A 42-year-old New Haven man has filed a federal lawsuit against eight of that city's police officers, claiming he was beaten for no reason after his vehicle was stopped.

In his lawsuit, filed Monday in U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut, Danny Robles, who is black, claims he was the victim of racial profiling.

The lawsuit says Robles was “obeying all traffic laws when he was stopped, searched and brutally assaulted by several New Haven police officers.”

The lawsuit, which seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages, alleges officers followed him closely for several blocks in April 2017 before demanding he get out of his vehicle for allegedly running a stop sign near his apartment complex.

“How does someone drive down a road on a beautiful night in April, end up on the ground, pepper sprayed and arrested for doing nothing? How does that happen?” asked New Haven solo practitioner Glenn Conway, Robles' attorney.

According to the lawsuit, Robles asked officers why he was being told to get out of his car. One officer allegedly responded by telling Robles to “get the f— out.” When Robles, who is disabled and walks with a cane, did not comply fast enough, the lawsuit says he was “dragged from his vehicle.”

At one point, the lawsuit says, Robles' face was pushed into the roadway and he was pepper sprayed. The lawsuit also alleges officers falsified reports about the sequence of events leading up to Robles' arrest. Robles was charged with interfering with police, breach of peace and failure to obey a stop sign. But Conway said prosecutors who evaluated the case reduced those criminal charges to an infraction.

As of Wednesday, the New Haven Police Department had not assigned an attorney to the case. New Haven police referred all comment to Police Chief Otoniel Reyes, who did not respond to a request for comment.

New Haven Corporation Counsel John Rose Jr. said Wednesday his office will review the case and make a determination on whether to take it in-house or refer it to outside counsel. Rose told the Connecticut Law Tribune he had not seen the lawsuit and would have no comment.

Conway said Robles has a history of drug-related offenses in New York, but has had no run-ins with the law in his approximately 10 years of living in Connecticut.

“They treated him like he had drugs on him, which he did not,” Conway said. “The police searched everything top to bottom and there was no drugs. I just do not understand why it's OK that this happened. I'm outraged.”

Robles' injuries are not permanent, but Conway said, “Danny is just looking for vindication first and foremost. We will leave it to a jury of his peers to put an appropriate money value to this case. I expect substantial punitive damages if a jury finds this as wrong as I found it.”

Judge Victor Bolden is scheduled to hear the case.