Keith Puckett says he was heading to the gym to help prepare his son for basketball tryouts at El Segundo High School when a police officer passing in the opposite direction flipped a U-turn and stopped him.
Puckett, 47, a senior security program manager at Microsoft, was driving a weathered pickup truck he’d borrowed from a friend, according to a civil rights complaint he filed last August in L.A. County Superior Court that described the March 2021 encounter.
The officer, according to the complaint, claimed the truck’s rear license plate light was out. Puckett maintains he made a point of checking that all the lights worked before hitting the road. A photo included in court filings, which he said was taken the day of the stop, showed the rear of the vehicle with the license plate and a frame that said, “I’d rather be fishing” clearly illuminated.
The real reason he was stopped, his complaint claims, is the officer “saw a colored person in the car.”
It wasn’t the first time Puckett, who is Black, alleges he was racially profiled in El Segundo.
Puckett said in court filings that he contacted the police department and local officials to “see if an agreement could be reached about policy changes to improve the treatment of Black people in El Segundo,” but disagreement led to the ongoing lawsuit.
The city has denied wrongdoing in court filings and disputed Puckett’s claims.
“The City of El Segundo is committed to treating everybody fairly, no matter their race, national origin, sexual orientation, sexual identity or alleged involvement in criminal activity,” a statement issued last August said. “Our police chief is committed to upholding our high standards, and we do not tolerate bias or discrimination of any kind.”
But in April, a judge refused a request to strike down the complaint, permitting the case to move forward.
Maurice Suh, Puckett’s lawyer, told The Times “it is apparent that change won’t occur without this court proceeding.”
Attorneys say the remaking of the federal Department of Justice under President Trump has left lawsuits like Puckett’s as one of the last lines of defense against alleged civil rights violations.
Under Trump and the new leadership of Assistant Atty. Gen. Harmeet Dhillon, roughly 70% of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division has been dissolved. What remains has been issued a new set of priorities.
Instead of its traditional functions of protecting the constitutional rights of minority communities and marginalized people, the administration plans to use the department as an enforcement arm against state and local officials, college administrators and student protesters. Dhillon has said her office is done spreading “woke ideology.”
The department plans to refocus its efforts toward voter fraud and limiting the rights of transgender people. This week, the DOJ also announced it would no longer enforce consent decrees against police departments in Minneapolis and Louisville, Ky., ending federal oversight that stemmed from the 2020 killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
The DOJ has typically enforced laws that prohibit discrimination, prosecuted police misconduct and conducted investigations into constitutional violations entrenched in some institutions.
But even with enforcement from the federal government, police departments can be slow to embrace change. State data shows racial profiling remains pervasive, with Black and Latino individuals still stopped by police at rates disproportionate to their percentage of California’s population.
“The Department of Justice only gets involved with the worst of the worst, and without its oversight, systemic abuse is more likely to run rampant in our nation’s law enforcement agencies,” said James DeSimone, an attorney whose firm specializes in civil rights law.
Puckett’s claim against El Segundo is one of several to be filed against L.A. County municipalities in recent years.
The Beverly Hills Police Department has been sued repeatedly, including by several Black LAPD officers who allege they were pulled over without justification.
The officers are included in a $500-million class-action lawsuit against Beverly Hills, along with over 1,000 Black people who allege they were unjustly targeted, handcuffed and arrested. Attorneys Brad Gage and Ben Crump filed the suit in 2021, and followed up with another last year, which argues racial profiling by the department continued unabated.
“The City of Beverly Hills continues to vigorously defend this case. The role of the Beverly Hills Police Department is to enforce the law, regardless of race,” wrote Keith Sterling, the deputy city manager, in a statement.
Gage said that in his 40 years of practicing law, this era is the “worst [he’s] ever seen” when it comes to discrimination litigation.
Gage doesn’t foresee his cases being affected by the federal civil rights changes, but he is worried about what will happen to accountability for alleged “repeat offenders” like Beverly Hills under this refashioned DOJ civil rights arm.
“We definitely want to see them have a consent decree. I don’t know if that’s going to be possible,” said Gage. “It’s going to be more on lawyers to try to do things through the courts.”
Cuts under the Trump administration, Gage said, are expected to delay any cases involving the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission due to staffing issues as “there just won’t be enough people to handle the files.”
Another Los Angeles lawyer, Will Reed, who deals with employment law and workplace discrimination, said an executive order from Trump to “eliminate the use of disparate-impact liability” could also have major consequences.
Disparate impact law comes into play in cases where bias can be subtle and may not even be intended. Its purpose is to hold employers, housing providers and others liable for practices that disproportionately harm vulnerable groups.
“If I lose the ability to use disparate impact, that’s going to take away a tool that we use to try and work to make society a more equitable place,” said Reed.
On the state level, a spokesperson for the California Civil Rights Department said the agency is monitoring federal actions, but its focus “remains the same: To safeguard the civil rights of all Californians.”
Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said he will continue to investigate law enforcement agencies for compliance with civil rights laws and will also keep supporting the Racial and Identity Profiling Advisory Board. Created in 2015, the board requires law enforcement agencies to collect and report demographic data in an effort to eliminate discrimination.
“California is not backing down. My office will continue to vigorously investigate and enforce state and federal civil rights laws,” Bonta said in a statement to The Times. “California has always prioritized this work, and we will continue to do so.”
But without additional oversight from federal authorities, there’s only so much the state can do.
Jin Hee Lee, strategic initiatives director at the Legal Defense Fund, is concerned not only about the surge in cases private law firms and nonprofits like hers will face but also about budget cuts that have left resources scarce to fight prolonged court battles.
Even though the civil rights division is shrinking, she still hasn’t lost faith in local government entities.
“People shouldn’t feel powerless,” said Lee. “They still have the ability to pressure their local elected officials to make sure that the type of public safety they receive is what they want.”
El Segundo officials said in a statement last August issued in response to Puckett’s lawsuit that they had treated his claims seriously and hired an outside firm to conduct an independent investigation. Puckett, the statement said, had proposed a dozen policy changes, but the city found it was “already in substantial compliance with all but one of his demands.”
“The only issue that Mr. Puckett and the City had any real disagreement over was his request that certain Vehicle Code violations be deprioritized for stops,” the El Segundo statement said.
In his lawsuit, Puckett said he “plans to continue living in El Segundo, a city he has called home for many years.” But despite his efforts to bring change, he claimed, police officers continue to follow him and he lives in fear of future encounters.
Puckett called the case his “final effort to vindicate his constitutional rights, hold the City accountable for its unlawful conduct, and compel it to stop racially profiling Black people.”
