Antioch Police Department Sued by ACLU

Antioch is a growing city of a little more than 100,000 people situated at the Eastern edge of the San Francisco Bay Area. If you pick a direction and drive for an hour or so, you wind up either at the edge of the Pacific Ocean, the heart of Napa Valley or the State Capital, Sacramento. The city boasts an annual festival celebrating Jazz, water sports involving the San Joaquin delta that borders the North and the breathtaking views of the majestic Mount Diablo to the Southwest.

Like any small town, the growth spurts of this once rural city became increasingly painful. The once sprawling grassy foothills began sprouting thousands of gigantic tract homes. The housing bubble started to jiggle with instability and left many home owners in a frantic search for a way to make their heavy mortgages "just in case". Renters of all ethnic, social and economic backgrounds flooded the city to take advantage of the opportunity to live in a gorgeous house for a great price.

Fast forward five years.

On July 16, 2008 the ACLU, on behalf of African American Section 8 recipients living in Antioch, California, filed a class action civil lawsuit with the Federal Court in San Francisco. The lawsuit claims that the City of Antioch, its Police Department and their Community Action Team (CAT Team) engaged in "varied forms of coercion, intimidation and threats" which "violate state and federal laws, including the Fair Housing Act; the Fourth Amendment; and the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibits intentional discrimination on the basis of race." The ACLU website accuses the Antioch Police Department of being "engaged in a concerted campaign of intimidation, harassment and discrimination against African Americans who receive federally funded Section 8 housing rent assistance".