- Police Brutality Watch

Suit claims Seminole cops went overboard in stop

A Kissimmee couple said Thursday that Seminole County deputies went to such extremes to prove they had drugs during a 2001 traffic stop that they pulled down their infant son's diaper so a drug dog could sniff inside it. An attorney representing Darrell J. Young; his fiancée, Emerald McNeil; and their son, Da'Mond Young, filed a suit against Seminole Sheriff Don Eslinger and two of his deputies Thursday in Circuit Court in Sanford. Claims in the suit include false arrest and detention, invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress. They are seeking damages in excess of $15,000. Attorney Howard Marks and his clients contend the couple were stopped because they are black. "We think it's a pretty clear case of racial profiling," Marks said. Young said he was driving along East 25th Street in Sanford, taking his 11/2-year-old son to day care, when he was stopped by Fagan about 8:30 a.m. Aug. 10, 2001. After about 10 minutes he ordered everyone out of the car. Before long at least five other patrol cars arrived and a helicopter was circling overhead. Young said it was all he could do to keep his cool when the dog sniffed inside his son's diaper. "He's hollering and screaming," Young said. "I wanted to get that dog off my boy. They wouldn't let me." The dog also sniffed under McNeil's dress, the couple said. She was pregnant at the time. The deputies found no drugs. He said the drug dog was allowed to enter Young's Land Cruiser and defecated in the vehicle. "You have to have at least a reasonable suspicion" that there are drugs in the car, or permission from the owner, before the dog could legally enter the vehicle, Marks said. There was neither, he said. Young said at one point an officer pulled his gun and demanded to know where the drugs were. McNeil said she was threatened with having her son taken away and turned over to the state Department of Children & Families. In the end, Young said, he was given a warning for not having his son in a child seat. He insists there is no way someone in a patrol car could have seen into his vehicle, which sits high off the road. [more]