‘What Is All You Doing, Man?’: A Black Man Was in a Dodge, Cops Were Looking for a Malibu — The K-9 Attack Was Just the Start
A Black man who was viciously mauled by a police dog in Ohio after a license plate reader falsely indicated he was driving a stolen car has agreed to a settlement.
Brandon Upchurch was driving a red Dodge pickup truck with the license plate number JLL 7637 when he was pulled over after a license plate reader confused it with a tan Chevrolet Malibu with the license plate number JLL 7362.
Toledo police officer Adrian Wilson apparently did not see the discrepancy between the two plates when he pulled Upchurch over on April 11, 2024.
Even after Wilson read off Upchurch’s license plate number to a dispatcher who apparently informed him it was not the same number as the one from the stolen car, Wilson called for backup anyway, arresting him on charges of obstructing and resisting arrest.
“They instantly came out with the guns drawn,” Upchurch, who was driving a red Dodge pickup truck, told local media last year.
“They did not come to my car and ask me for license, insurance, etc., anything.”
The settlement still needs to be approved by the Toledo City Council, according to WTVG-TV. And at this time, it is not clear how much he will be receiving but he was seeking at least $75,000 in his lawsuit.
The arrest proved to be another example of cops detaining Black people at gunpoint whose license plate numbers did not match the ones allegedly involved in a crime.
Watch the video below.
Verbal Reprimand
An internal investigation cleared the cops of wrongdoing stemming from the dog attack but Wilson received a verbal reprimand for “failing to verify the plate as stolen,” the lawsuit stated.
Three months after Upchurch’s arrest, with his charges still pending, Wilson — having just been reprimanded — charged Upchurch with an additional charge of failing to comply with a lawful order. All three charges were dismissed in August 2024.
Police body camera footage shows Wilson ordering Upchurch to lie on the ground while the Black man demanded to know why he had been pulled over, telling the cops all he did was pick up his cousin from work.
As the cops repeated their orders to lie on the ground, Upchurch began walking toward the muddy grass at the side of the road and was starting to kneel to comply when the cop sicced the dog on him.
“Get the f_ck off me,” Upchurch said. “What is all you doing, man?”
“Put your hands behind your back,” one of the cops said. “Don’t you f-cking move.”
The Toledo chapter of the NAACP described the arrest as “unwarranted” and “inhumane.”
“Our police are here to serve, not to occupy our neighborhoods even when they believe a violation of the law has been committed,” the Rev. Willie Perryman III, president of the Toledo NAACP branch, told the Toledo Blade.
According to the lawsuit filed on April 9.
Upon seeing the flashing lights of Officer Wilson’s patrol car, Upchurch pulled over to the side of the road near the intersection of Albion and Post. Officer Wilson then failed to visually verify that Upchurch’s license plate number matched the stolen plate reported by the FLOCK system. Instead, he proceeded to take cover behind his patrol car door, pointed his gun toward Upchurch, and ordered Upchurch to turn off his truck and throw his keys out of the vehicle. At no point did Officer Wilson explain to Upchurch why he had been pulled over.
Officer Wilson then contacted dispatch to request backup. On his call to dispatch, he read off the actual license plate number on Upchurch’s truck. At this point, Officer Wilson knew that Upchurch’s truck did not match the report from the FLOCK system, but he proceeded with the stop anyway because “he believed that there was something more to the situation, based on [Upchurch’s] behavior.” On information and belief, the dispatcher also responded to Wilson with information confirming that Upchurch’s truck was not in fact stolen.
After a backup unit arrived, Wilson told the other officers that Upchurch was being noncompliant; however, Wilson made no mention of the fact that Upchurch’s license plate number did not match the stolen car reported by the FLOCK system. The newly arrived officers took over providing cover and pointed their weapons at Upchurch’s truck while Wilson retrieved his K9 partner from his patrol car.
The incident marked another instance of modern technology racially profiling innocent Black people, proving to be just as biased as the cops themselves.
In fact, a 2018 study cited by the ACLU determined that facial recognition technology misidentified Black women 35 percent of the time while hardly ever getting it wrong for white men.
“If government agencies like police departments and the FBI are authorized to deploy invasive face surveillance technologies against our communities, these technologies will unquestionably be used to target Black and Brown people merely for existing,” the ACLU states.