Black Man Wrongly Arrested at Funeral by Broward Police Files suit

A Navy veteran who was handcuffed and detained at his grandmother's funeral last month in a case of mistaken identity filed a lawsuit Wednesday, accusing Broward Sheriff Ken Jenne and two detectives of violating his civil rights. "On a sacred day in a sacred place, these officers abused their authority, and they took away from my family and I what should have been a treasured moment," plaintiff Donovan Lightbourn II told reporters shortly before filing the suit at Fort Lauderdale's federal courthouse. Lightbourn, 20, of Orlando, said he had never been in trouble with the law. But at Fort Lauderdale's Forest Lawn Cemetery on Feb. 19, he said, a Sheriff's Office helicopter hovered over the gravesite. Deputies rushed him, held him at gunpoint, and slapped handcuffs on him. They pushed him against a car, Lightbourn said, injuring the tendons in his shoulder. They falsely accused him of being Kareem Lightbourne, the 26-year-old suspect in a murder and kidnapping in Lauderhill two years earlier. He said he tried to explain he was in the Navy when the murder took place. The suit seeks unspecified monetary damages on 14 counts, including civil rights violations, false arrest, battery, use of excessive force and defamation. [more]