Toledo City Council is poised to approve Wednesday a $50,000 settlement with one of two women who sued the city and two police officers alleging brutality and false arrest during a traffic stop on New Year’s Day, 2023.
Kaylynn Smart was a passenger in a car that police pulled over at Central and Maplewood avenues after it passed close to a vehicle involved in the response to an accident several blocks west of there on Central Avenue.
In the lawsuit she filed Dec. 22 in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio in Toledo, Ms. Smart claimed false arrest, unlawful imprisonment, unreasonable and excessive force, assault and battery, and related mistreatment by the two officers who performed the traffic stop, as well as seeking undisclosed punitive damages.
Police officers Adam Hobbs and Ashlynn Pluff were disciplined for their conduct during the encounter, which was recorded on their cruiser’s dashboard camera.
Officer Hobbs was suspended for 10 days, plus another 10 days held in abeyance for three years, for unnecessary use of physical control techniques while arresting Ms. Smart plus a verbal reprimand for improper demeanor. Officer Pluff received a one-day suspension, held in abeyance for three years, for improper demeanor.
Video showed Officer Hobbs striding briskly toward the stopped car and opening its passenger-side door immediately. After a short time, he yanked Ms. Smart out of the passenger seat and slammed her onto the sidewalk. Officer Hobbs is then seen twice punching and once using his knee to strike Ms. Smart on the ground, while Officer Pluff punches the car’s driver, Melvina Keith, at least five times.
Profanities were exchanged between the police and the women throughout the encounter.
In a Toledo Municipal Court affidavit under which Ms. Smart was charged with assault on a police officer and harassment with bodily fluids, Officer Hobbs stated that Ms. Smart struck him several times in the face and neck, causing scratches and a cut, bit his left hand, and spat on him. But the Lucas County grand jury declined to find probable cause for those charges when it reviewed the case about three months later, opting to charge Ms. Smart only with an open-container violation and not wearing a seat belt.
Ms. Smart pleaded no contest to the seat belt count on June 5, 2023, and paid $35 plus court costs.
Still pending against the city is a lawsuit from Ms. Keith that was initially filed in Lucas County Common Pleas Court but then transferred to the federal court.
Ms. Keith’s lawsuit also names Chief Michael Troendle and eight John Doe officers as defendants and includes an allegation of racial discrimination against her and Ms. Smart. Officers Hobbs and Pluff are both white, while Ms. Keith and Ms. Smart are both Black.
“It is almost inconceivable that Caucasian women stopped for the same reason would have been treated in the same abominable matter,” a preliminary statement in a revised complaint filed May 30 of this year asserted after disputing Ms. Keith’s behavior as resistance to being arrested.
The same grand jury declined to indict Ms. Keith for assault but did bring misdemeanor charges of failure to comply with an officer’s signal, operating a vehicle under the influence, and failure to disclose personal information. Those charges remain pending in municipal court.
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