Baltimore pays woman $220K to settle lawsuit
Baltimore officials have agreed to pay $220,000 to a woman who said police arrested her, assaulted her and broke her phone because she filmed them beating a young man.
The Board of Estimates, which is controlled by Mayor Catherine Pugh, voted last week to award the money to Makia Smith to settle her lawsuit against the Police Department alleging battery and constitutional violations.
In her $1 million suit, filed in U.S. District Court, Smith said city police officers destroyed her camera and arrested her on March 8, 2012, because she was recording officers whom she observed beating someone else.
Smith said in the complaint that she was driving on Harford Road when she saw officers beating a young man. She said she took out her camera phone and started recording.
An officer ran over, reached into her car and grabbed her phone, and smashed it under his foot. She said three other officers came to the car, pulled her out by her hair and placed her under arrest, the lawsuit says.
Smith was charged with resisting arrest and other violations. All charges were dropped by prosecutors.
In the civil trial stemming from her lawsuit, a jury sided with officers.
But a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered a new trial because prosecutors mentioned Smith’s previous arrests during cross examination, creating an “enormous” risk of prejudice.
The judge in the case had already ruled that information about Smith’s arrests was not allowed to mentioned.
City lawyers wrote that they decided to settle the case “because of conflicting factual issues and given the uncertainties and unpredictability of jury verdicts.”