A filmmaker is suing both the city of Los Angeles and his police officer uncle after he was shot with projectiles during a Black Lives Matter protest in 2020 following George Floyd’s death.
Jamal Shakir Jr. [pictured above] filed suit against his uncle, LAPD Officer Eric Anderson, and the city alleging civil rights violations, assault and battery, false imprisonment and negligence. The suit alleges Anderson ordered his nephew shot with a non-lethal weapon after spotting him in a crowd of BLM protesters in downtown L.A.
“This lawsuit demonstrates the heart-rending extent to which the current warrior mentality permeates the Los Angeles Police Department, threatening to destroy a Black family to its core from within,” says the suit, which was filed on May 10.
[Read the complaint here]
The documents additionally allege Anderson “turned his trained wrath against a member of his own family, leaving a promising young entrepreneur, his own blood, scarred and reeling in the wake of his malicious attack.”
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Shakir, 23, is seeking unspecified damages from the city and Anderson. The filmmaker streamed the May 29, 2020 encounter on Instagram Live. Some of the footage shows he recognized his uncle on the police skirmish line.
“Eric, look at me in my eyes,” he said at one point to his uncle.
“You know how your daddy feeling right now? That could have been you,” Shakir said before the camera wobbled as he was hit with a projectile.
The suit states that he was shot in his right hand and then in the buttocks by another projectile.
Shakir held a news conference Tuesday afternoon outside LAPD headquarters in downtown L.A. He was joined by Black Lives Matter Los Angeles co-founder Dr. Melina Abdullah and attorneys Carl E. Douglas, Jamon R. Hicks, Tiffany McLean and Bianca V. Perez.
“The irony of this entire story is just that I’ve spent my entire life doing everything to prevent being a statistic of the criminal justice system or being a victim of the police brutality force just due to the fact of my circumstances of my mother and father being incarcerated at an early age,” Shakir told reporters at the news conference. “To be able to do such a thing despite it being your family, your blood or your own people is something that is tremendously affecting the entire community.”
An LAPD spokesperson said the department does not comment on pending litigation.
Tuesday’s news conference came after a federal judge on Monday ruled to extend recent court restrictions on the LAPD’s use of “less-lethal” projectiles at protests.
Watch the video Shakir recorded below:
