Phoenix to pay $500k to black couple who had cops pull guns on them after their kid took a $1 Barbie

The City of Phoenix is to pay nearly half a million dollars to a black family after police pointed guns at them last year, threatening to shoot the father in front of his fiancé and children after their daughter took a $1 Barbie from a store without them knowing.

Dravon Ames and his partner Iesha Harper were with their one-year-old and four-year-old daughters when they were held at gunpoint by Officer Chris Meyer and a number of others on May 27, 2019. Harper was also five-months-pregnant at the time.

Footage captured by a bystander that would later draw public outcry shows Meyer telling Ames: ‘I’m gonna put a f***ing cap in your f***ing head,’ as police surround the father and his young family. 

Harper said at a Wednesday news conference that she and will receive $475,000 from the Phoenix City Council to settle a $10 million lawsuit they launched against the city last year, accusing police of excessive force and civil rights violations.

Responding to the settlement Wednesday, Harper said ‘I just want to say I’m glad we got justice. It’s been hell dealing with my kids and everything that’s happened.’

Harper said he children have been left emotionally scarred from the incident and now suffer from anxiety because of it. 

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The settlement was passed by city leaders by a vote of six to two.

Councilman Carlos Garcia said he knows the ‘money won´t take away the trauma or the harm that´s been caused, but I hope the children will have a better life for it.’

Garcia also apologized to the couple for what they’ve been through, thanking them for their ‘bravery in telling their story and their persistence in seeking justice’.

The Phoenix Police Department has long been criticized for its use of force, which statistics show disproportionately affects Black and Native American residents, as reported by The Arizona Republic. The department also has one of the highest shooting rates in the country.

The payment would be one of the latest by the city over police actions. Payouts in connection to excessive-force or wrongful-death claims have totaled millions of dollars in the last several years.

Ames and Harper’s encounter with the department received widespread attention when a bystander shared video of the incident online.

In the wake of the video’s emergence, Officer Meyer was fired by the department and a new policy now requires a report to be written every time an officer points a gun at someone.

The incident began when employees at a store told officers who responded to an unrelated shoplifting case that the couple’s four-year-old daughter had taken a doll.

Ames and Harper were unaware their daughter had taken the $1 Barbie and had already driven away from the dollar store. Police then followed them back to their apartment complex.

Officers didn’t use lights or sirens before walking over to the couple’s parked car, with their four-year-old and one-year-old daughters also inside.

‘Next thing you know, a police officer … comes up, “Open the door,” banging on the window with a gun, saying he´s gonna shoot us in the face, telling us to get out of the car,’ Ames said.

In a video recorded by a resident of the apartment complex, officers can be heard yelling and cursing at the couple.

Officers can repeatedly be heard swearing in front of the youngsters, telling their parents to ‘put your f***ing hands up’ . One, later identified to be Meyer, can be heard saying: ‘You’re gonna f***ing get shot.’

Ames frantically tells them: ‘My hands are up. My hands are up.’

Harper, meanwhile, stands by in tears, pleading with officers and desperately holding onto her two young children as the horror unfolds.

She cries: ‘I can’t put my hands up, I have a baby. I’m pregnant.’

In their lawsuit, the couple claimed police ‘grabbed the mother and the baby around both of their necks, and tried to take the baby out of the mother’s hand’. They said the infant sustained a ‘dead arm’ and later suffered nightmares and bed-wetting – something she had ‘not done before’.  

As Ames is held against a police car his partner desperately tells police she is unable to lift her arms as she is carrying her one-year-old baby. At least one child can be heard crying as they are taken to safety by witnesses.

The officer screams: ‘If I tell you to do something you f***ing do it.’

Ames replies: ‘Yes, sir.’

A different video begins with Ames lying on the ground as an officer handcuffs him. He’s pulled off the ground and pressed against a police car before the officer kicks one of his legs open.

The claim alleged the officer kicked him so hard that Ames collapsed. He also accused the officer of punching him in the back.

Onlookers are heard calling out to the officers, asking to take the children away to avoid them from seeing their parents being detained but the pleas fall on deaf ears.

Cops stated in a report that Harper was ‘loud’ and ‘verbally abusive’. The report claims an officer pulled his gun because Ames ‘began to reach towards the center of the vehicle between the front seats’.

Police said Harper, the mother of the two children, remained in the vehicle and later explained that she believed one of her daughters had stolen the doll because they didn’t have any money.

Ames later admitted to stealing a pair of underwear from the dollar store, police said. 

Both parents were handcuffed and detained inside police vehicles. The couple were released after another officer arrived and defused the situation, the claim said. No one was charged and the property was returned to the store.

Meyer was later fired by the department by Police Chief Jeri Williams four months after the incident.

The Police Department’s Disciplinary Review Board recommended Meyers receive a 240-hour unpaid suspension for his actions, however Williams viewed the punishment to not be severe enough.

‘A 240-hour suspension is just not sufficient to reverse the adverse effects of his actions on our department, and our community,’ she said at the time.