THE
STOP
distasteful, it’s clearly not illegal.” Williams added, “Everything that we do is
vetted through current law or Supreme
Court rulings.”
Williams didn’t address Reichert’s history in his interview with St. Louis Today.
But since our initial report, Huffington
received other complaints from other motorists who have been stopped by Reichert
as well as other officers in the area. More
local defense attorneys have also since
said they too have had clients with stories
similar to Huff’s.
In May, Huff filed a civil rights lawsuit
against the town and against Reichert.
Until the video went viral, it was hard
for him to find representation. “The
ACLU blew me off,” he says. “They said
this sort of thing was common, and there
wasn’t much they could do about it.” He
is now represented by the Chicago law
firm Meyer & Kiss.
In response to the suit, Madison County State’s Attorney Thomas Gibbons told
the St. Louis Post Dispatch that the video
“speaks for itself.” He also said Reichert
was justified in searching Huff’s car because of Huff’s previous arrest. But a
previous arrest isn’t probable cause for a
search. It was also an especially odd comment given that the officer who pulled
Huff over had a record of his own.
“I’ve definitely learned to sympathize with people who get stopped and
frisked, or who have a minor arrest
record,” Huff says. “One blemish on
your record and you’re branded for the
rest of your life. Whether the law says
so or not, you basically forfeit your
HUFFINGTON
10.21.12
Fourth Amendment rights.
Meyer and Huff say the lawsuit isn’t
about money. It’s real aim, they say, is to
prompt new training for police officers in
the area, including proper discipline for
officers who violate motorists’ civil rights.
“I’d just like to draw attention to
what’s going on, so we can change all of
this,” Huff says. “I was subjected to a
similar stop in 2005. Same thing. I was
profiled, they searched my car from top
to bottom, and again they found nothing.
It sort of rolled off my back at the time.
But when it happened again, it put me in
a more activist mindset. If this happened
to me twice, it’s definitely happening to
lots of other people. There’s probably a
lot more of this going on than we could
ever know.”
Huff says he’s received lots of support
from fellow Star Trek fans. He got another boost in October when the season
premiere of the ABC prime-time drama
The Good Wife included a plotline that
followed Huff’s case—and The Huffington
Post’s reporting of it—almost to the letter. The show even gave a call-out to Huff,
when one of the characters mentioned
the title of the video he posted to YouTube, “Breakfast in Collinsville.”
“That was gratifying,” Huff says. “If the
goal was to get these issues in front of a
larger audience, you can’t do much better
than 10-12 million people. But it will feel
even better if we can put an end
to these things.”