arrest” against local citizens.

“It is well known in the Decatur legal com­mu­ni­ty that Decatur offi­cers fre­quent­ly use these charges, com­mon­ly referred to as POP (p— off police) charges, with­out a legal basis,” the law­suit states. Penn had trapped a shoplifter with an elec­tron­ic lock and the sus­pect was lying on the ground, with Penn hold­ing him at gun­point. Surveillance video shows Penn unload­ing his gun as police arrive. The video appears to show Penn set­ting the gun mag­a­zine down as the offi­cers approach. An offi­cer walked past the sus­pect and told Penn to put down his weapon. Penn refused say­ing, “I have a right to have my gun,” accord­ing to body cam­era video. But police said in 2020 they believed Penn was reload­ing the gun. An offi­cer, who has been iden­ti­fied as Rippen, then appears to punch Penn. Rippen and two oth­er offi­cers wres­tled Penn to the ground and hand­cuffed him, the video shows. Penn was arrest­ed and charged with obstruct­ing a rob­bery investigation.

Penn’s lawyer, Hank Sherrod III, said using the obstruct­ing gov­ern­men­tal oper­a­tions charge “is stan­dard pro­ce­dure for most police juris­dic­tions and 100% used in north Alabama.” The law­suit says city offi­cials failed to ensure offi­cers were prop­er­ly trained and supervised.
City lead­ers were aware of numer­ous sit­u­a­tions “in which cit­i­zens were sub­ject­ed to uncon­sti­tu­tion­al stops, search­es, arrests and uses of force but took no action to inves­ti­gate and dis­ci­pline offi­cers,” the law­suit says. Penn spent six weeks with his jaws wired shut as he recov­ered. Sherrod said the mis­de­meanor charges against Penn are still pending.
“I don’t know why they’re still active or they haven’t set a court date,” Sherrod said.
Sherrod said Penn “prompt­ly” filed regard­ing the assault and false arrest com­plaint after he was punched “and the city did noth­ing. Mr. Penn hasn’t heard from the city to this day.”
Rippen wasn’t dis­ci­plined, the Penn law­suit says. No inves­ti­ga­tion began until the video became pub­lic in June 2020, three months after it happened.