Pete Freedman
The Man Initially (And Falsely) Accused Of Killing Five Dallas Cops After The July 2016 Police Brutality Protests Has Now Formally Filed Suit Against DPD.
Hey, it finally happened: Mark Hughes — the man initially identified by cops as the prime suspect in the July 7, 2016, assault on police in Downtown Dallas — has followed through on his promise to formally file a lawsuit against the Dallas Police Department, something he has long told us he was in the process of doing.
Hughes rose to fame, you no doubt recall, for participating in the peaceful July 7 protests against police brutality that took place prior to Micah Johnson’s attack. He brought a rifle to that rally, exercising his open carry rights as a commentary on police treating blacks and whites who carry firearms differently. Little did he know how effective that decision would prove: Even after he turned his rifle over to police, Hughes was detained by DPD and remained publicly fingered by the department’s social media channels as the shooting’s prime suspect long after Micah Johnson had been killed and publicly identified as its sole participant.
Filed in conjunction with his brother Cory, who had helped organize the July 7 gathering, the lawsuit alleges a litany of claims. Among them? That the brothers’ civil rights were violated, that their rights to bear arms and free speech were suppressed by cops, that they were subjected to unlawful arrest and detention as they were “interrogated without proper Miranda warnings” and weren’t allowed to speak to their attorney until being subjected to “forensic testing” and that police illegally seized their property and “repeatedly rebuffed” their requests to have their belongings returned. It also accuses DPD of negligent officer training and intentionally inflicting emotional distress upon the Hughes brothers, and does not indicate a monetary amount being sought by its plaintiffs.
It’s interesting that the Hughes brothers have waited two years to file their suit, if only because it took the father of Patrick Zamarripa, one of the five officers killed during the July 7 shooting, just four months to file a lawsuit that sought $550 million in damages from Black Lives Matter, the Nation of Islam, Al Sharpton, Deray McKesson and 13 other defendants, whose anti-cop rhetoric he says was to blame for his son’s death.
If Hughes’ past comments to Central Track are to be believed, he and his brother aren’t so much seeking a payday as they are a public apology from DPD, and perhaps a meeting about how the department can better work with the area communities that feel oppressed by police brutality.
Given that they haven’t issued a simple “Sorry, bro!” to Hughes, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to hear that neither the City of Dallas nor its police department have yet commented on the lawsuit.