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LOS ANGELES — A Miami surgeon filed a claim against the Police Department Tuesday, contending that racial profiling led officers to pull him over on a freeway, mistakenly arrest him and give him career-damaging injuries in the process. 

“I want to stand up for justice, to stand up for an end to racial profiling,” Dr. Angelo E. Gousse, 37, said at a news conference outside Los Angeles Superior Court. “We cannot allow this to continue.” 

The claim, filed with the city attorney’s office, calls for unspecified damages for wrist and arm nerve damage Gousse says occurred when police arrested and tightly handcuffed him Feb. 11 on Interstate 10, then detained him until early the next morning at the Rampart station. 

Gousse, who is black, also seeks compensation for civil-rights violations, lost earnings and post traumatic stress. 

Police spokesman Sgt. John Pasquariello said no complaint had been filed in connection with the incident before Tuesday, and that police and city attorneys will investigate the claim. 

A ban on racial profiling and better oversight and training are among the LAPD reforms the city agreed to in a consent decree finalized in November. The federally monitored reforms stem in large part from a corruption scandal in which Rampart station police admittedly lied under oath and shot and maimed innocent people. 

Gousse, wearing braces and bandages on his hands, said the injuries have left him unable to drive, play with his two children or perform the surgical procedures he specializes in. He said he is one of only a few physicians trained in pelvic flow reconstruction, which is used to treat female incontinence. 

Gousse said he was pulled over after 10 p.m. as he was returning to his Los Angeles International Airport-area hotel room from the University of California, Los Angeles, where he had attended a tribute to a urology professor. 

Interstate 10 is the jurisdiction of the California Highway Patrol, not the LAPD. Gousse attorney Browne Greene said that according to a Rampart officer, Gousse was stopped by officers who saw his vehicle while delivering something to another station. 

Instead of approaching Gousse’s rented 2000 Ford Taurus, police shined a light on him and talked to him through a bullhorn as the freeway was closed and about 10 police cars and a helicopter gathered, Gousse said. 

“I knew then that I was going to experience a night of terror in Los Angeles,” said Gousse, who came to the United States 18 years ago from Haiti and graduated from the Yale University School of Medicine. 

Police ordered him to toss his car keys on the pavement, then to lie face-down on the roadway. “I felt completely humiliated. ... At this point the tears were essentially coming out of my eyes,” he said. 

Police arrested and handcuffed him. Gousse said he told police who he was and that the rental car contract was in the glove compartment, but “it was as if I was talking to the pavement.” 

Gousse said police knew by his medical ID that he was a physician, but refused to tell them why he was being arrested or why they were driving him to a police station several miles away. 

He said one officer responded to his questions by saying, “Hey, boy, you don’t know where you are now? You’re in Los Angeles, California.” 

Gousse said officers uncuffed him and put him in a cell at the station, then released him sometime before 2 a.m. Feb. 12. They told him he had been arrested because of a problem with the car’s license plates, but offered no apology, he said. 

Gousse said he went to an emergency room after his release to have his wrists examined, and is now under the care of a specialist in Miami. He said he may require surgery, but is hopeful that will not be necessary. 

The city attorney has six months to decide whether to reject the claim, Greene said, and Gousse has a year after that in which to file a lawsuit.