League City man suing police who arrested him for not displaying handicap placard

LEAGUE CITY, Texas (KTRK) -- A League City man was arrested in 2023 for parking in a handicap space. Now, he's filing a civil rights lawsuit.

Scott Shearer said in his long career as a criminal defense attorney, he never imagined ending up on the other end of the law. He believes his arrest was unfair and sets a dangerous precedent for others.

Scott Shearer said on July 28, 2023, he drove over to his gym and sat in the car before going in so he could check emails. It would appear sitting outside of a gym on his phone made someone nervous because a League City police officer arrived and asked him if he had been taking photos.

"I offered him my phone twice to look at my phone to see I hadn't taken any pictures, and eventually he got off that," Shearer said.

Shearer said the officer never took him up on his offer to check his phone, but eventually the officer asked him to get out of the car, so he did. Shearer alleges the officer told him his eyes looked strange and asked if he was on anything.

Shearer said he told the officer no, but refused when the officer asked to do an eye-tracking test.

Eventually, the officer mentioned that he was parked in a handicap spot without a placard displayed. Shearer said he told the officer he had one in the car and offered to get it, but the officer refused, and again said he needed to be the one to search the car. Shearer said he knew his right and refused the search again, then, much to his shock, he was placed in cuffs and taken away.

"I just couldn't believe some would get arrested for a class C parking ticket violation," Shearer said.

According to a League City Police event report Shearer sent ABC13, the placard was found "under a mound of items," inside his car, on the passenger seat. Shearer said he hadn't hung it up yet because the back of the placard says you're not allowed to hang it while driving, and he hadn't left the car yet.

"In 31 years of being a criminal defense attorney, I've seen a lot of dumb stuff that police do, but I've never seen anything like this, and it happened to happen to me," Searer said.

Shearer was booked into jail and bonded out, and eventually the charge against him was dropped. But he wasn't done yet. Shearer said he filed an open records request and found since January 2020, he's the only person League City has ever arrested over a handicap violation.

Now, he and attorney Randall Kallinen have filed a civil lawsuit against the arresting officers and League City police.

"We're filing a lawsuit today to tell League City you need better training, you need to discipline your officers when they do this sort of thing," Kallinen said.

Despite the comment about Shearer being on something, he said a blood draw was never done while he was booked into jail. He did provide us a copy of a drug test he voluntarily did the next day, which showed him negative for more than a dozen drugs it screened for.

ABC13 contacted League City Police today, who said they were made aware of the lawsuit on Friday. They said it's city policy not to comment on pending litigation.

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