Claims against two police officers and the city of Euclid, Ohio, in connection with the unjustified arrest of a black man were reinstated by a federal appeals court Thursday in a ruling that hinged in part on a Chris Rock video.

In November 2016, two plainclothes police officers approached Lamar Wright’s SUV, which was parked outside a friend’s house, with weapons drawn, according to the ruling by the 6th U.S. Circuit  Court of Appeals in Cincinnati in Lamar Wright v. City of Euclid Ohio; Kyle Flagg, Vashon Williams. The police officers were surveilling the friend’s home based on report of alleged illegal drug activity.

Thinking he was about to be robbed, Mr. Wright tried to back up the vehicle to get away but stopped when a flash of a badge made him realize the men were police officers.  Mr. Wright stopped the SUV, and the officers pulled open the driver’s side door.

Mr. Wright had no weapon, and the officers holstered theirs. Nonetheless, they deployed a taser against him and pepper-sprayed at point-blank range as he remained seated in the vehicle.

Mr. Wright, who was recovering from a medical operation for diverticulitis, had trouble getting out of the SUV because of a colostomy bag stapled to the right side of his abdomen, according to the ruling. The police aggravated the staples, causing bleeding from around the bag.

“The officers then arrested Wright even though there was arguably no probable cause for the arrest,” the ruling said. They designated his arrest as arising from a drug investigation, then detained him for more than nine hours, during which time he underwent an intrusive body search, before releasing him.

All charges against Mr. Wright were dropped. Neither police officer was investigated or disciplined in the case, and their use of force was approved by their supervisors, according to the ruling.

Mr. Wright filed suit against the officers and the city of Euclid in U.S. District Court in Cleveland on claims of unconstitutional use of excessive force, false arrest, malicious prosecution and municipal liability, along with state law claims.

The district court granted summary judgment to the officers on the basis of qualified immunity and to the city. The case was reinstated by a unanimous three-judge appeals court panel.

This case “raises a gravely important issue - police use of force – that has dominated the nation’s attention in recent weeks, the ruling said.

Mr. Wright argued his injury was “directly attributable to the city’s policy or custom of indifference to the use of force.” 

Among the training materials used by the Euclid Police Department and cited in the litigation was a YouTube video of a Chris Rock comedy sketch titled, “How not to get your ass kicked by the police!” that includes numerous clips of multiple police officers beating African-American suspects and also includes a reference to Rodney King. 

The training materials also included a PowerPoint presentation that shows a stick-figure cartoon portraying a police officer in riot gear beating a prone and unarmed civilian with a club, with the caption, “protecting and serving the poop out of you.”

Both the Euclid police sergeant in charge of training and the police chief testified they had never found merit to any civilian complaint concerning the department’s use of force.

“Wright points to the Euclid Police department training on use of force to support his argument that the City has a custom of allowing excessive force,” the ruling said.

Mr. Wright “has produced enough evidence such that a reasonable jury could find that the City’s custom surrounding use of force is so settled as to have the force of law and that it was the moving force behind violations of Wright’s constitutional rights,” the appeals court said, in reinstating Mr. Wright’s municipal liability claim.

“A reasonable jury could find that the City’s excessive-force training regimen and practices gave rise to a culture that encouraged, permitted, or acquiesced to the use of unconstitutional excess force, and that, as a result, such force was used on Wright,” the ruling said in also reinstating Mr. Wright’s failure to train or supervise claim.

The panel held a reasonable jury could also find that the training supervisor and police chief’s “seeming failure to ever meaningfully investigate excessive force complaints rises to the level of a ratification of use of force by a policymaker.”

The panel also reinstated several of the charges against the police officers.

“The officers’ designation of Wright’s arrest as drug-related, given their knowledge of the circumstances of his arrest, including his medical condition, is sufficient proof for a reasonable jury to find that the officers engaged in at least reckless falsehood that resulted in his wrongful detention and intrusive search,” the ruling said in reversing the district’ court’s grant of qualified immunity to the police officers.

Mr. Wright’s attorney, Jacqueline C. Greene, a partner with Friedman & Gilbert in Cleveland, said in a statement, “At this moment in history, as streets throughout Ohio, across the country, and around the world swell with protests against racist policing and brutality, this decision symbolizes a realization that police lies and violence against Black people cannot and will not be tolerated.”

An attorney for the city had no comment.

In a case that also cited George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis, earlier this month a federal appeals court reinstated charges against five West Virginia police officers who placed a black homeless man in a chokehold, then shot him 22 times while he allegedly was prone on the ground.