An 18-year-old Black man has filed a civil rights suit against the city of Los Angeles, alleging he was racially profiled when he was confronted by police as a minor in 2024 and asked if he was a gang member as well as if he had a gun while he waited for his mother to return from a store.
Jeramiah Burge’s Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit also alleges assault and battery and negligence. He seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.
“(Burge) was racially profiled as a criminal and a gang member based on (Burge) being a teenager, young and Black,” the suit alleges.
A representative for the City Attorney’s Office did not immediately reply to a request for comment on the suit brought Monday.
According to the suit, Burge and his mother visited family and friends in South Los Angeles the evening of June 30, 2024, and later he sat alone in the passenger side of a friend’s car while she went to the store. He says he was speaking on the phone when two officers, one male and one female, approached and one asked, “Are you a gang banger?” and if he had a gun in the vehicle.
Burge answered “no” to both questions, the suit states.
The officers told Burge to get out of the car, pushed him against the hood and told him to stop resisting even though he was not doing so, the suit states. The officers kicked Burge’s feet out from under him and he fell to the ground, the suit alleges.
Burge, who had recently suffered a fractured shoulder, was handcuffed and the officers denied his request to call his mother, according to the suit, which further alleges that more officers arrived and threw the plaintiff to the ground again and threatened to shoot him with a stun gun.
Burge was then slapped multiple times in the face, shot with the stun gun multiple times in the chest and placed in a chokehold, causing him to have difficulty breathing, according to the complaint. Burge was hospitalized because of his injuries and the officers refused to tell his mother what happened when she returned about 30 minutes later, the suit further states.
Burge believes that officer body-worn camera footage and nearby surveillance cameras captured the entire event, according to the suit, which further contends he had done nothing wrong to warrant his being detained and arrested or subjected to excessive force.
Burge has suffered a lost of past and future income and continues to experience fear, anxiety, headaches, sleep disturbance and interference with concentration, according to the suit.