A lawsuit filed by a Black 25-year-old YouTuber/activist against Beverly Hills, alleging his civil rights were violated during 2020 arrests connected with his participation in Black Lives Matter protests, should be dismissed, attorneys for the city maintain in hew court papers.
Plaintiff James Butler, also known as James Kweisi, has more than 300,000 YouTube followers. In addition to civil rights violations, the Los Angeles Superior Court suit also alleges battery, false imprisonment and unlawful arrest and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
“The city of Beverly Hills has a long and well-documented history of racial profiling and discriminatory police practices against African Americans,” the complaint filed in September 2021 states.
But in court papers filed Thursday urging dismissal of all or part of Butler’s case, attorneys for the city contend that the plaintiff was arrested for unlawful conduct during two large-scale protests on June 26, 2020 and July 23, 2020. The demonstrations were in protests of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020.
“By his own admission, on both occasions plaintiff and other protesters impeded pedestrian traffic on the city’s sidewalks and blocked all lanes of a state highway, causing complete disruption of vehicular traffic for multiple hours,” the city’s attorneys state in their court papers.
Butler also led demonstrators through residential neighborhoods as late as 11:30 p.m., using bullhorns and speaker systems to chant, yell and blare loud music, according to the suit, which further states that both protests were declared unlawful assemblies for violating numerous provisions of the state Penal and Vehicle codes as well as the municipal codes.
The city’s municipal code prohibits the use of sound amplifying equipment in a residential zone from 10 p.m. to 8 a.m. and the Penal Code deems a misdemeanor behavior that disturbs others by loud and unreasonable noise.
Butler was booked, cited, and released for his arrest in the first protest and spent a few hours in jail, and when arrested a second time during the July 2020 protest, he refused to follow officer commands and the arresting officer reported that Butler drove his knee into the officer’s chest while refusing to walk and insisting on being carried “comfortably,” the city’s lawyers maintain in their court papers.
“The incontrovertible evidence, including plaintiff’s own deposition testimony, establishes that there is no triable issue … that plaintiff’s arrests were supported by probable cause and the force used against him was objectively reasonable under the circumstances,” the city’s attorneys state in their court papers.
During the June 2020 protest that began in front of Beverly Hills High School, a BHPD lieutenant announced over his police vehicle loudspeaker that the group’s loud music, yelling and chanting was unlawful, but the noise was not stopped despite the lawman’s 10 additional warnings, the city’s lawyers state in their court papers.
When a sergeant and an officer approached Butler’s group during the July 2020 protest and tried to tell them how to demonstrate lawfully and to use sidewalks and not block streets, the protesters began to yell obscenities at the pair and refused to speak with them, according to the city lawyers’ court papers.
As the sergeant and officer tried to leave in their vehicle, one demonstrator approached the sergeant’s open side window and spat on him, according to the court papers of the city’s attorneys.
The protest group later broke through a police skirmish line and marched to Santa Monica and Wilshire boulevards, where they sat on the pavement, blocked all lanes of traffic, and continued to use bullhorns to chant and yell, according to the city attorneys’ court papers.
No criminal charges were filed against Butler. A hearing on the city’s dismissal motion is scheduled June 20, 2024, before Judge Colin P. Leis.