A white officer in suburban Detroit lied to a Black pedestrian by identifying an officer from another force as his supervisor during a 2021 police stop.

Brian Chaney says he asked for a supervisor during his arrest in Keego Harbor, Michigan, and Police Officer Richard Lindquist told him that another officer present was in charge. The problem: That second officer was not a supervisor or even a member of the Keego Harbor Police Department.

Lindquist was never disciplined and his chief says that while a suspect has the right to request a supervisor, what the officer did was OK.

“An officer can lie in the field when he’s not under oath,” Keego Harbor Police Chief John Fitzgerald said in a deposition in Chaney’s $10 million wrongful detention lawsuit.