Lawsuit alleges motorist wrongly stopped
Settlement talks ordered in 2020 case
A judge has ordered settlement talks in a federal lawsuit filed by a Black man who claims he was wrongfully stopped by a white New Braunfels police officer three years ago, pulled out of his car, shocked with a Taser and charged for protesting the stop.
Then-officer Kaleb Meyer had pulled over Clarence Walter Crawford Jr. for having a “dirty” license plate on his white Pontiac — meaning the plate number was obscured.
Crawford accused Meyer of racial profiling in his lawsuit, which targets Meyer, the city of New Braunfels and former Police Chief Tom Wibert. In court, lawyers for the defendants have denied Crawford’s allegations.
At the time of the incident, Meyer was 23 and had been on the New Braunfels police force less than a year.
Most of the encounter was captured on Meyer’s body camera. The recording is among the evidence U.S. District Judge Xavier Rodriguez is weighing, in case the parties don’t reach a settlement. Rodriguez ordered mediation talks to take place by March 31, court records show.
The body cam footage begins with Meyer driving his patrol car with the siren sounding, and reading a license plate number twice to a dispatcher — though Meyer said later he had to “guess” the number because of dirt on the plate. Meyer is heard saying the driver of the car wasn’t acknowledging his siren and lights.
A little more than a minute into the recording, Meyer said the driver finally started to pull over, taking the Texas 46 exit. Meyer requested backup.
After Crawford stopped in an urgent care clinic’s parking lot, Meyer instructed a female bystander to move away as Meyer approached Crawford’s car, gun drawn.
He instructed Crawford to put his hands on the steering wheel. Crawford asked why he’d been stopped, and with one hand holding his cellphone, he put both hands on the steering wheel.
The video then shows Crawford shouting, “Please don’t shoot me, officer! I’m Black!”
As Meyer ordered Crawford to get out, the driver told the officer he still had his seat belt on because Meyer had directed him to keep his hands on the wheel. Crawford then asked if he could put down his phone as Meyer yelled at him, directing him to put the phone down.
Meyer threatened to cut Crawford’s seat belt, but Crawford unfastened it. Meyer then grabbed his arm and pulled him out of the car. Crawford went down on one knee as the officer ordered him to get on the ground.
Meyer is seen using a stun gun on the back of Crawford’s leg.
The video shows Crawford eventually lying flat after Meyer used the Taser on him a second time and handcuffed him.
Meyer told Crawford that he had tried to run from the police, and Crawford replied: “I wasn’t running. I wasn’t stopping on the highway because it wasn’t safe. I was trying to get to a safe location. I’m allowed to do that. Those are the rules.”
Crawford was arrested on
charges of having an unclean license plate, attempting to elude police and interfering with official duties.
The Comal County District Attorney’s Office, after reviewing video footage from Meyer’s patrol car, found he had probable cause to stop Crawford on a misdemeanor license plate charge, which normally would result in a ticket.
District Attorney Jennifer
Tharp said in a court motion, however, that it appeared Meyer was conducting a felony stop because he approached with his gun drawn. Meyer did not follow the department’s standard operating procedures for felony stops, the DA wrote.
She added that Crawford had been overly dramatic in yelling at Meyer not to shoot him, but that the officer did not try to deescalate the situation.
The DA said Wibert, the police chief, had asked prosecutors to drop all charges against Crawford “in the interest of justice.” The charges were dismissed.
By then, Meyer had resigned. And Wibert retired in September 2020.
In November of that year, New Braunfels city officials publicly released the body camera recording. They said the kind of behavior Meyer exhibited would not be tolerated and was not representative of the rest of the police force.
Crawford’s lawyer, Paul Vick, has said in court filings that the city’s own records showed Meyer stopped four motorists — two were Black, two were Hispanic — for dirty license plates during his year with the department.
Vick also said the city’s records from 2019 and 2020 showed Meyer issued 212 citations or warnings — 24 (11.3 percent) to Black motorists and 113 (53.4 percent) to Hispanic drivers. Blacks represent 2 percent of New Branufels’ population, and Hispanics 37.4 percent, according to the Census Bureau.
Lawyers for Meyer and Wibert have argued — in part — that the suit should be dismissed because the defendants are shielded by legal principles of immunity and that Crawford has failed to prove they violated his constitutional rights.
Wibert and the city also have contended that the New Braunfels Police Department did not have a policy or practice of targeting minorities.
Crawford filed his lawsuit in San Antonio federal court in 2021.