Sergeant Lateef Al-Saraji of the U.S. Army, filed a lawsuit against the Dallas Police department alleging that two officers,  Tracy Glenn and Victor Quezada, arrested him and used excessive force, and detained him without reasonable suspicion or cause.

The lawsuit also includes another defendant named Hatham Badry Al-Ani for assault and battery, as Al-Saraji alleges that he assisted Glenn and Quezada.

Filed Tuesday August 31, the suit asserts that City of Dallas and the City of Dallas Police Department are responsible for the actions of Glenn and Quezada for not properly training the officers regarding excessive use of force and by failing to impose discipline after Al-Saraji filed a complaint.

According to Al-Saraji,  he and his wife joined two friends, also from the army, for dinner at a Middle Eastern restaurant away from their base in Fort Hood, Texas on Sunday June 21, 2009. After spending several hours conversing with friends, Al-Saraji saw an officer approach their two companions, who had been drinking, and telling them not to take another drink, or he would arrest them.

“I went to the officer and I told him ‘sorry we don’t want any trouble’, and the officer got angry asking ‘Who are you?’ ” Al-Saraji said. He and his wife then called a cab and took their two friends outside to wait, walking a short distance from the restaurant.

While waiting for the cab, Al-Saraji said he was asked by the officers if he was leaving. After answering affirmatively, just as the taxi was arriving, Al-saraji said he was assaulted by the officers, in front of his wife, two friends, and the cab driver.

The officers allege that Al-Saraji was publicly intoxicated at the time of the arrest, and resisted them.

Al-Saraji will be tried for the charge on September 23 in Dallas, Texas.

Al-Saraji’s wife, Teresa who was present at the time of the alleged assault, says that he was not intoxicated.

“We were there several hours, and he had one Heineken (beer) and maybe one glass of wine,” Teresa said.  “Most of the time he was out talking.” 

No test for blood alcohol level was administered that evening.

Al-Saraji believes the reason for the attack was his ethnicity, especially since he is an officer in the army.

“They kept calling me a terrorist in uniform,” Al-Saraji said. “All I could think was that they were going to kill me.”  Al-Saraji asserts that he was beaten by the officers into unconsciousness and then taken into custody.

“There was no  reasonable reason for either Glenn or Quezada to believe that Lateef had committed an offense in their presence.  They nevertheless arrested him without warrant,” said John Wheaton Gibson, lead attorney on the case. “Lateef was not inebriated.  Lateef in no way acted confrontational and was compliant to the officers at all times, both inside and outside the restaurant.”

After being released, Al-Saraji was taken to the hospital where he was treated for his injuries. According to his wife, he was at the hospital for over four hours.

“He kept trying to tell them he was a sergeant in the U.S. Army,” Teresa said.

Al-Saraji and his wife claim that they are still dealing with the effects of the attack. Teresa, in respects to her inability to help her husband.

“They were threatening to arrest all of us if we moved to help him,” she said.

Al-Saraji has been given several accolades by his commanding officers, including by Captain Daniel E. Hurd, who called Al-Saraji his, “right hand” and said that he could not say enough about the impact that Lateef had on his company.