Prosecutors have dismissed at least 24 firearms cases after defense lawyers challenged the legality of stops conducted by two Philadelphia police officers who they say systematically targeted Black men for unlawful searches.
Lawyers with the Defender Association of Philadelphia say former partners August Gershwin and John Lee initiated hundreds of pedestrian investigations in Northwest Philadelphia without sufficient legal justification — ordering Black men to submit to searches during interactions that were supposed to be voluntary, delaying activation of body-worn cameras until after stops were underway, and rarely documenting investigations unless they yielded illegal guns or contraband.
The allegations come more than a decade after Philadelphia entered into a federal consent decree aimed at curbing unconstitutional stop-and-frisk practices. The agreement requires officers to document investigative stops for review by independent monitors and encourages police to handle low-level violations through so-called mere encounters — voluntary interactions with officers in which people are free to ignore questions and walk away.
The lawyers contend that Gershwin and Lee exploited that distinction, routinely detaining people without the legal justification required for a stop while avoiding the scrutiny those interactions would otherwise receive.
Their review, detailed in recent court filings, has prompted prosecutors to abandon dozens of cases tied to the officers, while the fate of dozens more remains uncertain.
The dismissals began with the case of Namir Mack, charged with firearms offenses and evading arrest after a March 2025 stop by Gershwin and Lee led to the recovery of an illegal handgun.
According to court filings, the officers stopped Mack as he walked along West Erie Avenue. Body-worn camera footage showed Mack lifting the back of his sweatshirt after the officers ordered him to expose his waist.
Mack then ran. During a brief chase, he was struck by an SUV on Hunting Park Avenue, and officers recovered a handgun. A supervisor’s body-worn camera footage captured the aftermath.
“What is this?” Sgt. Christopher Bloom asked. “A mere encounter turned into a foot pursuit?”
Defender Association lawyers characterized the pattern of conduct discovered in their review as deeply concerning.
The officers’ actions were “flying in the face of everything that’s supposed to be happening with this march toward more equitable policing in Philadelphia,” said Michael Mellon, who, along with Paula Sen, leads the association’s police accountability unit and conducted the review.
Efforts to reach Lee, who left the department last November, were unsuccessful. Gershwin directed inquiries to his supervisor, who declined to comment.
The police department declined to comment on the dismissed cases and the Defender Association’s findings.
Police Commissioner Kevin J. Bethel declined an interview request, and police union leaders did not respond to requests for comment.
The district attorney’s office, too, declined to comment.
Police spokesperson Sgt. Eric Gripp said that pedestrian stops must be based on something more than a “hunch,” and that “the mere presence of a firearm” or “a person being in a particular area does not, standing alone, automatically justify a detention or frisk.”
Department policy also requires officers to activate body-worn cameras at the outset of investigative stops. But the lawyers found that in every reviewed stop for which footage was available, the officers activated their cameras only after the interaction had begun, obscuring the moments most critical to determining whether the stop was lawful and whether citizens had voluntarily complied with police requests.
According to the lawyers’ legal filings, the department sustained at least three investigations for body-worn camera violations against both Gershwin and Lee during the two-year period reviewed by attorneys.
Of the nearly 500 pedestrian interactions reviewed by Mellon and Sen, only 130 were documented as investigative stops. The officers recorded an additional 320 as mere encounters.
After reviewing body-worn camera footage, police paperwork, and other materials, the lawyers concluded that 277 of the interactions described as mere encounters should have been classified as investigative stops and subjected to consent-decree review. Of those, 218 involved weapons license investigations. None resulted in the recovery of an illegal firearm.
The lawyers also found that all but one of the nearly 500 people the officers stopped during the review period were Black. All but two were men.
In one encounter classified as voluntary, body-worn camera footage showed Gershwin asking to search a man’s bag outside a beer deli. When a woman in the group objected, Gershwin searched the bag anyway before walking away after finding nothing.
In another supposedly voluntary encounter, Gershwin warned two teenage boys that if they did not lift their shirts, “we’re gonna cuff you.” Neither teen was found to have a weapon.
“They know they don’t have reasonable suspicion,” Sen said, “so they’re simply not documenting them.”
Gripp said the department’s internal affairs bureau conducted six investigations involving Gershwin and four involving Lee related to pedestrian stops and searches. Two allegations against Gershwin were sustained, he said, and none of the cases against Lee was sustained.
David Rudovsky, a civil rights lawyer who helped secure the consent decree, said he is “concerned that at least some officers in the department are doing an end run around the consent decree.”
Rudovsky said he plans to press the department to investigate Gershwin, Lee, and other officers who appear in body-worn camera footage reviewed by defense attorneys.
“If we’re not satisfied,” he said, “ultimately we can seek relief from the court.”
The Citizens Police Oversight Commission also said it plans to analyze department data on mere encounters and conduct audits as a result of the Defender Association’s findings and complaints from residents.
While most active cases handled by the Defender Association have been dismissed, Mellon and Sen estimate that an additional 30 to 40 cases involve private defense attorneys. They said they next plan to press the district attorney’s office to review closed cases tied to the officers’ arrests and broaden their analysis to other officers.