YouTuber LeRoy Truth filed a two-count lawsuit against Union City Mayor Brian Stack and the local police department this morning, alleging that his civil rights were violated and that he was wrongfully arrested at a board of commissioners meeting last week.
By John Heinis/Hudson County View
The 34-page court filing by West New York-based attorney Mario Blanch on behalf of Truth, whose real name of Leonard Filipowski, also contains an order to show cause with temporary restraints to ensure another arrest doesn’t occur in the interim.
Blanch first made mention of that last week when speaking to HCV, the first outlet to report on Filipowski’s arrest for disorderly conduct at Tuesday’s Union City Board of Commissioners meeting at the Jose Marti Freshman Academy.
“Union City Police Officers advised the Plaintiff that he was interrupting the public meeting, acting in a disorderly manner and that he could only speak from the podium. Plaintiff refused to go back to the podium and advised the police officers that there was no law that required that he speak from the podium. From the video the Plaintiff is not acting in a disorderly manner,” the lawsuit says.
“Despite there being no law requiring Plaintiff to use his five (5) minutes from the podium, the Union City Police continued to insist and then escalated the situation by getting in Plaintiff’s face and acting aggressively towards the Plaintiff. Despite the escalation by the police and the aggression displayed by the police, the Plaintiff refused to return to the podium.”
Furthermore, Filipowski, through the complaint, alleges that Stack and a few of his supporters, including Police Chief Anthony Facchini and Commissioner Wendy Grullon, have filed false criminal complaints against him to “stifle his First Amendment rights.”
The incident, which has been captured to some extent by videographers who attended the meeting with Filipowski, was also a clear violation of the Open Public Meeting Act (OPMA), according to a legal argument written by Blanch.
“There is no law or ordinance that requires a speaker to speak only from a podium. It was clear from the outset of the meeting that the Defendants were trying to stifle free speech,” he wrote.
” … The Open Public Meetings Act (“OPMA”) makes it clear that commissioners must give time to members of the public to discuss anything that ‘may be of concern to the residents of the municipality.’ The language of the OPMA is broad, and does not limit what may or may not be of concern to the public. It is not for the commissioners to determine what may be of concern.”
In addition to the temporary restraints, Filipowski is seeking compensatory and punitive damages, legal Costs and attorney fees, injunctive relief preventing defendants from filing false charges against plaintiff, as well as any other relief the court finds just and equitable.
Union City Corporation Counsel Donald Scarinci said this afternoon that Filipowski was arrest for his conduct, not the content of his remarks, refusing to comply with police officers who were working the meeting.
He also said that Angelo Auteri, a partner at his firm who sat in on Tuesday’s meeting, asked him several times not to approach the commissioners and remain at the podium, and when he ignored him, that caused the officers to escalate the situation before the arrest occurred.
“The incident that occurred at the Union City Commission meeting was not an isolated incident. It was the continuation of a pattern of repeated harassment of Union City’s Commissioners since about December 2023, which is currently under investigation by law enforcement,” Scarinci told HCV.
“The nature of Mr. Filipowski’s conduct over these seven or eight months has been loud and has been accompanied by close contact personal confrontation with the mayor and commissioners, threatening conduct, and abusive language. The mayor has received death threats, and the Commissioners have been made to feel unsafe and afraid in Mr. Filipowski’s presence.”
Stack’s social media pages have received death threats and other threats of violence since Tuesday, as have employees in his office, emails forwarded to this reporter show.
Filipowski wrote on his own Facebook page that he has also received death threats since he began investigating Union City in December, continuing that he does not support acts of violence or threats against anyone, including Stack.