In June of 2022, Derrick Gilbert was walking to his job as a line cook at a restaurant in Willmar, Minnesota, wearing a sleeveless red hoodie with the hood up. He was spotted by Willmar Police Officer Christopher Flatten, who was driving by and said he mistook Gilbert for a man he’d recently stopped for criminal trespass and who had an open arrest warrant.
Flatten parked his patrol car and approached Gilbert, saying, “Sammy Price, you have a warrant.” Gilbert told the officer he was not Sammy and kept walking. He declined to tell Flatten his name or to produce identification when asked.
Over the next several minutes, three more law enforcement officers arrived and joined Flatten in tussling with Gilbert and forcing him down onto the sidewalk, cutting the straps off his backpack and cuffing him.
They fished his driver’s license out of his back pocket and determined he was not Price. Then Flatten arrested him for “obstructing legal processes,” a misdemeanor, and took him to the Kandiyohi County Jail. He was released later that day.
These basic elements of the encounter Gilbert, his attorneys, and Willmar police more or less agree on. But their accounts of how police treated Gilbert — and why —diverge sharply in recent legal filings.
A civil lawsuit against Flatten and the Willmar Police Department filed in Kandiyohi County District Court in June on Gilbert’s behalf by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Minnesota alleges that Gilbert was unlawfully arrested “for walking while Black.”
The complaint asserts that police “slammed him to the ground,” threatened to tase Gilbert, cuffed him in a painful way, and caused him other physical injuries and mental and emotional distress during the arrest, all the while lacking probable cause to arrest him.
The ACLU attorneys argue that because Flatten had removed Price from a property in Willmar just 10 days prior for criminal trespass and had had other recent interactions with him, he should have realized that he was pursuing the wrong man once he saw Gilbert’s face.
“Both Derrick Gilbert and Sammy Price are Black men. Other than that, they bear no resemblance to each other,” the complaint obtained by Atlanta Black Star alleges. “Mr. Price is seven years younger, four inches shorter, and at least 90 pounds heavier than Mr. Gilbert,” it said, adding that Gilbert’s skin is darker than that of Mr. Price, who also has scars and tattoos on his face that Gilbert does not have.
“There’s no conceivable way that he thought this was Sammy Price,” Ian Bratlie, lead attorney for the ACLU in the civil lawsuit, told Atlanta Black Star. “So as soon as he saw Derrick, he has no reasonable suspicion of any crime at all.”
Instead of releasing Gilbert, police then pivoted to the obstruction charge, which “they argue was justified because he had clenched fists at his side,” said Bratlie.
The ACLU’s complaint stated that Gilbert “did not at any time deny a lawful order from an officer” and that he had a legal right to refuse to identify himself.
Citing Minnesota criminal law, it further argued that a defendant charged with a misdemeanor can’t be taken to jail unless police have reason to believe he’ll cause bodily injury to himself or others, will engage in other criminal conduct, or is likely to not respond to a citation.
The obstruction charges against Gilbert were dismissed six months later, in December of 2022, but not before he had made several appearances in court, missing about a week of work, according to the ACLU.
In addition to compensatory damages “well in excess of $50,000” and reimbursement for attorneys’ fees, the lawsuit seeks a court order declaring “the Defendants have violated the guarantees against unreasonable searches and seizures, equal protection and due process” under Minnesota law.
Bratlie said he intends to amend the complaint to seek punitive damages as well.
“Sadly, what Mr. Gilbert went through isn’t uncommon for Black men in America,” said Teresa Nelson, legal director of ACLU of Minnesota, in a statement last month. “Officer Flatten’s racist behavior—requiring Mr. Gilbert to identify himself with no legal justification—is grotesque and has no basis under Minnesota law. We hope this lawsuit will make the Willmar police department change the way they operate and will result in some measure of justice for Mr. Gilbert.”
In their answer to the civil lawsuit, filed on July 12, Flatten and the Willmar Police Department denied most of the plaintiff’s allegations of discrimination and argued that Gilbert’s detention and arrest were justified.
“Christopher Flatten was acting … with a good faith belief his conduct was lawful, constitutional, proper and pursuant to probable cause,” argue defendants’ attorneys Jason Hively and Ashley Ramstad.
“Officer Flatten believed the pedestrian was Sammy Price,” they claim, admitting that the man was later identified during the incident as Gilbert.
Their filed answer categorically denies that either the initial stop or the arrest was unlawful, that Gilbert was falsely imprisoned, or that the Willmar Police Department failed to properly train Flatten in racial bias-free policing and standards to make arrests.
Attorneys for the police department further argue that the plaintiff’s claims for relief are “barred by the legal doctrines of qualified, statutory and official immunity.” They joined the plaintiff’s request for a jury trial.
The Willmar Police Department had more to say about the events of June 22, 2022, when Gilbert was arrested, in their response to a separate complaint filed by Gilbert last year with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights, which charged racial discrimination by the police department.
“This violation was an ugly example of law enforcement thinking that all Black men look alike and racist policing,” Gilbert wrote in his charging document.
In their response, filed on August 2, 2023, the city of Willmar, represented by attorney Julia Kelly, wrote that “Mr. Gilbert was not discriminated against. This is simply a case of mistaken identity.”
Contrary to the allegations in the discrimination complaint, Kelly said, “Gilbert agrees Officer Flatten mistook Gilbert for another Black man. … However, Gilbert and Sammy are very similar in appearance. Both men are in their thirties, both are six feet tall and weigh over 200 pounds, and both have short black hair and similar facial hair. “
According to police reports and booking photos from the Kandiyohi County Jail in June of 2022, Gilbert was 37 years old, 6 feet 4 inches tall, 220 pounds, and had a mustache and beard. Price was 30 years old, 6 feet tall, 293 pounds, and had a short beard on his chin.
“Gilbert was hostile toward Officer Flatten and refused to cooperate or provide his identification,” the city’s response alleges. Officer Flatten believed Gilbert was, in fact, Sammy and concealed his identity because Sammy had a felony warrant.
The city’s response, signed by Willmar Police Chief Jim Felt, further detailed the encounter between Gilbert, Flatten, and three other law enforcement officers Flatten had called for backup, including two plain-clothed drug enforcement officers who arrived in an unmarked, gray pickup truck.
“Flatten asked Gilbert if he was not truly ‘Sammy’ to provide his real name. Gilbert refused and continued to walk across the street,” it noted. “Flatten grabbed Gilbert’s backpack to try and stop him. Gilbert twisted out of his grasp, clenched his fists, and yelled at Officer Flatten … [and] grew increasingly hostile toward the officers,” physically resisting their efforts to stop and handcuff him.
Bratlie said his client did nothing to justify his arrest.
“They never said Derrick assaulted an officer or attacked an officer,” said Bratlie. “They harassed him, kept asking, ‘Who are you?’ and when he said, ‘I’m not talking to you,’ that’s when he’s jumped by these four men. … Derrick Gilbert can be angry at these idiots. It’s not against the law to be upset.”
The varying accounts of the arrest cannot be verified by video, as Flatten parked his patrol car without the lights on and thus did not activate the dash cam video recorder. He said he also forgot to turn on his body-worn camera. The dash cam of Jordan Lemke, a Kandiyohi County sheriff’s deputy who responded to Flatten’s call for help, was on but captured only a small portion of the encounter, said Bratlie.
The city denied its police officers discriminated against Gilbert, as evidenced by the fact that he was not “subjected to adverse and unreasonable treatment” or “treatment caused by a discriminatory consideration of race,” as outlined by Minnesota law.
“Officer Flatten had, at a minimum, arguable probable cause to arrest Gilbert. Even if he was mistaken in his belief that Gilbert had an outstanding felony warrant, Gilbert still resisted lawful arrest.”
In the civil lawsuit, Gilbert and the ACLU attorneys noted that the Willmar Police Department has “updated their impartial policing policy” since Gilbert’s arrest. The policy, last updated in August of 2022, states that “racial profiling does not include law enforcement’s use of race or ethnicity to determine whether a person matches a specific description of a subject.”
In their response to the human rights complaint, the city noted that the Willmar Police Department “requires its officers to complete implicit bias training, which Officer Flatten has completed. Nor has Officer Flatten been disciplined for discrimination.”
The city’s attorney contended that “the probable cause standard is not so rigid to condemn Officer Flatten for his mistake. The misidentification here was objectively reasonable.”
Flatten has since left the Willmar police force and joined the Kandiyohi County Sheriff’s Office as a deputy sheriff earlier this year.
The West Central Tribune reported that, according to meeting minutes of the Willmar Police Civil Service Commission on May 28, Flatten said in his exit interview that he was leaving due to frustrations over the police department’s most recent contract negotiations.
Gilbert’s case with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights remains open. The initial hearing for the civil lawsuit was on Aug. 1 and is assigned to Judge Benjamin Wilcox in Stevens County.
