Man Violently Beaten By Police And Falsely Accused Of Assaulting Officers Files $10M Federal Lawsuit

An unarmed Detroit bounc­er has filed a $10 mil­lion fed­er­al law­suit after offi­cers assault­ed him while per­form­ing a rou­tine liquor license check at a club where he worked.
Michael Kennebrew wants the offi­cers who entered his place of work held account­able after vicious­ly attack­ing and wrong­ful­ly arrest­ing him. He has since filed an exces­sive force law­suit against Detroit and its offi­cers. He believes sur­veil­lance footage of the vio­lent arrest will help his case and bring about justice.
“I think any­body who watch­es it should be trou­bled to a cer­tain extent or a cer­tain degree,” Kennebrew said of his arrest on April 28

The 42-year-old father of three is a ship­ping super­vi­sor and a bounc­er for Minnie’s Bar and Grill. On the day of the arrest around 7 p.m., Kennebrew was mak­ing his rounds at the bar as nor­mal. He said he noticed three Detroit police offi­cers approach the bar but did not think much of their pres­ence at the time. “I saw them when they went in, and I was going to check to make sure every­thing was going well and noti­fy the own­er,” Kennebrew said. WJBK reports the offi­cers were work­ing with the department’s vice squad unit. The unit was at the bar to ensure its liquor license was in com­pli­ance. Kennebrew says the com­pli­ance check usu­al­ly hap­pens twice a year. Unlike pre­vi­ous vis­its where the rou­tine check would be unevent­ful, this vis­it had a dif­fer­ent out­come. Video sur­veil­lance from the bar cap­tures Kennebrew walk­ing past the female offi­cer in the vice squad, and things esca­late quick­ly after she grabbed his arm.

“I walked past her, and she asked me was I armed, and I said no,” Kennebrew recalled. Surveillance shows what hap­pened next. The female offi­cer pulls Kennebrew’s right arm, and he pulled his arm away. Another male offi­cer came from beside the female offi­cer and quick­ly approached Kennebrew, push­ing him back a few feet before the two fell to the ground. “He just start­ed punch­ing me, he didn’t say any­thing, no com­mands or any­thing like that,” Kennebrew said. Both Kennebrew and the male police offi­cer were on the ground, with the offi­cer on top of Kennebrew, the footage shows. The uniden­ti­fied offi­cer is seen punch­ing Kennebrew at least four times in the back of his head and neck; it is unclear the exact num­ber of times Kennebrew was punched. As the assault con­tin­ued, at least two more police offi­cers approached a downed Kennebrew and the attack­ing offi­cer. Two oth­er bar patrons also approached Kennebrew and the offi­cer from the oppo­site direction“I was going to attempt to get up and when I glanced up, one offi­cer had a Taser in my face, and a wit­ness told me anoth­er offi­cer had his pis­tol out,” Kennebrew said.

It is unclear exact­ly how long the attack occurred, but moments lat­er Kennebrew was arrest­ed and charged with assault­ing the police offi­cer. He says he sat behind bars for three days. “I didn’t even touch the oth­er offi­cers so when did the assault come in,” Kennebrew said of the assault charge. Kennebrew’s attor­ney, Todd Russell Perkins, helped get him out of jail. “It’s just an abuse of pow­er, these indi­vid­u­als have run amuck with­in the sys­tem and it’s all for noth­ing, this guy did absolute­ly noth­ing,” Perkins said of Kennebrew’s predica­ment. WJBK con­firmed pros­e­cu­tors dis­missed the assault charge, claim­ing it lacked suf­fi­cient evi­dence. In a news inter­view on May 9, DPD’s direc­tor of pro­fes­sion­al stan­dards and con­sti­tu­tion­al polic­ing Chris Graveline said he did not believe the offi­cers involved sent all the avail­able video footage to the Wayne County pros­e­cu­tor for the assault charge. “We’re look­ing at that as well, and that’s also one of the rea­sons why the [DPD Vice Squad] super­vi­sor has been moved,” said Graveline. Additional ques­tions Graveline says the inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion may answer include what caused the offi­cers to react the way they did. “What could have caused this imme­di­ate esca­la­tion? On the face of the video, we see no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, but we’ll be ask­ing those ques­tions,” Graveline said. A spokesper­son for the Detroit Police Department con­firmed to Atlanta Black Star the case is still under inves­ti­ga­tion. The spokesper­son also said the depart­ment did not have any more infor­ma­tion to release at this time and direct­ed ABS to a state­ment released by Detroit Police Chief James White on May 9. White said, “I am deeply trou­bled and con­cerned after watch­ing the sur­veil­lance video. I have direct­ed our Force Investigations Unit to imme­di­ate­ly launch an investigation.”

The state­ment con­tin­ued with, “The actions of the offi­cer don’t appear to be con­sis­tent with our poli­cies or pro­ce­dures. Therefore, the offi­cer has been removed from the unit pend­ing the out­come. DPD is com­mit­ted to trans­paren­cy and will update both the com­mu­ni­ty and our media part­ners fol­low­ing a thor­ough and com­plete inves­ti­ga­tion.” Perkins says since the vio­lent arrest, DPD has been far from trans­par­ent. “We filed a suit because noth­ing is being done; they haven’t even giv­en us one police report.” He added that they have a Freedom of Information Act request pend­ing. Kennebrew hopes his exces­sive force law­suit brings account­abil­i­ty for what hap­pened to him. He wants to see pol­i­cy change and wants a citizen’s review board to review cas­es of police mis­con­duct. “I think there def­i­nite­ly needs to be pol­i­cy change. If I had to rec­om­mend some­thing, I would rec­om­mend a citizen’s review board. The cit­i­zens should decide if they want them to serve the city of Detroit or not,” Kennebrew said. The City of Detroit cur­rent­ly has a Board of Police Commissioners. The 11-mem­ber civil­ian board was cre­at­ed in 1974 and gives super­vi­so­ry author­i­ty over the police department.