Man says officers woke him in bed, wrongly detained him while half-naked

Man says L.A. officers wrongly detained him when he was half-naked - The Washington Post

Derrick Cooper said he thought he was dreaming last week when he heard shouts from law enforcement officers inside his Compton, Calif., home at 4 a.m.

It happened so swiftly that Cooper, who runs a youth sports academy in Compton, was marched out of his home half-naked, he alleged. He said officers did not allow him to put on pants as they ordered him outside.

Cooper said he was detained in the back of a patrol car parked outside his home for around 20 minutes. Then he heard a dispatcher on the car’s radio inform the officers they were at the wrong address. The officers apologized to Cooper and released him, he said. He went back inside, still shaking from the encounter and naked from the waist down.

“It was so, so humiliating,” Cooper said in an interview. “I just felt less than a man.”

The sheriff’s department is investigating the incident, a spokesperson said, while declining to comment on Cooper’s allegations. The department told KTLA that officers were investigating a burglary in the area and released Cooper once they determined he wasn’t a suspect.

Jaaye Person-Lynn, Cooper’s attorney, said that Cooper had no warrants for his arrest and that the sheriff’s department said officers were responding to an alert from a home security system. Cooper did not report a burglary, and no one broke into his home that night, Person-Lynn said.

Cooper intends to sue the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, he announced at a Friday news conference.

“This is wrong and just cannot continue,” Cooper said. “We want to have a healthy relationship, a safe relationship with our law enforcement, but this is not the way to do it.”

Cooper, 54, runs a youth sports academy in Compton called the L.A. City Wildcats, where he goes by “Coach Cooper.” The academy’s classroom is attached to his home and faces the street, its windows plastered with photos of Cooper and the basketball and cheer teams he coaches.

Cooper and his attorney said they were perplexed that officers entered the building at 4 a.m. with guns drawn.

“I am a man of prestige in this community,” Cooper said at his news conference Friday. “I have children [that] I helped get into college.”

The officers entered Cooper’s home by reaching in through a delivery slot for mail and unlatching his front door, Cooper said. He woke up to yells and the glare of flashlights as the officers announced their presence. Cooper alleged that the officers did not tell him why he was being detained.

The officers also did not allow Cooper to put on shorts or a towel to cover himself before ordering him out of his home, Cooper alleged.

Cooper said he was anxious to comply with the officers’ orders and feared for his life. He added that he is still struggling to sleep after the incident.

Person-Lynn said the decision to detain Cooper while he was undressed was “egregious” and criticized the officers’ decision to enter Cooper’s home at all.

“With three deputies, there’s somebody that should have said, ‘Hey, we don’t have any indication of a burglary going on,’” Person-Lynn said. “‘We don’t have a warrant. We don’t have any exigent circumstances. Maybe we should get approval from a superior before we go into this residence.’”

Person-Lynn intends to file a claim against the sheriff’s department for inflicting distress on Cooper, which would probably precede a lawsuit, he said.

Cooper said he decided to pursue legal action after noting how similar his situation had been to fatal encounters between officers and Black people in their homes.

“I feel like I’m the ambassador for those that lost their lives in situations that I was in,” he said.