Two former Bennington residents have filed a lawsuit against the town government, alleging they were racially harassed by town police and, after they complained, faced discrimination and retaliation by town officials.
Cassandra Keating and Joel Fowler, an interracial couple, filed the lawsuit Friday against the town in Bennington County Superior civil court. They are represented by the Vermont chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
They allege they experienced sustained harassment from Bennington police officers when they lived in town in 2020 — particularly against Fowler, who is Black — including through frequent police stops and tickets and alleged insinuations to other residents that the couple was engaged in gang activity.
“Mr. Fowler and Ms. Keating believed — and continue to believe — that the Bennington Police Department’s targeting, harassing, surveilling, and vilifying of them was due to their interracial relationship and Mr. Fowler’s race,” the lawsuit stated.
The lawsuit follows several years of legal maneuvering between Bennington and the ACLU, which filed a complaint with the Vermont Human Rights Commission over the Selectboard’s handling of the couple’s concerns, including naming them during a public meeting. That case remains pending, according to Lia Ernst, the ACLU of Vermont legal director.
Under the Human Rights Commission rules, the commission may decide to administratively dismiss the case because the lawsuit’s been filed, Ernst said.
“The statute of limitation for the lawsuit was drawing near and, rather than risk our clients not being able to litigate their claims, we brought the claims in court now,” Ernst said.
Town officials were unaware of the lawsuit until provided a copy by VTDigger on Monday, according to Bennington Selectboard Chair Jeannie Jenkins. In an email earlier in the afternoon, she declined comment.
Later, the town provided a lengthy statement to VTDigger, stating that the Human Rights Commission’s staff attorney, executive director and legal counsel found “no reasonable grounds to believe that the Select Board discriminated against or retaliated against Ms. Keating and Mr. Fowler, and recommended that the HRC Commissioners find the same.”
While the commission itself did not not make a final determination, the allegations contained in the couple’s lawsuit pressed forward by the ACLU are similar to those that were assessed in the complaint, town leaders said.
“The Town believes the allegations in the lawsuit are similarly deficient and will respond and defend the case as appropriate,” according to the town’s statement.
Human Rights Commission reports
The town also provided VTDigger with a copy of the Human Rights Commission’s 27-page investigative report, dated May 2, which recommended that the Human Rights Commission find no reasonable grounds for rights violations.
The investigation was “limited to investigating the complaint against the Bennington Select Board,” according to a footnote in the report. “As such, contested facts about the actions of the Bennington police department will be indicated, but this investigation states no opinion about the validity of any such facts.”
In an email on Monday, Ernst wrote that although Human Rights Commission leaders recommended a finding of no reasonable grounds on the claims of the complaint, “after hearing legal argument from both sides, (the commission) unanimously voted to find that extraordinary circumstances existed to justify reopening the matter on all claims.”
As of the lawsuit’s filing, Ernst said, the investigation by the Human Rights Commission remained open.
“While we would have preferred to see the HRC process through to completion, the statute of limitations for Ms. Keating and Mr. Fowler’s claims dictated otherwise,” Ernst said.
Big Hartman, public records officer with the HRC — who’s being promoted to be the organization’s executive director starting next week — said that, due to state laws, they could not comment on the status of any investigation.
“The only time we can speak about a case that has happened is if there’s been determination by the commission of reasonable grounds,” Hartman said on Monday.
Lawsuit alleges retaliation by selectboard
The ACLU lawsuit filed Friday alleges that between April and June 2020, Keating and Fowler were surveilled, stopped, questioned and ticketed several times.
“As Ms. Keating and Mr. Fowler tried to settle in Bennington,” the lawsuit alleges, “they frequently encountered neighbors, family, or acquaintances who described how police had approached them to warn them about Ms. Keating and Mr. Fowler or falsely insinuate that they engaged in illegal, often gang-related activity.”
They filed complaints to the town about eight separate incidents with the police department, according to the lawsuit, and they didn’t hear anything back.
Without warning two months later, the lawsuit stated, the selectboard — in charge at that time of reviewing complaints against the police department — presented the complaints at a selectboard meeting and ultimately concluded the complaints were unfounded.
The board then publicly named Fowler and Keating and presented their complaints and about 20 minutes of police body camera footage of police’s interaction with the couple.
In doing so, according to the lawsuit, the town broadcast video showing the couple and published online 62 pages of documents providing personal details regarding Fowler and Keating, from their addresses and birthdates to driver’s license information and phone numbers.
“Publicly shamed by the Select Board for speaking out and in fear of BPD officers, other public officials, and individuals who might seek to harm them,” the lawsuit stated, “both Mr. Fowler and Ms. Keating were forced to flee Bennington with almost nothing, leaving behind their furniture, clothes, and other personal effects.”
Keating and Fowler’s lawsuit seeks a judgment that the town violated their rights, a ban on continuing the policies and practices that led to the violations, and unspecified monetary damages “to compensate Ms. Keating and Mr. Fowler for the violations of their rights and the ensuing harm those violations caused.”
“Primarily, we’re very interested in a court ruling that would prohibit other municipalities from essentially doxxing individuals who make complaints about police misconduct,” said Ernst, the ACLU of Vermont legal director.
Suits and settlements in Bennington’s past
In announcing the lawsuit on Monday, the ACLU said “local residents have long objected to racial discrimination in Bennington government and its police department, and data has consistently shown that Bennington police stop and search Black motorists at disproportionate rates.”
In 2020, Shamel Alexander, a Black man who sued the Bennington Police Department for systemic racial profiling, reached a $30,000 settlement with the town. Alexander had been arrested for a drug offense following a traffic stop, but his conviction was unanimously overturned by the Vermont Supreme Court. The high court ruled the officer didn’t have reasonable suspicion and as a result unreasonably searched Alexander.
In 2021, the town settled a Vermont Human Rights Commission complaint with Kiah Morris and her family for $137,000 and a formal apology. The settlement was related to complaints that Bennington police did not properly investigate racial harassment aimed at Morris, who is Black, and her family, which led to her opting not to seek a third term in the state House of Representatives and to move away from Bennington.
An outside review of the Bennington Police Department, conducted by the International Association of Chiefs of Police, concluded in 2020 that the law enforcement agency displayed a “warrior mentality,” creating mistrust with the public.
The town, in its statement Monday responding to the lawsuit, said the IACP report was designed to look at the department’s policies and practices. The town statement pointed to a section of the report that stated, “To reemphasize, the review team found no policies that would encourage systemic bias in the organization.”
According to its statement, the town has also been working to improve its police department and the oversight of it.
The ACLU, in its press release Monday announcing the lawsuit, had a different view.
The release stated that while the IACP report provided detailed recommendations to improve the town’s police department, “three years after the report was published Bennington has done little to implement them.”
