An upstate New York man is expected to receive a $700,000 settlement stemming from a 2019 police misconduct incident. For context, Bruce McNeil was pulled over by Officer John Davidson in 2019, who is now serving as the president of the Buffalo Police Benevolent Association, and Officer Patrick Garry, while he was driving down Broadway to buy a newspaper and coffee, according to court papers filed by McNeil.
After being pulled over by the officers, he was asked for his license and registration. When McNeil asked the reason for the stop, the officers remained quiet, and he ended up giving the officers his license as he did not want to cause any “disturbance.”
Subsequently, officers took his driver’s license back to their vehicle, relayed his license information to Erie County Dispatch, and later returned his license to his car.
White People always say, “Why do Blacks make everything about race?” It’s because America is literally a country rooted in racism, built on a racial hierarchy that puts whiteness at the top and blackness at the bottom. There are laws to ensure this hierarchy never goes away pic.twitter.com/8ZWMRwntLb
— kevin blue (@kevinblue345) March 19, 2026
The man was then told to step out of the vehicle citing a ‘problem’, and he was told by the officers that they “just needed to check” him. Upon stepping out of the car, McNeil was handcuffed, searched and placed in the back of the patrol car. The officers then asked him if he had anything in his car, and he replied that there might be marijuana in the ashtray of the vehicle.
The officers searched his car, then returned and said they found no contraband before removing his handcuffs and telling him he was free to leave. Upon returning to his vehicle, the man “noticed that the hood on his vehicle started to bounce up and down,” something that had not happened before, and he suspected it was caused during the search.
Following this, he went to the C-District Precinct headquarters to file a complaint about the officers’ conduct who pulled him over, and was instead asked to leave and “not return to make a complaint” against the officers.
According to the complaint, he was also told he would go to jail if he tried to make a complaint again. However, he later returned to the police station with his mother and was met by Lt. Jenny Velez, who also asked them to leave the building or face arrest over the marijuana in his car.
When McNeil’s mother told her that there was no marijuana in the car, Officer Davidson, who was among five other Buffalo police officers listening to the conversation between McNeil and his mother and Lt. Velez from a backroom, came out and told Defendant Velez that they found crack cocaine in the back of their patrol vehicle.
According to the complaint, Velez later told McNeil that he was being charged with crack cocaine, and that “the charges are already downtown.”
When the man asked the lieutenant about the basis of the charge, she told him that he had left crack cocaine in the back of Officers Davidson and Garry’s patrol vehicle.
McNeil was later taken to the Erie County Holding Center where he was booked and placed in a cell. He was charged with felony, offered a plea deal which he refused, and ultimately acquitted in December 2019.
The Buffalo Common Council is being asked to consider more than $1.7 million in settlements for suits filed against the city negotiated by the Corporation Counsel’s office, with most of them stemming from incidents involving the Buffalo Police Department. https://t.co/XjdkXlJUvj
— The Buffalo News (@TheBuffaloNews) March 17, 2026
However, McNeil was pulled over twice by Officer Garry in three days following his acquittal. During the second stop on April 6, 2020, when McNeil asked the reason for the stop, Garry responded, “I heard you didn’t accept the plea deal.”
The man and his passenger were then ordered by the Officer to exit the vehicle, before Officer Garry searched his car and placed him in handcuffs. He was then placed in the back of his patrol car and searched his vehicle without his permission and “without probable cause.”
As per the complaint, Officer Garry did not find any contraband in the man’s vehicle, and later took the handcuffs off of him. Additionally, McNeil did not receive any tickets, citations, or violations regarding this “unprovoked and unnecessary traffic stop by Officer Garry,” the complaint added.
The upstate New York man later filed a lawsuit in federal court in July 2020 over the incident, accusing the officers of “violating his Fourth and 14th Amendment rights through false arrest, false imprisonment, malicious prosecution, unreasonable search and seizure as well as violating his First Amendment rights by retaliating against him for attempting to file a complaint against the cops,” as per Atlanta Black Star.
To resolve the case, the Buffalo city attorneys have proposed a settlement of $700,000, which is expected to be approved by the city council by the end of this month.
