Black Man Suing Police After He Was Arrested, Mistaken For A White Felon Twice His Age
Shane Lee Brown, a 25-year-old Black man, is suing two Nevada police agencies after he was misidentified as a white ex-felon almost twice his age, arrested and held in jail for six days.
According to the Associated Press, Brown claims his civil rights were violated by Las Vegas and Henderson police and that he was falsely imprisoned as the agencies displayed negligence and other wrongful conduct. He’s reportedly seeking upwards of $50,000 in damages.
The civil suit describes 51-year-old Shane Neal Brown as a white man with a bushy white beard who is taller than Shane Lee Brown. The former was first convicted of a 1994 felony and was sought on an arrest warrant in November 2019, accusing him of being a felon in possession of a firearm.
In January 2020, Shane Lee Brown was arrested during a traffic stop by Henderson police, jailed and then transferred in custody two days later to Las Vegas police. He remained imprisoned in Vegas until he appeared before a judge who ordered him freed, the AP reports.
E. Brent Bryson, Brown’s attorney, claims police and corrections officers failed to perform “any due diligence,” including the comparison of physical descriptions, fingerprints, photos, dates of birth, or criminal ID numbers following his client’s arrest.
“They would have easily determined that Shane Lee Brown had been misidentified as the person sought in the warrant,” Bryson wrote in the complaint.
The lawsuit also states that Shane Lee Brown told Henderson and Las Vegas police repeatedly that he was not the white “Shane Brown” named in the felony warrant.
According to KLAS-TV, Las Vegas police learned that Shane Neal Brown was jailed in San Bernardino County, California, that he had accepted a plea deal and was sentenced in February 2020 for up to six years in prison with credit for time served.
Shane Lee Brown was never charged.
