BATON ROUGE, La (BRPROUD) ––– The attorney of the family depicted in the body camera footage says he believes the family and the community deserve accountability.
“In the span of about 90 minutes, a team of five Baton Rouge police officers engage in a handful, at least a half dozen criminal offenses,” said attorney Thomas Frampton.
Frampton represented the family in the civil case after the incident seen in the body camera footage.
“I became involved with the case after a federal judge in Baton Rouge, Judge Brian Jackson, issued a really scathing opinion when dismissing the criminal case,” said Frampton.
He says it was that opinion that led him to believe there was evidence of criminal wrongdoing.
“I think the initial stop looks a heck of a lot like a battery and even a sexual battery. When they go over to the mom’s apartment there at minimum trespassing and probably engaging in a felony called unauthorized entry. They threatened to beat a handcuffed individual. That’s certainly an assault, and then Sergeant Camilo manipulated his reports numerous times and gave testimony that I think could be prosecuted for perjury. So we’re talking about a whole menu of criminal charges that Hiller Moore could bring if he were so inclined,” said Frampton.
The best outcome to this situation, he says, would be for all officers involved to be held responsible for their actions. “Accountability also looks like holding the officers accountable either through disciplinary action or criminal charges,” said Frampton.
In the press conference held by the Baton Rouge Police Department, Chief Murphy Paul said that one of the officers involved is already under investigation for entering without a warrant.
Frampton says, for the safety of the community, these officers should be disciplined within their departments and charged for their criminal actions, “I don’t know how you reform that other than fundamentally rethinking what it is that we want our officers to be doing on the street.”
