A Black man from upstate New York was pulled over by police for reasons never explained to him – ending up falsely arrested for possessing crack cocaine and mocked by the local media – after daring to file a complaint against the Buffalo cops who had pulled him over.
Now Bruce McNeil is about to receive a $700,000 settlement for having his rights violated by multiple officers who lied and retaliated against him for standing up to those lies.
One of those officers, John Davidson, went on to become president of the local police union, where he represents 700 police officers from the Buffalo Police Department and is frequently quoted in local media about police issues.
The other cop, Patrick Garry, went on to become a detective. Both cops who have each been sued three times by citizens they have arrested make more than six-figures each.
McNeil was arrested on May 27, 2019, on Memorial Day Weekend after Garry and Davidson pulled him over around 5:37 a.m. as he drove from his home to buy a newspaper and a coffee.
Without telling him why they had stopped him, the cops demanded his registration and identification. Even after he asked them, they refused to respond but he handed over his information to avoid trouble.
They took his information back to the patrol car where they ran his name through dispatch to see if he had any open warrants but he had none.
Nevertheless, they walked back to his car and ordered him to step outside’s telling him “there was a problem,” according to the lawsuit filed in 2020.
But they refused to tell him what the problem was, instead handcuffing him, searching his pockets and placing him in the back of the patrol car, asking if he had anything illegal in the car.
McNeil told them they might find some marijuana ashes in the ashtray of the car but did not give them consent to search the car which they did anyway, not finding anything illegal, the claim states.
They then released him from the car and handcuffs, telling him he was free to go but never explaining the reason for the stop in the first place.
‘Humiliated, Confused and Angry’
But as he was driving away, he noticed the hood of the car was bouncing up and down, something it had not been doing prior to the search so he called 911 and was told to come into the police station to file a complaint.
At the station, he explained the situation to Buffalo Police Lt. Patrick Boice who ordered him to leave the building under threat of arrest.
McNeil then returned to the station with his mother as a witness to file his complaint where he spoke to another lieutenant, Jenny Velez.
Velez, who also ordered him out of the building under threat of arrest, telling him he would be charged for the marijuana that cops did not find in his car.
McNeil’s mother objected, telling Velez there was no weed in the car, but that just escalated things.
The claim states that five other Buffalo police officers, including Garry and Davidson, were in a backroom overhearing the conversation between McNeil and his mother and Lt. Velez.
Officer Davidson emerged from the back room and told Defendant Velez that they found crack cocaine in the back of their patrol vehicle.
Defendant Velez then told Mr. McNeil that he was being charged with crack cocaine, and that “the charges are already downtown.” Confused, Mr, McNeil asked Defendant Velez for the basis of her charge.
Defendant Velez then told Mr. McNeil that he left crack cocaine in the back of Officers Davidson and Garry’s patrol vehicle.
Mr. McNeil protested the allegation, and Defendant Velez told
Mr. McNeil “it’s too late, you should have left.”
Officers Anthony Burvid and Matthew Vaughn then emerged from the back room and arrested Mr. McNeil in front of his mother and other C-District officers.
Mr. McNeil was humiliated, confused, and angry.
The following day, The Buffalo News ran an article about his arrest with the headline Man leaves crack cocaine in worst place possible: backseat of police car.
Like most mainstream media articles, it was written from the perspective of police who claimed they found a blunt in McNeil’s ashtray, and placed him in the back of their patrol car, but allowed him to leave with a warning to fix his license plate lamp.
It was only after they allowed him to leave that they claimed to have found the baggie of crack cocaine in the back of his patrol car which is when they arrested him.
But the article never explains when and where and how they arrested him if they’d not found the alleged cocaine until after he had driven away.
The felony charges against him remained pending until he was acquitted by a judge in December 2019 – after refusing to accept a plea deal by pleading guilty to a lesser charge.
Retaliation and Intimidation
Four months after his acquittal in April 2020, McNeil was pulled over by Garry, who did not explain the reason for the traffic stop but told him, “I heard you didn’t accept the plea deal.”
Garry ordered McNeil and his passenger out of the car, handcuffing McNeil and placing him in the back of his patrol car where he proceeded once again to search his car without a warrant, consent or reasonable suspicion.
Garry then allowed them to leave without a citation or a reason for why they had been stopped in the first place. McNeil once again tried to file a complaint but nothing appears to have come from it, the claim states.
The retaliation and intimidation left McNeil with “severe emotional and psychological distress,” the claim states.
“I said how can I be arrested for drugs if there are no drugs?” McNeil told WIVB-TV.
“And that’s when I was arrested by [Velez] and two other officers,” he said.
The lawsuit accused the cops of violating his Fourth and 14th Amendment rights through false arrest, false imprisonment, malicious prosecution, unreasonable search and seizure as well as violating his First Amendment rights by retaliating against him for attempting to file a complaint against the cops.
“They took me in the back and made up charges that had me going back and forth to court for eight months it seemed like,” he said in his interview with WIVB-TV.
The $700,000 settlement has been proposed by Buffalo city attorneys and must be approved by the city council which they are expected to do before the end of the month, Investigative Post reported.
