Family Alleges Anti-Arab Police Bias in Lawsuit

Members of an entire Dearborn Heights family claim in a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday that the city police department discriminated against them because of their ethnicity and religion when they failed to investigate alleged assaults on their daughters.

In the lawsuit, Ghassan and Sonia Khaled and their two daughters, ages 8 and 14, claim that a neighbor grabbed the girls and threw them to the ground over a dispute over garbage, and used foul language and called them “Arab scarfies” because they wear traditional Islamic headscarves. the Detroit Free Press reports.

When Dearborn Heights Police were called to investigate the alleged Dec. 6 incident, they not only failed to follow through, but also made anti-Arab remarks and retaliated against the family, the lawsuit claims.

The plaintiffs said police knocked on the neighbor’s door, but no one answered. According to the lawsuit, a half dozen police cars showed up at Khaled’s house later that night, and he was ticketed for putting his trash out a day early. Police allegedly made explicit anti-Arab remarks during the arrest, and continued their harassment later by shining bright lights in the family’s residence during the night.

Arab-American Civil Rights League Chair Nabih Ayad, who is suing the Dearborn Heights Police Department on behalf of the Khaled family, said at a Tuesday news conference the alleged harassment is part of a pattern against Arab-Americans.

Arab-Americans make up about 22 percent of the city’s population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, but the city has only one Arab-American police officer, Ayad said, likening the situation to that in the predominantly black Ferguson, MO, where only a few of the police officers are African-American.

“They just don’t get it,” Ayad said of Dearborn Heights police. “The community has ha enough.”

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