An Alabama police department is about to face legal ramifications as a Black pastor is gearing up to sue after being wrongfully arrested earlier in the year. The man believes his civil rights were violated by officers when they ignored the character references of others in the community and arrested him.
Rev. Michael Jennings, Pastor of Vision of Abundant Life Ministries in Sylacauga, has hired a lawyer in preparation to sue the Childersburg Police Department after officers arrested him for watering his neighbor’s front yard flower bush. The clergyman claims he was racially profiled and discriminated against because of the color of his skin, even being placed in handcuffs as other neighbors, white, told the police they erroneously called 911 on him. At the time of the call, they did not recognize the community stakeholder, Daily Mail reveals.
The officers took the man to the Talladega County jail and charged him with obstruction of government operation because he resisted the arrest.
On Sunday, May 22, a 20-minute video from the police’s bodycam captured the altercation.
On that day, after coming home from Sunday service, he completed a service his neighbor asked him to do: water the shrubbery around the house.
Unbeknownst to him, one of his white female neighbors reported a “suspicious” man and car on the property, and officers believed he fit the descriptor of being suspicious.
Officers arrived at the scene and approached the man.
“My neighbor goes out of town a lot, and they wanted me to watch their house and keep their flowers watered,” the good Samaritan said.
As Jennings told the officers what he was doing, bodycam footage captures one cop asking, “How do we know that’s the truth?”
“I had the water hose in my hand! I was watering the flowers,” the preacher snapped back.
Jennings refused to show the officers his identification. In Jennings’ life before the pastorate, he worked in law enforcement and felt the officers had no right to ask him for proof of his identity because he had not committed or was not presently committing a crime.
According to Alabama law, one is required to submit their identification if there is a “reasonable suspicion that the individual is involved in criminal activity.”
Nervously laughing, Jennings says, “Y’all racially profiled me.”
The officer responded with a denial, “We’re not racially profiling you.”
“Yes, you did,” Jennings responds but is met with, “No sir, no sir. We’re not about that okay?”
A white female resident came over and vouched for Jennings, saying he is not only a neighbor but friends with the owners of the house who left earlier in the day. “He lives right there,” she said.
This did not sway the officers and they hauled Jennings off to jail.
After placing him in a patrol car, the officers ask the woman, “Does he have permission to be watering flowers?”
“He may, because they are friends,” she said. “And they went out of town today and he may be watering their flowers. It would be completely normal.’
The woman then added, “This is probably my fault.” She was the person that originally placed the call.
In a police report about the account, officers have the woman admitting she misidentified Jennings as a suspicious person.
The document calls Jennings “belligerent” and “dismissive,” alleging Jennings walked away from the police while they were talking to him.
Officers included in their report that Jennings threatened to sue them for racial profiling.
The report did not address the pastor by his last name or titles (Mr. or Rev.) but referred to himself by his first name. It read, “Michael kept saying that we didn’t have a reason to be talking to him and that he didn’t have to identify himself to us.”
Later it was revealed the “suspicious” vehicle, a gold SUV that Jennings denied was his, belonged to another person, and charges were dropped in June.
However, Jennings has now hired attorney Harry Daniels and is expected to file a lawsuit against the department, saying “watering roses ain’t no crime” and being arrested has caused an “emotional toll” he is struggling to recover from.
Daniels said, “These cases put law enforcement on notice and the country on notice of these types of interactions. Thank God that Pastor Jennings had a cool head.”
“He didn’t get aggressive or defensive in a sense, and he complied when the officers grabbed him,” the lawyer continued, before saying, “It represents an abuse of police powers.”
“It represents racial profiling, and it represents law-enforcement officers intimidating a person who actually understands and knows their rights,” the attorney added.
