Photo: Metropolitan Nashville Police Department Does anyone remember Michael J. Reynolds, the former officer with the New York Police De...
Does anyone remember Michael J. Reynolds, the former officer with the New York Police Department who flew to Nashville, Tenn., to attend a 3-day bachelor party in 2018 and ended up breaking into the home of Black woman Conese Halliburton and her four sons, who lived next to the Airbnb he was staying in? You might remember that Reynolds hurled racial slurs at the family, cursed at them and even threatened them with violence. You might also remember that he was sentenced to 15 days in jail behind the offense but somehow wasn’t removed from the force.
Well now, more than 2 years after the incident, a federal district court judge has ruled that the Klan-ish ex-cop must pay out $1 million to the Black family he terrorized.
First, here’s what The Root reported in January:
At around 2:30 a.m. on July 9, 2018, Reynolds is seen, via video surveillance from a neighbor’s RING camera, kicking in Halliburton’s door in an apparent drunken rage.
In an interview with The Tennessean, Halliburton recalls the events.
“This is my mother fucking house,” Reynolds shouted, Halliburton told the paper. The video shows Reynolds shouting at the family “Try to shoot me, and I’ll break every fucking bone in your fucking neck.” He also is shown in the footage calling the family “Fucking niggers.”
Reynolds claimed he mistook Halliburton’s home for his Airbnb which was one door down.
The Tennessean reports that Judge Eli Richardson approved a $1 million settlement against Reynolds on Monday. The lawsuit against the former officer—whose racist ass should have been fired but instead resigned just before his official disciplinary process early this year, according to WKRN—was filed in January by Halliburton.
“Ms. Halliburton promised from the beginning that she would hold ex-Officer Reynolds fully accountable for his criminal misconduct and obtain justice for her family regarding this despicable incident,” Nashville attorney Daniel A. Horwitz, who represented Halliburton, said. “We are certainly pleased with this development, but we also aren’t finished here.”
According to Fox 17, Halliburton—who said in her suit against Reynolds that the home invasion left her “reasonably fearing that her children would be murdered in front of her and fearing that she would be subject to deadly force herself”—also filed a complaint with the NYC Civilian Complaint Review Board against Reynolds and other NYPD officers involved in the incident. The complaint states that the other officers laughed off Reynold’s home invasion and mocked Haliburton. It also states that at least one officer, Thomas Geberth—whose bachelor party Reynolds and his companions were in Nashville to attend—tried to intimidate Haliburton’s neighbors who expressed contempt over what Reynolds had done.
From Fox 17:
Horwitz says due to Reynolds’ bankruptcy declaration, Halliburton will likely only collect a small portion of the $1 million judgment. She has launched a GoFundMe account to help with legal expenses.
“As many of you know, a racist NYPD officer recently broke into my home, threatened to shoot us, and terrorized me and my children. We are all traumatized by what happened,” Halliburton wrote on the GoFundMe account. “To protect my family, I hired lawyers to help ensure that he was prosecuted, went to jail, lost his job and was held accountable for his crimes. He has since declared bankruptcy, but I am still fighting for justice.”
So far, $1,795 has been raised of Halliburton’s $15,000 goal.
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