Detroit Free Press

DETROIT --- An undercover hooker. A coney island restaurant. Three teenage boys in a car.

Mix 'em up, and you have the makings of a civil rights lawsuit that's unfolding in federal court, where three suburban teenagers are suing six Detroit police officers over accusations of arresting and mistreating them during a summer prostitution sting that ended with the teens getting dropped off in an unfamiliar area of the city and ordered to walk home to Dearborn.

According to the lawsuit in U.S. District Court, the police engaged in misconduct of all sorts that August night. It alleges the officers drove the boys through neighborhoods at "reckless speeds" without activating emergency lights or sirens; impounded their car and said it would cost "thousands of dollars" to get it back; took a photo of one of the handcuffed boys and broadcast it on the Internet using the Snapchat app, and laughed and joked about the arrest.

All of this happened, the lawsuit claims, because the officers thought the teens were trying to flag down a relative and stop him from approaching an undercover prostitute outside the Caesars Coney Island on Warren in west Detroit. The teens were charged with interfering with police activity, but the charges were later dismissed.

"It was pretty outrageous," said defense attorney Amir Makled, who represented the teens after their arrest. "They charged these guys with interfering with police activity. In essence, they were accused of stopping prostitution in the making ... these officers were just out of control."

Makled disputes that the teens were trying to deter someone from picking up a prostitute, but argues that even if they were: "It's not a crime ... that's a First Amendment issue right there ... it’s not as if they were in the middle of an arrest."

The Detroit Police Department declined comment on the lawsuit, which was filed Nov. 18 in U.S. District Court in Detroit on behalf of Hassan Abdallah and Ibrahim Bazzi, both 17 of Dearborn; and Ali Chami, 18, of Romulus.

According to the police report, no force was used in the arrest and there was no video or audio of the incident. The report said a team of officers with the 6th Precinct was conducting an undercover prostitution sting in the area of Winthrop and Warren at 6:45 p.m. Aug. 26, when they spotted a group of males sitting in a Chevy Monte Carlo in the parking lot of the Caesars Coney Island.

"The males were yelling across the street and waving their arms to get the attention of an older Arabic male who was making his way toward our ... decoy. The males were yelling, 'Don't do it! Don't do it?' " the police report stated. "The males appeared to be discouraging the older Arabic male from talking with the decoy."

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This interfered with the police operation, an officer wrote in the report, so the teenagers were arrested and their car was taken to a "staging area by the takedown." The vehicle was towed by Detroit Auto Tow for impound, the report said.

For plaintiffs attorney Nick Hadous, the police version of events sounded like hogwash.

"It sounds almost like something you’d see on TV, like 'Narkos' or 'Menace to Society,' where kids are dropped off far away from home. Something really didn’t sit well with me when I heard what happened," said Hadous, who filed a civil suit after getting contacted by the teens' parents. "They are outraged. They do not believe police should be treating anyone’s children that way."

Especially egregious is that police abandoned the teens in the middle of Detroit and told them to walk to Dearborn, said Hadous, who argues the teens did nothing wrong.

"What I heard that really offended me was that these kids were arrested on the basis of what seems to be more a speculative crime involving somebody else. There was no underlying crime," said Hadous, arguing the drop-off location was especially alarming. "Why would you drop them off at a Detroit location, especially when two of them were minors? Are their lives that worthless that you don’t even consider their safety? And putting it on Snapchat?"

According to the lawsuit, here's what happened on the night of the arrests:

Two teenagers were sitting in their car eating chips and drinking soda while waiting for their friend to get out of work at the coney island. When he got out, he joined them in the car. As they were about to leave the parking lot, one of the teens noticed a relative pull his car into a nearby CVS pharmacy and started to wave to the relative, who drove over and greeted them.

As soon as the relative left, the police officers stormed the coney island parking lot with their vehicles and surrounded the teenagers, who were handcuffed, searched and placed under arrest for an "imaginary offense," the lawsuit states. The officers drove the teens around town and dropped them off at Tireman and Abington in Detroit instead of a police station where their parents could safely pick them up," the lawsuit states.

The officers ordered the teens to walk home and "the boys complied," the lawsuit states.

Over the next few days, one of the teens — 17-year-old Hassan Abdallah — made several calls to find out where his car was towed. At one point, he was told that it would cost "thousands of dollars to get the car back," the lawsuit states, noting the teen's father intervened and ultimately paid hundreds of dollars to get the car back from a towing company.

Throughout this ordeal, the lawsuit states, the police refused to drop the charges and forced the teenagers to get lawyers. The criminal charges were ultimately dropped.

The lawsuit seeks an unspecified amount of damages.

"We want justice," Hadous said. "We want the department to be aware of what happened and maybe take any appropriate measures they deem warranted. This is something that shouldn’t be happening to anybody."

The reporting officers listed on the police report are Michael Carson and Joseph Machon — both of whom are named defendants in the lawsuit.

According to DPD spokesman Michael Woody, Carson and Machon still work at DPD, as do two other officers who are named in the lawsuit: Jordan Leavy and Ibrahim Abdul-Hamid. Two other officers are also being sued, but their full names were not listed in the lawsuit.