In 2019, he was wrongfully arrested by MNPD. Now Nashville will pay him $236,000.

It was a Thursday night in 2019, and Ralph Ward had a busy day at work. He had a corporate job with T-Mobile and had also picked up a gig delivering packages for Amazon.

On his way home, he decided to stop at his favorite liquor store.

The encounter he’d have with police there has resulted in one of the largest wrongful arrest settlements the city has made. It also revealed a gap that existed in police training.

That night, Ward remembers walking into the store. The attendant at the counter greeted him.

But before Ward could reply, he heard a commotion behind him.

“I looked back, and I saw about six or seven officers with guns drawn. And they’re like, ‘Get on the ground. Get on the ground.’ And I’m like, looking at them like, ‘Huh? Who? Me?'”

Officers pointed their guns at Ward. They handcuffed him on the floor of the store.

He kept asking what exactly was going on, but couldn’t get any answers.

Eventually, one officer told Ward that he was being arrested for fleeing a traffic stop on I-65 North.

But Ward said he had not taken that way home; he even had GPS records of his routes to prove it.

Yet the officers didn’t take that into consideration.

“I feel like, if I was a white male, I don’t even think I would have been put in handcuffs,” Ward says. “I don’t even think there would have been any guns drawn on me, to be honest with you.”

He was taken to jail anyway, and charged with a felony for evading arrest.

That became a sticking point in Ward’s suit against the city. His GPS route is considered exculpatory evidence and should have been considered.

But Ward’s lawyer Kyle Mothershead dug into it, and found exculpatory evidence was hardly covered in the police manual.

“They had not been trained that they actually have a duty to do that — but they actually do,” Mothershead says. “They actually have a constitutional duty to look at evidence of innocence that a suspect’s trying to show them. And so, you know, from that standpoint, it does go beyond the money.”

MNPD says that the requirement to supply all relevant evidence is taught at the police academy.

The department would not specify what updates were made after Ward’s arrest in 2019 — but it says training materials are reviewed and updated on an ongoing basis.