It was still daylight when Nevada police pulled Shane Lee Brown over for not having his headlights turned on back in January 2020.
They would end up arresting him on a felony warrant for another man named Shane Neal Brown.
“I’m pretty sure it’s you,” one of the Henderson police officers told Brown after he insisted they had the wrong man.
But it wasn’t. Not even close.
Shane Lee Brown, a Black man with brown eyes who stands at 5 feet 7 inches, was 23 years old when he was pulled over.
Shane Neal Brown, a White man with blue eyes who stands at 5 feet 11 inches, was 49 years old and already incarcerated in a San Bernardino County jail in Southern California when the younger Brown was pulled over.
Last month, the younger Brown agreed to a $90,000 settlement, according to Fox 5 Vegas News. The cap in Nevada for negligence is $100,000, his attorney told the news station.
The ordeal began at 4:44 p.m. on January 8, 2020 when the younger Brown was pulled over for not having his headlights turned on.
The traffic stop escalated when Brown told the cops his license was suspended but he had a court date the following morning to deal with it. He also gave the cops his full name, date of birth and social security number to show he had nothing to hide.
Upon learning he had a suspended license, the cops ordered him out of the car. But then they decided to arrest him when learning of the warrant for the older Brown.
“So, we got to figure some stuff out,” a cop told Brown. “You got arrested for something with a weapon.”
“Not ringing a bell?” a cop asked.
Brown told him he had never been arrested on a felony weapons charge but the cops did not believe him.
“It comes back totally matching you. Not much else we can do,” a cop told him, according to body cam footage obtained by 8 News Now which you can see in the news report below.
He ended up spending two nights in a Henderson jail before he was picked up by Las Vegas police and transported to the Clark County Detention Center which is where the warrant was from, spending another four nights there.
He repeatedly told police and detention officers that they had the wrong guy during his six-day ordeal but they never bothered checked their records to see if what he was saying was true.
It wasn’t until January 14 during a court hearing that a public defender told the judge they had arrested the wrong guy that he was released.
The city of Henderson paid $25,000 and the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department paid $65,000 Read the lawsuit here.