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Ken Savage's Facebook photo
The city of Detroit will pay $225,000 to settle a federal lawsuit stemming from a July 22, 2016 marijuana raid that resulted in police fatally shooting a couple's three dogs.
The Detroit City Council approved the settlement last month, reports C.J. Ciaramella of Reason magazine.
Kenneth Savage and Ashley Franklin filed a federal lawsuit in 2017 against the city and three unnamed Detroit police officers. The lawsuit alleged the officers shot Savage and Franklin's three dogs while the animals were enclosed behind an 8-foot-tall fence—all so the officers could confiscate several potted marijuana plants in the backyard.
"As far as I know this is the largest settlement of this kind that the city of Detroit has made," the couple's attorney Chris Olson tells Reason magazine. "I think it was very serious matter, and the city's settlement reflects that."
The 18-page lawsuit states that eight officers came to the house in the 16000 block of Cruse Street in northwest Detroit around 11 a.m. to execute a search warrant.
Two days earlier, they were conducting an investigation unrelated to Savage and Franklin and noticed marijuana plants in their backyard.
Days after the raid and shooting, Savage posted this on Facebook, referring to his three dogs as family:
Saturday morning my family was brutally murdered by the fine men and women of the Detroit Police Department! They were shot down with well over 25 rounds of deadly AR-15 assault rifle bullets. My 3 babies; Mother, father and daughter were behind a chained locked gate and privacy fencing. They were executing a warrant the day before elsewhere and claimed they took notice of the garden I was preparing to put in the earth and noticed hemp plants!!
They come back the following day and with a fake-ass warrant, raided my home, wanted access to my garden where my dogs were. They dispatched Animal control to come remove the dogs.
Rather than wait and follow proper procedure, these people slaughter the complete Trinity of them.
A police search warrant affidavit says cops were "aware of a medical marijuana card" to grow pot, but because the plants were visible to the public, they were illegal, the lawsuit said, according to a report in Deadline Detroit last year. Police wrote that they had stumbled upon what appeared to be a "covert marijuana grow operation."
The plaintiff, Franklin, told the officers he had documents to prove the marijuana plants were legal.
When Franklin asked officers to see a search warrant, one cop stated, according to the suit: "If you keep asking for a warrant, we are gonna kill those dogs and call child protective services to pick up your kid."
The lawsuit says police couldn't access the marijuana plants in the yard, which was surrounded by an eight-foot privacy fence, because of the three dogs, Isis, Heru and Beautiful. It also said the police report "falsely states" that the officers tried unsuccessfully to round up the dogs.
"They did not," the suit alleges.
