Baton Rouge Cops Had ‘Torture Warehouse’ Where They Beat Detainees: Lawsuits
GRISLY DETAILS
U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana
The Baton Rouge Police Department is facing further allegations that several officers in its street-crimes unit assaulted and humiliated people at an unmarked warehouse nicknamed the “Brave Cave.” The latest claims were made in a lawsuit filed on Monday by Ternell Brown, a 47-year-old Baton Rouge grandmother who said she was taken to the “torture warehouse” in June after officers making a traffic stop found prescription medication in her car. “Because BRPD officers deemed this behavior ‘suspicious,’ she was taken to BRPD’s black site,” the complaint reads, “where she was forced to show officers that she was not hiding contraband in her vagina or rectum. After more than two hours, they let her go without charge.” The existence and use of the so-called ‘Brave Cave’ was first reported last month, when Jeremy Lee sued the police department and the city over his alleged detainment there in January. Lee’s lawsuit, brought by the same lawyers representing Brown, included body-camera images of the 22-year-old tied up in the barebones facility. After the suit was filed, the FBI in Louisiana was asked to assist the Baton Rouge Police Department in investigating the matter, and the department’s street-crimes unit was temporarily disbanded. The department told CNN on Wednesday that it remained “committed to addressing these troubling accusations.”