BATON ROUGE - The city-parish has paid $55,000 to settle a police brutality lawsuit, but could have paid less if the officer had been willing to apologize to the woman he cursed at, yanked from a car and handcuffed, according to her attorney.

The officer, Troy Lawrence Jr., has been involved in two other cases in which the city-parish paid damages, and has been repeatedly suspended in other incidents, plaintiff's attorney Thomas Frampton said Wednesday.

Lawrence, who has worked for BRPD for four years, is the son of Deputy Chief Troy Lawrence Sr.

Frampton said Shermanie Reed, who filed the current suit, offered to accept $40,000 with an apology from either the officer or the police chief. City-parish attorneys recommended to the Metro Council that they settle the suit for $55,000, which the council ultimately approved.

Reed went to the scene of an Oct. 31, 2020 "fender-bender" wreck involving her sister, Frampton said. She said Lawrence used profanity toward the people involved and when she told him he was acting unprofessionally, he pulled her out of her car and arrested her.

Frampton said an Internal Affairs investigation cleared Lawrence of any violation of the department's policy on the use of force.

Lawrence was part of two related cases that led city-parish to pay damages. In the first case, a $35,000 settlement went to a family whose child had his underwear searched by police in public. In the second, BRPD settled with Frampton, the attorney in that case, for $86,000 for retaliating against him after he released some of the video in that the search case.