A Black man is receiving a $90k settlement after being misidentified and detained for six days on a warrant for a white convicted felon twice his age, CNN reports.
In January 2020, Shane Lee Brown, 23, was pulled over by Nevada police officers for driving without his headlights on.
Brown told police that he had lost his wallet, so he didn't have his driver's license on him — He instead provided officers with his name along with his Social Security number and card.
Though their middle names, races, ages, and heights differed, Nevada cops misidentified the 23-year-old as Shane Neal Brown, a 49-year-old white man with an outstanding warrant for ownership or possession of a firearm by a prohibited person.
Brown was wrongfully detained for six days at multiple Nevada detention centers, where he begged authorities to double-check the mix-up.
“I’m not a felon, I didn’t commit a felony … I was trying to plead to anyone that would listen, to let everyone know, like ‘Hey can you double-check,’” Brown recounted to KVVU.
Following the misidentification, Brown filed a federal lawsuit seeking $500k in January.
Now, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police and Henderson Police Department have awarded Brown with a $90,000 settlement for the incident.
Henderson police said in a statement, “Shane Brown was driving an unregistered vehicle with a suspended driver license and had a warrant for contempt of court, failure to pay. While his arrest for these charges was lawful, we regret that he was misidentified on other charges in our system and have put measures in place and improved training procedures to prevent this from happening in the future.”
However, Brown, a father of two, said he's still traumatized from the misidentification.
“I almost never drive anymore unless it’s absolutely necessary,” Brown said.
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