A UMass senior has filed a civil rights lawsuit against five members of the Amherst Police Department, claiming he was assaulted and falsely arrested while video-taping police during last year’s Blarney Blowout.

According to the complaint filed in Federal Court in Springfield, Thomas Donovan was recording an incident on his smart phone in which several police officers appeared to use excessive force arresting a person at the off campus spring celebration. Donovan refused police orders to stop recording. A videotape that was released along with the complaint then seems to show police knocking Donovan’s phone down and repeatedly stomping on it in a failed attempt to destroy it.

David Milton, Donovan’s attorney, says his client was “ gratuitously pepper sprayed, assaulted, arrested on false charges, suspended as a result of those charges, and having his life be turned upside down merely for exercising a basic and well established first amendment right.”

The criminal charges and suspension from school were later dropped. Calls to Amherst Police and the town have not been returned.