One of the 170 bikers arrested in Waco, Texas and previously held on $1,000,000 bond has taken to the media to call upon Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to investigate. The biker, Matthew Alan Clendennen, claims he is innocent and that his May, 17, 2015 arrest was a result of a broad sweep by Waco police.
His family joined him in an emotional press conference on Monday along with his attorney, Clint Broden, to blast the Waco Police Department for what they claimed was an unprecedented abuse of power by police.
Clendennen is a former firefighter and a Baylor graduate. He is also member of the Scimitar Motorcycle Club. He was reportedly on the patio of Twin Peaks on May 17.2015 when fighting broke out in the parking lot. According to Clendennen, he took cover inside the restaurant before being swept up by police.
As Breitbart Texas previously reported, Clendennen filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the City of Waco, the McLennan County Sheriff’s Office, and individual police officers in May.
The lawsuit asserts:
It was the policy of the City of Waco, as decided and approved by their policymakers, to cause the arrest and detention of numerous individuals belonging to motorcycle clubs who were in or around the Twin Peaks restaurant at the time of the incident, regardless of whether or not there was individualized probable cause to arrest and detain a particular individual and to do so based on “fill in the name” complaints without individualized facts. This policy was carried out repeatedly, and as a result, over 170 people were arrested and detained, with each one of those persons given the identical $1 million bond, with no regard to their individual situation.
The issue of the arrests exploded when Justice of the Peace W.H. Peterson discussed the $1,000,000 bonds set on the bikers while they were still presumed innocent. He told the Waco Tribune, “I think it is important to send a message … We had nine people killed in our community. These people just came in, and most of them were from out of town. Very few of them were from in town.”