An embattled Louisiana police department has been hit with a second lawsuit alleging officers from a street crime unit dragged detainees to an unmarked warehouse dubbed the “Brave Cave,” where they were assaulted, stripped and subjected to body cavity searches.

The latest allegations against the Baton Rouge Police Department were detailed in a lawsuit filed Monday by Ternell Brown, a 47-year-old grandmother, who said she was taken to a “torture warehouse” after officers making a traffic stop found bottles of legal prescription medication in her car.

“She was forced to show officers that she was not hiding contraband in her vagina or rectum,” the Baton Rouge woman’s complaint stated. “After more than two hours, they let her go without charge.”Brown’s lawsuit, which also named the city and the parish of Baton Rouge and several officers as defendants, was filed a month after another resident, Jeremy Lee, filed a lawsuit alleging that he was taken in January to the “Brave Cave” and beaten by the officers.

The street crime unit called BRAVE, short for Baton Rouge Area Violence Elimination, was disbanded after Lee filed his lawsuit, which included a body camera image of the 22-year-old perched on a chair in what appears to be a mostly empty warehouse.

“It’s essentially an unmarked interrogation warehouse where Baton Rouge citizens have been getting taken for years, strip-searched and sometimes beaten,” Thomas Frampton, an attorney for Lee and Brown, said Thursday.

The officers named in the lawsuits “are well known for their brutality in the Baton Rouge community,” Frampton said.

Lee was “left so badly beaten that the local jail refused to admit him until he was treated by a nearby hospital,” his complaint states. “There he was treated for broken bones and other injuries.”

  • cbarrick@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    “When Baton Rouge sends its cops, they’re not sending their best. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

    • Kbobabob@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      And some, I assume, are good people.

      Not if any of them knew or suspected any of what these guys were doing. I’m sure there was no locker talk.

        • asteriskeverything@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Yes I am aware it is from a trump quote! Thank you, sorry, that’s why I liked it for a meme because it was stupid when he said it and using it for a city highlights it. I really didn’t reply clearly.

          What I haven’t seen is it be used like this before. But I’m not too hip so maybe I missed it and twisting his quote for using American cities is a meme now?

          • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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            1 year ago

            It’s not for cities in particular, just anything involving conservative really.

      • cbarrick@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        It’s a Donald Trump quote, except the original starts with “when Mexico sends its people”.

        • asteriskeverything@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Thank you for being so helpful! I am aware I suppose I either over explain myself or am completely misunderstood and I do not have the skills to succinctly make my point. Apparently for me it’s choose one or the other lol