Civil Rights Lawsuit Filed Against Granite City, IL, Alleging Excessive Force and Religious Discrimination

A lawsuit was recently filed by the The Law Offices of Haytham Faraj, PLLC under Section 1983 of the Civil Rights Act against the City of Granite City and its police department naming several officers and the city itself. Granite City is a small city in southern Illinois near St. Louis Missouri.

The civil rights lawsuit sets forth disturbing facts of excessive force and false imprisonment against a teenager whose mother wears an Islamic head scarf, known as a hijab. The officers involved became irate and beat and battered the young boy when his mother stepped in to stop the cops from questioning him after he had been involved in a car accident.

The officers, Redstone and Dawes, called the women a stupid Muslim bitch and f'ing Muslim bitch when she courageously interceded on behalf of her son. Later in the day when the woman went to file a complaint regarding the offensive comments at the police station, the officers at the station grabbed her son beat and battered him including slamming his head against metal doors and bars and kicked him while his mother looked on in terror.

The lawsuit seeks damages in the amount of 15 million dollars as compensation for the terror suffered at the hands of the police officers and to punish and deter them from engaging in similar abuses in the future. The lawsuit may be read here. It was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois.