A motorist is suing Michigan State Police after troopers arrested him on false claims that he was intoxicated when they pulled him over in Benton Harbor shortly after 3 a.m. on April 10.
Dakarai Larriett, who is Black, claims he was racially profiled when troopers pulled over his Cadillac SUV, mocked his name, and suggested he smelled “fruity,” which he interpreted to be a homophobic remark.
At the time, Larriett was wearing pajamas and forced to undergo field sobriety tests in the cold. Trooper George Kanyuh, who Larriett says had a history of making sexist, racist, and homophobic statements on social media, was adamant that Larriett was under the influence.
“I don’t know what he’s on,” Kanyuh told his partner Matthew Okaiye, according to footage obtained from his body-worn camera. “I’m going to assume it’s weed and alcohol.”
Larriett says the camera footage proves that troopers were trying to plant drugs on him. At 3:25 a.m., Kanyuh can be seen rifling through the trunk of his squad car for two minutes, and the video goes dark. At one point, Okaiye appears to say, “Drugs?”
Kanyuh responds, “I don’t think I have any … I had a stash in here somewhere. I don’t know where it’s at.”
Without any proof that Larriett was under the influence, the troopers handcuffed him and took him to a hospital to be tested for drugs and alcohol. He was then taken to jail, even though his alcohol test turned up negative.
Then an already humiliating encounter with police allegedly turned even more degrading.
While doing a scan of Larriett’s stomach, police claimed they had spotted an “anomaly” and accused him of “trying to smuggle drugs into the jail by way of ingestion of a bag of drugs,” Larriett tells Metro Times in an email.
“An extremely humiliating moment occurred where I was forced to defecate publicly while Trooper Kanyuh yelled at me not to flush,” Larriett recalls.
Kanyuh says he was charged with operating under the influence of a controlled substance, but prosecutors quickly dismissed the case “due to lack of evidence and the unlawful nature of the stop and arrest,” according to a federal complaint filed by Larriett’s attorney Shawndrica N. Simmons.
Five months later, the results of Larriett’s blood tests for drugs and alcohol arrived, and they were negative.
“The actions of the Michigan State Police officers were part of a pattern and practice of racially discriminatory policing,” Simmons wrote in the demand for a jury trial.
After his arrest, Larriett found an X account, @GKanyuh, that he says belonged to Kanyuh before it was recently deleted. The tweets contained racist, homophobic, and misogynistic language and imagery.
In one retweet, a photo of a Black woman is captioned, “Met the biggest beauty of a crackhead last night.”
Larriett tells Metro Times he’s still struggling to come to terms with the traffic stop and arrest.
“It’s horrible,” he says. “I’m still shaking when I see that video.”
State police did not immediately return a request for comment from Metro Times.
The police bodycam video can be viewed below or on YouTube.
