One of the protestors who was arrested on the Roebling Bridge last summer has filed a civil rights lawsuit in federal court alleging the Covington Police Department used excessive force.
Brandon Hill and his attorney, Marvin Knorr, filed a 23-page complaint July 15 in the Eastern District Court of Kentucky against police officer Zachary Stayton, an unnamed second officer and the city itself.
Hill alleges the police employed excessive force and “deprived him of his procedural and substantive due process rights protected by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution,” according to the complaint.
Fifteen people were arrested on the bridge last July. The arrests took place after a protest in Cincinnati branched off from a vigil for former Cincinnati Children’s chaplain Ayman Soliman, whom United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained following the revocation of his asylum status. At the time, Soliman was held at the Butler County Jail in Hamilton, Ohio. He was later released.
The police and protestors clashed as the protestors attempted to cross the bridge from the Ohio side. Nick Swartsell, a reporter with WVXU, was on the scene and recorded several videos that later became widely circulated among news media and on social media. One video shows Stayton repeatedly punching Hill in the head. Police body cam footage also captured Stayton’s actions.
Photos of the injuries Hill sustained are included in his complaint.
“It looks like they came and they responded, and they used force to try to de-escalate,” Knorr said. “So they escalated in order to try to de-escalate, and that to me is the wrong response.”
The complaint also accuses the City of Covington of liability for the hiring and retaining of Stayton, failure to properly train Stayton, failure to properly supervise Stayton and failure to discipline and correct the allegedly unlawful acts and omissions of Stayton.
Hill was one of four protestors whose felony rioting charges were upheld after his arrest. His felony case in county court has not had any hearings since last July when the probable cause for his felony charge was upheld.
The remaining three protestors whose probable cause was upheld, Ameer Ayman Alkayali, Logan Imber and Taylor Marshall, later had their rioting charges amended to lower misdemeanor charges, according to court records. Imber was arraigned for her misdemeanor on Wednesday, the same day Hill filed his federal suit. Alkayali’s arraignment is scheduled for August.
Everyone else arrested either took plea deals or has already gone to trial.
Hill’s new lawsuit seeks what’s called a Monell claim against the city and department, which argues that allegedly unconstitutional behavior by a single officer reflects broader practices within the department as a whole, thereby making the entire agency responsible. Monell claims have been leveled against Covington PD in the past.
An internal affairs investigation released in November found Stayton had violated department protocols during the bridge arrests but not for punching Hill. In fact, the investigation found his actions against Hill were “to be within policy and current departmental practice,” according to Sergeant Jeff Cook, who’s responsible for training at the department.
Instead, it was for his actions against another protester and actions during the clearing of the bridge after the protest had been broken up, for which he was docked for “unbecoming conduct” after cursing and shoving a protester for seemingly no reason. Stayton was placed on a 30-day suspension.
Notably, Stayton told the IA detectives during the investigation that “he had never been trained to handle a situation like this. He stated that he never thought he would be fighting someone on the bridge. He said that he wasn’t prepared for the situation and wished that he had been trained better.”
At multiple times throughout Stayton’s interviewing process, the detectives asked him where he learned to punch and strike people to gain compliance, and he said either during the police academy or through the Kentucky Department of Criminal Justice Training, the state agency responsible for training recruits.
“The events that occurred on the Roebling Bridge in July 2025 posed serious public safety concerns,” reads a written statement from the city. “The City remains committed to ensuring Covington is a safe place for all residents and visitors. Because both the criminal case and the civil litigation remain pending, the City has no further comment at this time.”
Hill is seeking compensatory and punitive damages in his lawsuit. He is demanding a trial by jury. Read his full complaint below.
WCPO’s Logan MacDonald contributed to the reporting in this article.
This story has been updated.
