Two years to the day after a traffic stop during which he says he feared for his life, an Oakland civil rights attorney filed a lawsuit against the city.
On the day after Christmas in 2017, at around 7 p.m., Adante Pointer said he was driving in a silver Mercedes-Benz down International Boulevard in San Leandro after visiting a client.
Pointer, a lawyer who works in the office of civil rights attorney John Burris, said he was trying to decide if he should pick up some food for his two kids at home when he noticed flashing lights in his rearview mirror.
At first, he assumed the quickly approaching Oakland police SUV was rushing to an emergency, so Pointer quickly pulled over to let it pass. Instead, officers pulled up right behind him and, according to Pointer’s complaint, got out of the car and began shouting at him with their weapons drawn.
“He started yelling at me, intensely loud and direct commands, ‘Get the f- out the car! Get the f- out the car!’ and he had his gun pointed out,” Pointer said. The complaint does not identify the officers involved.
As one police officer was shouting at him to get out of the vehicle, Pointer said another was simultaneously yelling at him not to move and to lift his hands up.
With different sets of conflicting commands, Pointer wasn’t sure who he should listen to and was terrified he might do the wrong thing.
“I know far too well, being a civil rights attorney and representing victims of police abuse over 15 years, that drivers have been shot for a lot less — the slightest movement,” Pointer said. “So I was petrified. I didn’t want to give them any excuse or justification to kill me.”
