Racism lawsuit against Las Vegas police dismissed

A federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit in which a former Las Vegas police officer alleged ongoing racism inside the Metropolitan Police Department.

Solomon Coleman’s complaint against Metro was dismissed after his attorney repeatedly did not respond to court briefs filed by the department’s lawyers, who said he had made “baseless, unsupported allegations” and that his allegations were filed too long after he was fired.

The attorney, Suneel Nelson, had initially requested a two-week extension from U.S. District Judge Jennifer Dorsey in order to respond to the department’s request to drop the case, but that window passed in the middle of last month.

“Plaintiff has filed no response and has not asked for a third extension of the deadline to do so,” court records stated.

Coleman said Monday that he was not aware of the dismissal. His attorney could not be reached for comment.

Coleman, who is Black, told the Review-Journal in October that the department had retaliated against him — and ultimately charged him with crimes — after he agreed to speak up about a racist officer.

Coleman, 34, was cleared of all criminal charges tied to allegations lodged against him while he was on duty in 2013, working as the only Black officer in the department’s southeast area command.

He was indicted in December 2013, after five years on the force, when a woman accused him of pulling off her pants and photographing her without her consent during a domestic violence call. Metro settled a lawsuit the woman filed by paying her $24,999.

Coleman said he disagreed with the settlement.

In 2016, a Clark County jury acquitted Coleman of oppression under color of office and gross lewdness but convicted him of photographing a person’s private area, a gross misdemeanor. He was given probation. But in May 2018, the Nevada Supreme Court reversed his conviction, which was not tied directly to the domestic violence call.

Coleman alleged that his constitutional rights were violated and that authorities fabricated evidence against him.

The same year he was charged, Coleman had volunteered to act as a witness in a fellow officer’s complaint with the department’s office of employment diversity. The complaint was investigated without an investigator speaking with Coleman, he said, and he was later passed over for a promotion.

Metro had alleged that Coleman sexually harassed women he met on duty, though most of the arguments for dismissal of the federal complaint pointed to an exhausted statute of limitations in the civil case.

Contact David Ferrara at dferrara@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-1039. Follow @randompoker on Twitter.