BLUEFIELD – Three Black residents are accusing three members of the McDowell County Sheriff’s Department of “unlawful and outrageous” racial profiling.
Donnie and Ventriss Hairston as well as Jason B. Tartt filed their complaint August 5 in federal court against Dalton T. Martin, Jordan A. Horn, James “Boomer” Muncy and the McDowell County Commission. Martin and Horn are deputies, and Muncy was Chief Deputy. The Hairstons, who are ages 66 and 63, are tenants of Tartt.
Police bodycam footage of the incident has been posted online.
Bryan
According to the complaint, the Hairstons were sitting on the front porch of their rural home when Martin and Horn approached them and began to harass and intimidate them about a complaint they had received regarding four marijuana plants that were growing on an overgrown parcel of land that housed an abandoned church. None of the plaintiffs owned the property.
Tartt, who lives next door, joined the Hairstons and began to ask questions. When the plaintiffs asserted their opinion and rights, they say retaliation ensued. They say Tartt was seized and arrested, and the Hairstons .were shoved into their home against their will. The charge against Tartt later was dismissed.
Attorney John Bryan, who is representing the plaintiffs, said the actions were “based on nothing other than the plaintiffs’ skin color.”
“The perpetrators must be one of the elderly African American residents nearby, of course,” Bryan said, referring to what he described as the officers’ thought process. “Instead of treating them as human beings, let’s accuse them first thing, then mistreat, harass, and retaliate against, them if they dare to get uppity, or not know their place.”
The Hairstons had just moved back to their native McDowell County in June 2020 after retiring from Lynchburg, Virginia. They have no criminal records. Tartt is a veteran who served in the Military Police, and he also had no criminal record.
The plaintiffs said “it became apparent” Dalton had no reason to be angry or to suspect they had anything to do with the marijuana plants.
“They began to suspect that they were the victims of unlawful racial profiling and multiple civil rights violations,” the complaint states. “Being in a rural area with a history of police misconduct and official corruption, they began to suspect that they may be in danger. To whatever extent the Hairstons implicitly licensed the initial presence of the officers on the property by waving at them, that license was thereafter revoked through express and implicit communications, as a result of the officers’ behavior.”
Body cam footage shows Mrs. Hairston saying he was scared of Dalton. She said she would feel safer if she knew the officers’ names based on “the season we’re living in,” referring to recent national police misconduct incidents involving George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
Dalton told her, “I’ll see if I can find my name.” But he refused to give his name.
Soon, according to the complaint, Dalton walked uninvited onto the home’s attached front porch and physically seized Tartt, forcibly removing him off the front porch and taking him onto the driveway, both using physical force and through verbal intimidation and threats of violence.
As the Hairstons tried to video and watch the incident, Dalton forced them to stop and go inside, according to the complaint. It says he pushed Mr. Hairston inside his front door. The deputies then placed Tartt in handcuffs and placed him in their cruiser, charging him with obstruction. That charge was dismissed October 28, 2020.
The plaintiffs accuse the defendants of unreasonable seizure and malicious prosecution in violation of the Fourth Amendment for the warrantless arrest of Tartt, unreasonable seizure for the search and seizure of the Hairstons, retaliation in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments, conspiracy to deprive civil rights, supervisory liability as well as a Monell Claim agaomst the McDowell County Commission.
They seek compensatory damages, punitive damages, attorney fees, court costs and other relief.
The plaintiffs are being represented by Bryan. The case has been assigned to Senior Judge David A. Faber.
U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia case number 1:22-cv-00327