Philadelphia City Hall in Downtown Philadelphia
PHILADELPHIA – A Super Bowl celebration left a Philadelphia man bleeding on Broad Street after a vicious beating from police, a recent lawsuit alleges.
Demond Smith-Cheatham sued Philadelphia and two of its officers last week in federal court over what he claims was excessive force following the Eagles’ championship win in 2025. He says he was struck in the head by a baton and left for 20 minutes, after which he was arrested.
PPD had prepared for fans to gather on Broad Street and had set up barricades to prevent people from joining another group near City Hall, the suit says.
But crowd control didn’t go smoothly, and a police motorcycle hit Smith-Cheatham’s foot, he says. Another officer on a bicycle allegedly told the plaintiff, “I’ll f--- you up.”
That cop, unidentified in the complaint, allegedly grabbed and pushed Smith-Cheatham, who fell. A third cop struck him in the head with a baton as even more officers joined in, the suit says.
“Smith-Cheatham collapsed, falling to his knees and putting his hands up to cover his now wounded face,” the lawsuit says. “One of the officers struck Smith-Cheatham in the back of the head causing Smith-Cheatham to fall against the ground, where he laid in a prone position.”
Smith-Cheatham struggled to stay conscious, afraid of what could happen if he fell asleep with a head injury, he says. The suit claims officers decided they “had to book him” even though he had committed no crime because of their attack on him.
He was charged with disorderly conduct and taken to Temple University Hospital, where doctors stitched and glued two gashes in his scalp together, the suit says. He spent the rest of the night in police custody and was released the following evening “without any paperwork and without receiving notice of charges for any crime,” the suit says.
“The actions by defendant police officers were the predictable result of the PPD’s long history of abusive response to mass gatherings,” the complaint says. Included in examples was a settlement of a man charged with punching a police horse after an Eagles playoff win who sued the city for excessive force.
Earlier this year, a federal judge ruled another Eagles fan couldn’t make claims Philadelphia has a policy of excessive force against large crowds. That plaintiff says he was pushed to the ground after the 2023 NFC Championship.
“City officials’ failure to implement an appropriate disciplinary system and their failure to intervene to prevent misconduct-riddled, aggressive crowd-control measures with a history of misconduct, directly led to the violation of Smith-Cheatham’s constitutional rights and the harms he suffered,” the lawsuit says.
Eleanor Carpenter and others at Kairys, Rudovsky, Messing, Feinberg & Lin represent Smith-Cheatham.
