Music producer Antone Austin says his life was turned upside down about two years ago when police officers arrested him and his girlfriend outside his California home in a federal lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles that claims to be a case of discrimination. racial, excessive force and illegal arrest.
With the trial date set for October, Austin, known professionally as Tone Stackz, hopes that a pre-trial effort to make the video from the Los Angeles Police Department’s body public will reveal the civil rights claims in his lawsuit and will help with what his lawyer, Faisal Gill, described as a “black hole”: his effort to get the criminal charges dropped.
“The police had no justification for arresting my client,” said Gill on Wednesday. “He never struck. He never acted inappropriately. He never hit them. He never attacked them – he did nothing.”
In an interview on Thursday, Austin, 42, said he hoped the public would have the opportunity to see the various angles of the camera video next to the body that he and his legal team have seen.
Los Angeles police said they did not comment on pending litigation. NBC Los Angeles reported for the first time the effort to release the video from the body’s camera.
The federal lawsuit, opened last year, alleges that the couple was unjustly arrested in front of Austin’s duplex apartment on May 24, 2019. shortly after their upstairs neighbor called the police to execute a restraining order in a domestic dispute. .
When the cops arrived at his Hollywood address, the lawsuit alleges, Austin was taking the garbage to the sidewalk.
“When I saw the policemen for the first time, I looked at them with another smile: ‘Hey, how are you’, kind of vibration, and when I realized that they were coming at me and I could see the anger in these policemen ‘eyes while they were approaching me, it was like, ‘What’s going on?’ “Austin said.
The officers approached Austin, a 6-foot, 5-inch-tall black man, and he raised his hands, but the officers immediately began to apply excessive force, without asking him for his name, identification or whether he lived there, the suit alleges. .
“Even after the original whistleblower informed the officers that Mr. Austin was not the perpetrator of the crime, they continued to illegally arrest Mr. Austin, putting him in a choke and throwing him on the floor and twisting his arms in positions that caused extreme pain “, claims the process.
“They didn’t care,” Austin said in a press release. “The policeman just said, ‘We got a call,’ when he started to get his hands on me.”
His girlfriend, singer Michelle Michlewicz, 30, ran out of the shower and tried to intervene before being pushed by a police officer into the street, where her clothes were undone, exposing her body to the public, the lawsuit alleges.
The Austin and Michlewicz lawsuit alleges that 10 unidentified police officers used excessive force, did not intervene, violated civil rights laws and committed aggression and neglect during their arrest.
The couple was taken to prison and detained before paying bail after midnight, the lawsuit says.
Austin was charged with the crime of resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer; his bail was set at $ 7,000. Michlewicz was charged with lynching, a California law against “the capture, through a riot, of another person from the legal custody of a peace officer” that leads to a maximum of four years in prison. His bail was set at $ 50,000.
None of the charges have been dropped and none have been prosecuted, Gill said.
Austin said the pending charges weigh on him.
“Is the case closed or is that something I have to worry about showing up in five years from now, when I’m driving down the street and a policeman stops me for turning left, and he says, ‘Hey, here’s a warrant for prison because there is an indictment that you were unable to deal with ‘? “Austin asked.
“I just want to find out what’s going on. I want it to be resolved,” he said.
Austin said he knows that the interaction with the Los Angeles police could have been better because later it was: the officers returned to his block later that week, after his neighbor called the police again to enforce the restraining order; the original suspect – a much shorter white man – escaped when police mistakenly arrested Austin, he said.
On the second visit, different police officers asked Austin his name and whether he lived there and acted “professionally”, he said.
“They asked me, ‘Hey, how are you, sir, did you see anything suspicious?'” Said Austin. “They were very respectful.”