FALL RIVER, Mass. (WPRI) – The family of Anthony Harden, the man shot and killed by Fall River police in 2021, has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the city and several members of its police department. Eric Mack, Harden’s brother who oversees his estate, along with his other brother – Antone Harden – filed the civil rights lawsuit earlier this month in Massachusetts federal court. The family accused police of unlawfully killing Harden and then covering it up by making it look like he had attacked police with a knife. The men also accused the city of illegally detaining Antone at gunpoint the same night Harden was killed in violation of his civil rights. Antone lived in the same building and police took him in handcuffs to headquarters after the shooting where they were “pressuring him to give them information that police could try to use to support the false narrative” about Harden, according to the lawsuit.   In addition to the civil rights claims, the family is seeking injunctive relief against the city, calling on the courts to step in and overhaul the police department to address its “embedded, historic culture of police coverups, racist attitudes, fabrication of evidence and the use of excessive force.” The police department is pushing back, accusing Mack of going on a media campaign and, “attempting to slander the brave men and women of our agency and discredit the investigation conducted by the Bristol County District Attorney.” The police department outlined Harden’s criminal history, including when he allegedly assaulted a woman in 2013 and beat a woman with a stick in 2019. When officers responded to the second incident, police said Harden was holding his 5-month-old daughter while “brandishing a sword.” Police said he threatened to squeeze the child to death during a more than three-hour standoff with police that ensued. Harden was under GPS monitoring awaiting trial for the 2019 case when police came to his home in 2021 after a woman said Harden assaulted her two days earlier. Sergeant Matthew Mendes sent Target 12 a statement on behalf of the police department, standing by the officers who were involved in Harden’s death. “Attorney Mack has made serious allegations of wrongdoing by the Fall River Police Department,” the statement said. “That is the right of every citizen, and the court will decide where the truth lies. We are confident that the officers acted not only bravely but appropriately given the circumstances.” Fall River Mayor Paul Coogan declined to comment, citing the ongoing litigation. The Harden family lawsuit is the latest development in a yearslong fight Mack and his family have leveled against the Fall River Police Department and Bristol County District Attorney Thomas Quinn over of Harden’s death and the ensuing investigation into what happened. The lawsuit names several defendants, including the two police officers – Chelsea Campellone and Michael Sullivan – who went to Harden’s rooming apartment the night he was killed. Campellone shot Harden twice inside his bedroom within minutes of the officers arriving. Police and Quinn have since said the shooting was warranted because Harden lunged at Sullivan with a steak knife. In 2022, Quinn ruled that Campellone’s use of deadly force was justified, saying, “the use of force was not excessive because two shots were reasonable under the circumstance to prevent the officer from suffering seriously [sic] bodily injury and/or death.” But the Harden family has never accepted Quinn's conclusion and have since scrutinized the officers’ stories, poked holes in the material evidence and even offered a cash reward to anyone who comes forward with evidence that helps them prove police engaged in a coverup. “To avoid holding officers accountable for their misconduct, various FRPD officers engaged in a coverup to protect Campellone and Sullivan by, among other things, claiming falsely that Anthony had a knife and attempted to stab Sullivan,” the family wrote in the lawsuit. The federal lawsuit takes aim at Campellone’s mental wellbeing at the time of the shooting, noting she was engaged in her own domestic violence dispute and had been involved in four separate police cruiser crashes. In one of the crashes, she struck a telephone pole, hit her head on the windshield and lost consciousness. She was taken to the hospital, according to the lawsuit. Despite her personal and professional issues, the Harden family alleged she “never sought leave from her employment due to emotional distress,” and the department never reviewed her behavior under its Early Warning System Policy, which is supposed to identify potentially concerning patterns of behavior among officers.   The police department hit back in the statement, criticizing Mack for having brought up Campellone’s personal issues publicly.   “It is regrettable that Attorney Mack is attempting to continually publicly traumatize one of the officers involved,” Furtado said. “That officer is a survivor of domestic violence and does not deserve to be re-victimized by Attorney Mack’s attempts to discredit her,” she said. “Attorney Mack also continues to cast unfounded allegations on the officer’s fitness for duty, based solely on his own subjective opinion,” she added. “Such statements are irrelevant to this case and raise serious questions about the ethical nature of the lawsuit.” Campellone later received the medal of valor from the Fall River Police Department and the Massachusetts Police Association for her actions in the Harden incident. In addition to scrutinizing the police officers involved in the shooting, the Harden family lawsuit examines the muddled and sometimes conflicting details police later provided about the knife that Quinn determined Harden was wielding at the time of the shooting. Both Campellone and Sullivan reported seeing something in his hand when they said he tried to attack Sullivan, but neither officer said they were certain it was a knife, telling investigators everything happened so fast. Emergency responders said they never saw a knife when they tried to save Harden from his gunshot wounds, and it wasn’t until later when an officer who accompanied Sullivan to the hospital called a policeman at the scene to say he’d found a knife and place it behind a TV stand on a table nearby to get it out of the way. Harden’s girlfriend at the time had “told investigators, among other things, that Anthony kept knives and dishes behind the television in his bedroom,” according to the lawsuit. The family said the kitchen was undergoing renovations at the time. “When you have police officers and you have paramedics denying the existence of a knife, and the knife is found later in the evening behind a television set where an officer says he put the knife – that’s just not a credible story,” Mack told Target 12 earlier this year. The lawsuit also took aim at the personal relationship between Quinn and Sullivan, which is something Mack has scrutinized in the past and Quinn never disclosed during his investigation. Quinn’s son and Sullivan were close friends growing up and became college roommates, and the family alleged Quinn at one point even provided “financial assistance” to Sullivan when he was young. “Despite these obvious conflicts and biases, and clear appearances of improprieties, DA Quinn never disclose the conflict of interest, recused himself, or his office, from the investigation into Anthony’s death,” the family alleged.   Quinn has since downplayed the significance and relevance of the relationship, arguing in a separate legal matter that “a direct friendship does not create a conflict of interest.” Mack currently has a petition pending with the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court to have Quinn removed from office. Quinn in court documents has criticized Mack and his motivations. “It is understandable that [Mack] is personally suffering from the loss of his brother, but that connection makes him particularly unsuited to determine whether criminal charges should issue,” Quinn wrote in a 2022 court filing. Beyond the Harden death, the family outlined a series of issues within the department over the past decade, including officers criminally convicted of beating suspects and lying in police reports, saying disparaging things about Black residents of Fall River and getting sued over civil-rights issues at least 10 times in the last 10 years. The family accused the city of allowing a “pattern of conduct” that discriminates against Black residents, gets innocent people arrested and deprives residents of their rights. The conduct, the family alleged, has allowed Fall River police officers to commit “excessive force, unreasonable detentions, false arrests and fabricated police reports,” according to the complaint. “These failures on the part of the [city] are signs of recklessness and gross negligence and exhibit a deliberate indifference by [the city], which is a shock to the conscience of all people,” the family wrote in the lawsuit. Eli Sherman ([email protected]) is a Target 12 investigative reporter for 12 News. Connect with him on Twitter and on Facebook. Tim White ([email protected]) is Target 12 managing editor and chief investigative reporter and host of Newsmakers for 12 News. Connect with him on Twitter and Facebook. Close Thanks for signing up! Watch for us in your inbox. Subscribe Now Daily Roundup SIGN UP NOW