Narragansett Smoke Shop Worker Awarded $300,000 in Suit Against Trooper

PROVIDENCE, R.I. –Jurors on Monday ruled that a state trooper used excessive force against an employee of the Narragansett Indians’ smoke shop during a July 2003 raid.

After deliberating for about four hours, the federal jury said Trooper Ken Jones used excessive force against Adam Jennings, whose ankle was broken when police shut the store down for selling cigarettes without collecting state tax. The jury awarded Jennings more than $300,000 in damages.

But jurors rejected claims two other smoke shop employees made against two other troopers.

Mike Healey, spokesman for Rhode Island Attorney General Patrick Lynch, said Lynch would meet Tuesday with the state lawyers who defended the troopers. A state police spokesman said the department would not comment.

During the trial, lawyers for both sides described a frantic and confusing scene that ensued when police moved in to shut down the smoke shop, capping a confrontation over the tribe’s sovereignty rights. The Narragansetts were selling tobacco tax free, saying they had every right to do so on their tribal land. The state disagreed.

“Whether or not the tribal lands were sovereign territory, the U.S. Constitution applied, specifically, the Fourth Amendment right to be free of excessive force,” Jennings’ lawyer, Michael Bradley, said after the verdict.

During closing arguments Monday, Bradley, who also represented Jennings’ mother, Paulla Dove Jennings, and fellow shop worker Keith Huertas, maintained that police “shoved and threw” his clients while attempting to close the shop during the raid.

Bradley acknowledged that the chaos may have warranted some aggressiveness by the police, but he said there is a point when the police should “knock it off when there’s no longer a need.” He said the troopers went beyond that point.

Bradley said after the verdict that Huertas and Paulla Dove Jennings understood that the jury found police perhaps had an understandable right to use force against them because they were detained at a chaotic time. That was not the case for Adam Jennings, he said.

“Adam Jennings’ (ankle) was broken at a point in time when the Rhode Island State Police had complete control over him, as the jury must have found,” Bradley said.

Seven troopers originally were named in the civil lawsuit. U.S. District Judge Ernest Torres threw out claims against one of them last week, and rejected claims of civil rights violations. Before closing arguments Monday, the judge rejected claims of false imprisonment, false arrest and several claims of battery, leaving just three troopers as defendants.

During the trial, witnesses, plaintiffs and defendants all agreed that officers tackled Adam Jennings after telling him they planned to arrest him. But the sides differed over whether Jennings was resisting.

He said he was not struggling and told Jones, who was holding his foot, that the trooper was going to break his ankle if he continued twisting it. Jennings said Jones continued, and the ankle broke.

But Jones said he was using a hold officers are taught to use to get a suspect to stop resisting, and said Jennings was continuing to fight.

Assistant Attorney General Rebecca Partington, who represented the troopers, told jurors Monday that they should find for the troopers if they had any uncertainty.

“The situation was tense, it was uncertain, it was rapidly unfolding,” Partington said. “If you’re confused about what really happened you must return a verdict for the defendants.”

Bradley told jurors that during the raid, the employees, two of whom are tribe members, were complying with orders as best they could. He said they were confused because at first they were confronted by undercover officers and it was not clear what was happening.

A federal judge has since ruled that the tribe cannot sell cigarettes tax-free on its land. The tribe has appealed.

Originally written By: Brooke Donald

Associated Press Writer