Ju’Zema Goldring, 29, was walking in Atlanta with her friends when police officers arrested her for jaywalking and claimed that there was cocaine inside her stress ball. They were wrong, a federal judge said.
A federal jury found last week that a Black transgender woman who was wrongly arrested in 2015 in Atlanta on bogus cocaine charges and jailed for more than five months is due $1.5 million.
Judge William Ray II said on Thursday, two days after the jury’s verdict, that Ju’Zema Goldring, who was arrested by two Atlanta police officers, deserved “some semblance of justice” for what occurred.
The officers, Vladimir Henry and Juan Restrepo, had sliced open her stress ball and claimed to have found cocaine inside, when, in fact, it was only “the interior contents of a stress ball,” according to the lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia in 2018.
“She spent nearly six months in the Fulton County Jail based on this seemingly bogus charge,” Judge Ray wrote in his ruling.
Miguel A. Dominguez, one of Ms. Goldring’s lawyers, said in an interview on Tuesday that “this whole ordeal has had a tremendous negative impact on her life,” and that she had struggled with nightmares and mental health issues after “being locked up as an innocent person for 23 hours a day.”
Michael Smith, a spokesman for the City of Atlanta, declined to comment on Tuesday. Steve Avery, a spokesman for the Atlanta Police Department, said Officers Henry and Restrepo, the defendants in the lawsuit, were still employed and on duty; he declined to comment further on the case.
Calls to phone numbers listed as belonging to the officers were not immediately returned on Tuesday. Ms. Goldring’s lawyers did not make her available for an interview on Tuesday, but they said her case underscored how Black transgender people were treated unjustly by law enforcement officials.
On Oct. 10, 2015, Ms. Goldring, then 22, was in midtown Atlanta with her friends when she jaywalked in an area that is home to a large L.G.B.T.Q. population, her lawyers said. She was arrested by Officers Henry and Restrepo, who searched her purse, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit claims that the men taunted Ms. Goldring with transgender slurs and conducted an “invasive search” of her body while she wore a dress.
Inside the purse, the officers found a stress ball, which they cut open, inspected for drugs and claimed to have found cocaine inside, the lawsuit states.
Ms. Goldring believed that “they were joking,” the lawsuit states, but they were not.
Officers Henry and Restrepo took Ms. Goldring to the Fulton County Jail. There, she saw the officers conduct drug tests on the substance inside the stress ball and heard one officer tell Officer Henry, “Give it up, buddy,” after multiple test results came back negative, the lawsuit states.
The officers then told Ms. Goldring that she would have to wait in jail until test results returned from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, her lawyers said. Her alternative was to pay her bond set at $25,500, which she could not afford.
While in jail, Ms. Goldring was placed in a dorm for people who identify as transgender women, yet she was still subjected to sexual misconduct, her lawyers said.
Ms. Goldring remained there for five months and 12 days until March 22, 2016, a day after her charges were dismissed. The G.B.I. had determined on Nov. 17, 2015, that the contents inside the stress ball were not cocaine or any other drug substance, the lawsuit states.
In his ruling, Judge Ray said that there were “two seeming injustices that came to light at the trial.” The first came when Atlanta police officers testified that they arrested people for jaywalking — a troubling practice, Judge Ray said, because such low-level offenses could “seriously disrupt a person’s life,” leading to discrimination. He said that officers’ energy “could be better spent on more pressing activities, such as addressing violent crimes.”
The second concern for the judge arose when the chief deputy of the Atlanta Police Department, Darin Schierbaum, testified that officers work under a system that rewards them with points for making a traffic citation, an arrest or other actions.
“The court is concerned that such a system may create perverse incentives for officers,” Judge Ray wrote. For example, he said, an officer who is at the end of a shift might be tempted to arrest a person “for just a couple extra points.” He added that he hoped the city and department would reform the practice.
Jeff Filipovits, one of Ms. Goldring’s lawyers, said on Tuesday that they expected an appeal.
The jury found that Mr. Henry should pay the amount. Typically, though, it is the city that pays the amount an officer is responsible for, but that will ultimately be decided by the Atlanta City Council, said Zack Greenamyre, another lawyer for Ms. Goldring.
The city did not respond to a question about how the $1.5 million might be paid.
“There’s nothing about this that makes this all just go away,” Mr. Dominguez said. “It’s just a portion of what she needs to restore her and make her whole. And this verdict, unfortunately, won’t do that.”
