The city of Seattle will pay $319,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by a Black delivery driver over a five-minute downtown traffic stop in 2020, in which officers pointed their guns at him and illegally searched his car.
The settlement and subsequent dismissal of the federal civil-rights lawsuit filed in 2022 by Anthony Sims followed a unanimous decision by a three-judge panel from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals refusing to overturn the trial judge’s denial of qualified immunity for several officers involved. The trial judge, in refusing to dismiss the lawsuit, found evidence the stop was racially motivated and a search of Sims’ trunk unconstitutional.
