Less than a month before Cpl. Michael A. Owen Jr. fatally shot a man in handcuffs, the Prince George’s County police officer was captured on video pressing his fingers to either side of another handcuffed man’s neck, ordering him to “calm down.”
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A year before that, Owen wrapped his hands around a man’s neck during an altercation that followed a traffic stop, video shows.
The men are among four plaintiffs in a new lawsuit against Owen and Prince George’s County filed by Baltimore-based law firm Murphy, Falcon & Murphy. In 2020, the firm negotiated a $20-million settlement with the county on behalf of William Green, who authorities say had his hands cuffed behind his back when Owen shot him multiple times in the front seat of a police cruiser that January.
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The firm led by William H. “Billy” Murphy again took aim at the department in a lawsuit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, describing incidents involving Owen as the culmination of its “consistent and well-known history of police brutality.”
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“For 50 plus years, Prince George’s County has condoned the brutality inflicted by its police officers, refusing to implement effective training, oversight, or disciplinary measures for its officers to this very day,” the suit says.
A lawyer for Owen, who was arrested the day after Green’s shooting, did not respond to requests for comment. Owen has been suspended without pay and is jailed while awaiting trial on charges including second-degree murder. The lawyer, Thomas C. Mooney, has previously said the charges resulted from a rushed investigation, and he has promised a vigorous defense.
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A spokeswoman for the county, Gina Ford, said she had not seen the lawsuit and could not immediately comment on it.
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The latest lawsuit’s plaintiffs are Jerry A. Costen Sr., Jonathan M. Harris, Devonne Gaillard Jr. and Demetrice A. Patterson. The lawsuit says they are seeking more than $75,000 each in compensation for “physical, emotional, mental, and financial injuries” as well as punitive damages. In addition to the incidents involving them, the suit catalogues other incidents in which Owen has been accused of excessive force during his decade on the force.
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In December 2019, Costen, a tow-truck business operator, was helping his niece with her broken-down car in the parking lot of a convenience store when a man came toward them, appearing wounded.
In the confusion that followed, video taken by Costen’s daughter shows, Owen pushed the handcuffed and increasingly agitated Costen against a patrol car, then pulled him to the ground and pressed fingers to his neck. Costen screamed until Owen released the pressure.
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The police report said Costen had “attempted to head-butt [Owen] and spat on him” as Owen walked him toward the cruiser. Video provided to The Washington Post does not appear to show that behavior.
A month before Cpl. Michael Owen shot a man in handcuffs, he helped arrest a bystander after a robbery in Fort Washington, Md., on Dec. 29, 2019. (Obtained by The Washington Post)
Five months earlier, that July, Owen was dispatched to a Temple Hills home where Gaillard was arguing with his girlfriend.
“He wanted to talk to me, and I didn’t want to talk to him no more, so I walked away,” Gaillard said of Owen in a 2020 interview with The Post. “When I turned my back, he grabbed me and slammed me on my neck.”
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An arrest report said Gaillard had “balled his fists,” “advanced” and “made evasive movements.”
That same month, officers pursued Patterson, whom they suspected of driving a stolen motorcycle. After he crashed and fled, Owen found him, and there was a brief struggle, according to a police report. Owen had drawn his gun. As he tried to reholster it, he fired. The department said it was accidental. No one was hit.
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The lawsuit says Owen fired the shot when Patterson already was in handcuffs, and that Patterson later produced evidence that he’d bought the dirt bike on the Internet and was unaware it was stolen.
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The incident involving Harris came in January 2019, when officers found him driving a car with no tags. Video of the arrest, taken by Harris, shows officers pulling him out of his car and Owen pinning him to the pavement, his hands around Harris’s neck.
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The July 2019 incidents with Gaillard and Patterson triggered the department’s “early identification system,” which is meant to flag officers who could be headed for trouble. But Owen’s supervisors weren’t formally notified until the following January. And they had not taken action by the time Owen killed Green, The Post has reported.
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The department’s early warning system was supposed to have been overhauled as part of an agreement forged with the U.S. Department of Justice, which in 2000 launched an inquiry into an alleged pattern of excessive force throughout the agency.
Federal authorities viewed the development of a computerized early warning system as a “cornerstone” of their subsequent agreement with local leaders to improve accountability within the department, records show. But years later, as federal oversight was lifted, the system still relied largely on paper reports being hand-entered in a database.
The lawsuit cites the system’s lapses among evidence that the department, along with Owen, is liable for injuries it says the plaintiffs suffered.
A year before Cpl. Michael Owen shot a man in handcuffs, he helped arrest a man in Oxon Hill, Md., driving a Volvo with no tags on Jan. 3, 2019. (Jonathan Harris)