A woman has sued an Atlanta police officer for allegedly leaving her breasts exposed while taking her from her house to a squad car – where she sat several hours, topless, while officers stopped and looked at her, with one masked officer opening the car door to take a photo.
The incident took place during a pre-dawn, Swat-style raid staged by Atlanta police and agents from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (or ATF), on 8 February 2024. The agents sought evidence related to the arson of police motorcycles and cars, carried out in opposition to a controversial police training center known as “Cop City”, which has attracted local, national and internet media attention.
The raid – including the woman’s experience of being left topless for hours – was reported on by the Guardian at the time. The lawsuit, filed 23 May by Atlanta-area attorneys Jeff Filipovits and Wingo F Smith, asserts that the woman’s fourth amendment rights protecting her against unreasonable seizure were violated during the raid and draws on details laid out in the Guardian’s story.
The federal complaint is important as a test of the police’s ongoing claims of qualified immunity nationwide – the “only thing that stands between the government and people seeking to vindicate their constitutional rights”, said Patrick Jaicomo, senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, where he works on the public interest law firm’s “project on immunity and accountability”.
An Atlanta police spokesperson said it doesn’t comment on pending litigation.
The lawsuit names Amy Smith as plaintiff; Atlanta police officer Frances Raymonville-Watson is named as defendant, as she “held Ms Smith in custody, unclothed and for hours for no purpose other than to embarrass and humiliate her”.
Smith told the Guardian anonymously last year: “They grabbed me, led me outside and handcuffed me – leaving me completely uncovered.” Officers put her in a squad car, where she remained for “what seemed like hours”, she said at the time.
“While Ms Smith was topless in the back of the squad car, an unknown male officer wearing a face covering opened the rear door of the squad car and took Ms Smith’s picture,” the lawsuit alleges.
“While Ms. Smith’s chest was uncovered, several officers came and went from the squad car, looking in at her through the window,” it continues. “The security of the scene and the officers conducting the search did not require plaintiff to be held with exposed breasts,” the lawsuit concludes. Ms. Smith was eventually released.
The February 2024 raids followed a publicity campaign lasting several months, including a $200,000 reward for information leading to arrests for arson and 450 billboards promoting the reward in New York, Seattle and other cities.
The controversial training center – which officially opened its doors in an invitation-only ceremony in April – attracted global headlines after police shot dead Manuel Paez Terán, or “Tortuguita”, an environmental activist protesting against the project, in January 2023.
Opposition to the training center, built on a 171-acre footprint in a forest south-east of Atlanta, has included local and national organizations and protesters, centered on concerns such as unchecked police militarization and clearing forests in an era of climate crisis.
Atlanta police officials say the center is needed for “world-class” training, and to attract new officers.
Jaicomo said police raid people’s homes across the country every day at hours when they are likely to find people partially clothed or naked, making the incident described in the lawsuit an important one. He pointed to a 2015 eleventh Circuit case out of Georgia affirming a district court finding of “a broad, clearly established principle that individuals who have been placed in police custody have a constitutional right to bodily privacy”.
The Atlanta lawsuit is meaningful, Jaicomo asserted, because “any case where you have the opportunity to overcome qualified immunity has the potential to set a precedent”.
Meanwhile, he said, the “traumatic experience will stick with her for the rest of her life”, referring to Smith. He called the incident an example of “police doing things to humiliate and punish people” – and of “the constitutional transgressions taking place thousands of times daily that, if left unaddressed, the government will use more frequently”.
