Clearwater settles case for racial discrimination in wrongful arrest

CLEARWATER – The city has paid $50,000 to settle two lawsuits filed by a man who claimed Clearwater police officers violated his civil rights when they arrested him for a burglary he did not commit.

Jacques LaPread, 51, was arrested in June 2019 and spent a night in jail after police spotted him at a gas station and mistakenly identified him as another Black man who had used a stolen credit card there that evening. Five months later, the Pinellas-Pasco District Attorney’s Office decided not to file charges because of identification concerns.

LaPread filed two lawsuits in federal court in Tampa in 2023 – one against the Clearwater Police Department and the three officers involved and the other against former police chief Daniel Slaughter. Both claimed his arrest was the result of racial profiling that violated the U.S. Constitution.

Clearwater risk manager Todd Morrone said the city did not admit in the settlement that it violated LaPread’s civil rights and argued in court documents that there was probable cause for the arrest. But he said the city agrees that LaPread was wrongfully arrested and is trying to avoid further costs to taxpayers. The terms were agreed to on May 5, and the cases were dismissed in late May, according to court documents.

Slaughter agreed that LaPread’s arrest was due to a “misidentification” by officers who should have conducted a more thorough investigation, but denied that it was due to ethnic profiling or a cultural problem in the department.

“It’s always clear to me that we could have done better in this case,” said Slaughter, who retired as police chief last year and became deputy city manager.

Although he is seeking more than $100,000 in damages, LaPread said he wants to put an injustice that turned his life upside down behind him. His goal, he said, is to expose “sloppy police work” that kept him from a promotion in his cybersecurity job while he was charged with burglary and credit card fraud.

“I just want them to do their jobs better,” LaPread said. “I’m not trying to take away anyone’s livelihood, even if they don’t care about mine.”

Following an internal investigation by the police department, the three officers involved – Michael Buis, Kyle Bingham and Henry Giles – were reprimanded. Bingham and Giles are still officers in the patrol division.

Buis later resigned, but his departure was not due to the disciplinary action, a spokesman said last year.

The investigation began on June 20, 2019, after a woman called police to report that her bracelet containing credit cards, her military ID, and other items had been stolen from her Jeep at the Eddie C. Moore softball complex.

At 8:06 p.m. that evening, one of the cards was used to purchase cigarettes at a Speedway gas station on McMullen Booth Road, according to LaPread’s complaints. A credit card from the Jeep was also used at a nearby Walgreens store.

That same evening, LaPread stopped at the Speedway, withdrew $20 from an ATM and used some of the cash to make a purchase, the indictment says.

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On the way out, according to the complaints, LaPread held the door open for officers who arrived without his knowledge to investigate the use of the stolen credit card.

“One of the officers thought LaPread ‘looked suspicious,’ so he observed LaPread getting into his vehicle and took note of his license plate number,” a complaint states.

After officers ran LaPread’s license plate, they obtained surveillance video of the man using the stolen credit card at the speedway. The suspect bore no resemblance to LaPread, except that he was African-American, the indictment said.

The suspect had a full beard with sideburns and was wearing long gray pants and a white long-sleeved shirt. LaPread was wearing a white T-shirt and blue cargo pants, the complaint states. His booking photo shows a goatee but no beard.

According to the police report on the case, officers identified LaPread “based on surveillance video” and testimony from the gas station clerk. In a response to the lawsuit, Senior Assistant District Attorney Michael Fuino claimed there was no evidence that officers viewed the video before making the arrest to support the claim that they violated his civil rights.

At 9:38 p.m., officers arrived at LaPread’s home, where he was standing outside. They approached him with guns drawn, held him at gunpoint and arrested him while his mother and young children watched, the complaints say.

Officers searched the car but did not find any of the items allegedly stolen from the Jeep, according to the complaint. They also had no evidence that LaPread had been to Walgreens, where the stolen credit card was also used, the complaint said.

LaPread claimed that officers also made no attempt to confirm the payment method he used at the gas station, which would have proven that he had used cash and not a stolen credit card.

LaPread was released on bail the next day. He said he had to report the arrest to his employer, which made him ineligible for promotion.

In November of this year, prosecutors declined to file charges because they were “very uncomfortable with the identification of the person arrested,” District Attorney Bruce Bartlett told the Tampa Bay Times last year.

On Friday, LaPread said he is focused on his job and moving on, but the effects are still being felt. The burglary case still appears on his file, although no charges have been filed.

“I can’t let this one thing stop me from moving on, unfortunately that’s part of life,” LaPread said.

And since LaPread’s wrongful arrest, police have not arrested anyone else in the 2019 burglary case, Lt. Meg Hasty confirmed Friday.