The Associated Press
BELLINGHAM, Mass. (AP) - A Bellingham man has sued the town and a town police officer for $20 million alleging he was arrested and held for 41 hours in a case of mistaken identity.
Modesto Montero, 45, was arrested at his home and handcuffed in front of his five children on the night before Thanksgiving last year, then led away barefoot. Police said he was wanted in Pennsylvania for parole violation.
The arrest warrant however, was for a Gumercindo Montero, and described a man four inches taller, with a scar on his chin, and with a different birth date and Social Security Number, Modesto Montero’s lawyer said.
Police did not check fingerprints until a judge ordered them to do so two days after the arrest. The prints did not match and Montero was released within an hour, attorney Scott Gediman said.
“It would appear that the only thing these two men had in common, besides the same last name, was that they were both Hispanic,” the lawsuit says. “He was not only arrested and treated like an animal in the middle of the night in front of his entire family, (but) his family spent Thanksgiving despairing about when and if he might ever be released.”
Montero, according to the lawsuit, suffers from “extreme anxiety and distress” as a result of the ordeal.
Gediman, while not giving other instances of Bellingham police harassing Latinos, said his client’s experience may indicate a pattern. “The policy and procedure of the police was to arrested, brutalize, and confine Hispanics,” he said.
The incident was “unfortunate” but not unlawful, town lawyer Lee G. Ambler told The Boston Globe, adding that the two men resembled each other.
The arresting officer, Kenneth Jones, and the police chief refused to comment on the case. Town administrator Denis Fraine said the case is in the hands of the town’s insurance company.
Gumercindo Montero was deported in 2001 after a drug-related conviction, a spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania parole board said.
Modesto Montero may have a hard time winning his case, said Chris A. Milne, chairman of the Massachusetts Bar Association civil litigation section. Police are rarely punished for mistaken identity incidents, and Montero may have to prove in court that police intentionally arrested the wrong person, he said.
“The case law is really tough on false arrest if it’s a lawful warrant,” Milne said.
Ambler, the town’s lawyer, thinks the public would sympathize with police.
“In these days and times, people are more concerned about safety, as opposed to letting people exercise their maximum freedoms,” he said.