Frazer’s insurance company pays Mexican workers to settle civil rights lawsuit
An insurance company for Frazer paid nine Mexican lawn care workers an average of $3,000 each to settle a civil rights lawsuit claiming its police and J.C. Penney employees illegally detained the men, the township said in a news release Tuesday.
The township denies in the settlement that its police did anything wrong during the Oct. 8, 2010 incident according to the release. The American Civil Liberties Union represented the men, who were detained and questioned by police after a store employee claimed that one of them has previously bought items with a counterfeit $100 bill, according to the lawsuit.
The person in the surveillance photo of that transaction didn’t resemble any of the defendants, and none of the men were carrying counterfeit currency, but police still held them for several hours because they knew of a federal investigation into a counterfeiting ring in Washington County that was apparently using Mexican workers, the lawsuit says.
The press release says that J.C. Penney has also made a monetary settlement with the nine men, but doesn’t say how much the settlement was. Lawyers for the company and the ACLU couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.