An incident involving a white lawyer spitting at a Black Lives Matter protest leader resulted in a $750,000 settlement due to a mishandled arrest.
Stephanie Rapkin was found guilty of disorderly conduct for spitting at Eric Patrick Lucas III during a protest in Shorewood, Wisconsin on June 6, 2020.
Following a 60-day jail sentence, Rapkin pursued legal action against the Village of Sherwood, the Village of Whitefish, and eight police officers for their questionable conduct the day after the spitting incident. They forcibly entered her home and arrested her, as reported by the Atlanta Black Star.
Protesters showed up outside her house on June 7, 2020 to confront Rapkin about the spitting incident, when she was filmed apparently shoving one of the demonstrators, Joe Friedman, after the two got into an argument about what had occurred the day before.
Rapkin had claimed at the time she was defending herself and that she spit in response to being attacked by Lucas – though the claims were not supported by the video – and tried to demonstrate the alleged attack by approaching Friedman and shoving him in the chest.
Another demonstrator then called Sherwood police, whom Rapkin claimed broke into her house without a warrant to arrest her.
She argued in her lawsuit that after the police reviewed Friedman’s cellphone footage, they knocked on her door for about 30 minutes, while discussing their plan to arrest her for disorderly conduct.
Those claims were backed up by police-worn body camera footage obtained by TMJ 4, which shows one cop telling another: ‘If she comes out, arrest her.’
Stephanie Rapkin won a $750,000 settlement from local villages for her 2020 arrest
She was caught on camera spitting on Eric Patrick Lucas III in The Village of Shorewood during a Black Lives Matter protest on June 6, 2020
But the cops then allegedly ‘conspired to come up with a justification to break into her house’ without ever considering obtaining a warrant, according to Rapkin’s federal suit filed in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin in May 2023.
She claimed that the officers ultimately found a false pretense to enter the home, after speaking with a neighbor who informed them that she had taken a sleeping pill.
‘I know she took a dose this morning and then probably another couple of doses because she couldn’t get to sleep,’ the neighbor said in the police-worn body camera footage.
When cops then asked whether Rapkin was taking ‘multiple doses of sleeping medication,’ the neighbor replied that they were not sure.
At that point, the officers with the Village of Sherwood and the Village of Whitefish devised a plan to conduct a welfare check on her, the suit claims.
Footage of the arrest, however, shows cops breaking through the front door and entering Rapkin’s home with their guns and Tasers drawn.
The cops could be seen standing at the bottom of her staircase and ordering her to come down so they could ‘check on her.’
‘Gentlemen, do you have a warrant?’ the cunning lawyer shot back.
The following day she was accused of shoving a protester who gathered outside her house
‘We’re here for a community caretaker, OK?’ the officers then assured her.
Rapkin replied that she was ‘perfectly fine’ and sleeping, noting that she had not taken any sleeping medication as the neighbor suggested, and she just wanted to go back to sleep.
But still, officers placed Rapkin under arrest in her dining room, where one cop could be heard telling her she was being charged with ‘assaulting an individual, revealing their true motivation for going into Rapkin’s home without a warrant,’ her lawsuit said.
A scuffle then ensued, during which, one officer claimed that Rapkin kneed him in the groin – though Rapkin later claimed the cops threw her up against a wall while screaming in her face.
They then escorted her from her home, to the applause of protesters outside, and conducted a search of her home for evidence that Rapkin was abusing sleeping pills – coming up empty-handed, according to the suit.
In a federal lawsuit filed in May 2023, Rapkin claimed officers from the Village of Sherwood and the Village of Whitefish came up with a bogus reason to enter her house that day and arrest her without a warrant
Police escorted her from her home, to the applause of protesters outside
A felony assault charge against Rapkin for allegedly kneeing one of the officers was later dropped, and when a federal judge granted a motion to suppress evidence gathered from the search of her home, she called the search ‘outrageous police conduct.’
Judge Laura Crivello ruled that a ‘reasonable officer would have come to the conclusion that either you need to get a warrant or wait until her attorney brings her down to the station house to talk.’
Rapkin ultimately claimed police officers violated her Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure and alleged that the Village of Sherwood’s police department had a policy of ‘falsely invoking the community caretaker doctrine to break into private citizens’ homes.’
She sought compensatory and punitive damages against the villages and the officers involved, all of whom denied the allegations as the police departments claimed qualified immunity from liability for their officers.
Sherwood Village Manager Rebecca Ewald has since told Fox 6 that the settlement is not an admission of wrongdoing – but is rather a decision by village officials to avoid the cost and risk of a trial.
She also said residents of the village will not have to pay the hefty settlement, which is covered by insurance.
