WATONGA – The woman seen in a 2019 arrest video for which former Watonga Police Chief Shawn Kays was recently criminally charged has filed a civil lawsuit against the city of Watonga for what she describes as a pattern of harassment by the Watonga Police Department.
Julia Cosby sued the city along with individual former members of the Watonga Police and her landlords at the time. She is requesting a jury trial and seeking damages from the city.
Cosby’s complaint says she “was stalked, harassed, kidnapped, assaulted and battered” by Kays “and other officers and employees” of the Watonga PD. She alleges that her landlords used their personal relationship with the police department to kick Cosby out of her house.
Reached via phone on Tuesday, Watonga’s city attorney Jared Harrison declined to comment on the allegations in the lawsuit. He said the city will turn the case over to attorneys from the Oklahoma Municipal Assurance Group, Watonga’s insurance provider.
Harrison said the city hasn’t yet been served and that it expects the lawsuit to be amended. “We know things are going to change,” he said, and therefore wants to withhold comment “until we know exactly what their final allegations are going to be.”
Cosby’s attorney Joe Norwood did not return a phone call Tuesday.
According to Cosby’s lawsuit, she moved to Watonga in March 2019 and moved in with a man on Montgomery Street. But shortly after moving there, it says, the man “began to verbally and physically assault her.”
The lawsuit says the man was arrested on July 1 at his mother’s house down the street; court records confirm that he was arrested on suspicion of domestic abuse that day, though the charges against him were ultimately dismissed.
After the man was released on bail, he moved in with his mother. That’s when Cosby claims her alleged abuser and his mother used their relationship with his landlords, who in turn used their relationship with the Watonga Police, to harass Cosby out of the house.
The lawsuit details at least five separate incidents in which she says Watonga police officers entered her home to threaten her with eviction. On July 23, 2019, she said Kays and other Watonga officers “dragged” her out of the residence “and told her to leave the area” while her landlords changed the locks on the house.
Cosby spent that night outside, she says.
After crashing with “whoever would give her shelter” for a few weeks, Cosby said she found her landlords’ handyman on Aug. 13 because she “had learned that he had her belongings at his old residence.” Cosby says she waited at his residence while he left to retrieve them.
That’s when the Watonga Police showed up again, she said. Their encounter culminated in the incident for which Kays was recently charged; he was filmed pushing Cosby down and twisting her arm while placing her in handcuffs. Cosby claims that twisting dislocated her elbow and shoulder.
Cosby alleges that Watonga police ultimately had her interred at a psychiatric hospital against her will. Cosby’s suit says she suffered “great emotional and physical pain and suffering” because of the experience.
It says the alleged abuses of the Watonga Police Department “were so well-settled as to constitute the de facto policy” and that she’s targeting the city because “municipal policymakers with authority over the same exhibited deliberate indifference to the problem, thereby effectively ratifying it.”
Cosby’s lawsuit was filed on Aug. 10 in the United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma. The Watonga City Council discussed the lawsuit in a closed, executive session during its regular meeting on Tuesday, Aug. 17.
Kays was fired from the Watonga Police in June 2021 after a separate incident. In July, the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation filed a criminal complaint alleging Kays had committed burglary and assault while apprehending Cosby on Aug. 13, 2019.
Kays is due in court again on Oct. 26 in Kingfisher.