A teen boy and his mother filed a federal lawsuit against Williamsport, Pennsylvania, and its police department, alleging false arrest and imprisonment after the boy was misidentified in a surveillance video and jailed for nearly a month on gun charges.

The complaint filed by Mekhi Johnson and his mother, Amber Garrity, on July 31 (and obtained by Atlanta Black Star) claims Williamsport Police Bureau Agent Benjamin Hitesman ignored evidence proving Johnson’s innocence and failed to inform prosecutors, willful omissions that a county judge later said “cast a dark cloud” over local police and all law enforcement.

After shots were fired near a park on the south side of town on July 22, 2024, police investigators obtained surveillance footage from four locations, which showed two masked peop

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