First suit filed against city and VPPD for investigative hold practice

On behalf of his clients Shawanna Deville, Liljohn O’Neal and Shaquille Freeman, attorney Jacob Fusilier filed a Class Action suit on Monday against the City of Ville Platte and the Ville Platte Police Department for performing illegal investigative holds.
This appears to be the first suit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana concerning VPPD’s practice of performing these holds.
In December of 2016, this practice was deemed unconstitutional by the United States Department of Justice after they completed a two year investigation into the VPPD and the Evangeline Parish Sheriff’s Office.
Fusilier is representing three individuals who claim to have experienced these holds first hand, and in his complaint filed on February 6, 2017, the Ville Platte attorney outlines the basis for their lawsuit.
According to the complaint, in July of 2014 Fusilier’s clients were “picked up off of the streets in Ville Platte,” and were “involuntarily” taken to the VPPD by Ville Platte Officers.
The complaint goes on to state that “no plaintiff was arrested, charged or told why they were being held. However, one of Fusilier’s clients “were placed into a holding cell at the Ville Platte City Jail with several other prisoners, was strip searched without cause and left to spend the night on the floor.”
Fusilier’s clients were not suspects, and there were no “warrants issued for their arrests,” nor “were there any Court approved orders to detain the plaintiffs.”
According to the complaint, Fusilier’s clients were also “told by police officers not to discuss what happened to them under threat of legal reprisals including the threat of serving jail time.” The complaint states that this is the reason why the plaintiffs “took no action until this suit was filed.”
This complaint was filed, according to the lawsuit, because “the plaintiffs have suffered numerous actual violations of their constitutional rights and/or laws of the United States.”
The complaint also states that the plaintiffs suffered numerous injuries, which were “inflicted upon them by the deliberate indifferences or actions” of unnamed police officers.
The injuries listed in the complaint include “physical pain, humiliation, and mental and emotional anguish.”
According to the lawsuit, the plaintiffs suffered through this experience because “Chief Neal Lartigue and the Ville Platte Police Department developed and maintained policies, customs, and practices,” which “caused extreme harm to and resulted in violations of the constitutional rights of plaintiffs.”
These practices are described in the complaint as ones that “demonstrate a reckless disregard for both human life and safety.” The complaint states that the “recklessness,” on the part of the VPPD officers, “is attributable to the instruction, example, or acceptance of or by Chief Neal Lartigue and the Ville Platte Police Department.”
The plaintiffs and their council believe that Lartigue, unnamed police officers, and the City of Ville Platte through the police department are all liable for damages for the following: failure to use proper police/prisoner techniques in handling the situation with respect to plaintiffs; failure to adopt and/or adhere to proper police procedure, procedures to properly train officers in procedures regarding the supervision, transport, and detention of private citizens; failure to adequately supervise, train, or otherwise control the actions of its employees, namely police personnel who administered the jail; and any and all other acts of negligence and/or gross negligence and/or intentional acts, to be discovered and presented at the trial on the manner to which were the proximate and sole cause of the injuries described above and subsequent injuries to follow.
To read comments from Fusilier concerning this matter, pick up a copy of Thursday’s Gazette.