About a year ago I posted footage of Denver Police SWAT raiding the home of a 78 year old grandmother, based solely on a guy claiming that his “Find My iPhone” app showed his stolen truck at her home. Since then, the lawsuit went to trial, and the jury awarded $3.7 Million.
Media report here.
My original video here.
You may remember the video that went viral showing police officers in Aurora, Colorado, holding a black family hostage in a parking lot outside the car. Supposedly the cops thought their car was stolen, based on their (the cops) mistake. The family filed a civil rights lawsuit and just settled for a whopping $1.9 Million Dollars. But, this will continue to happen. Here’s why…
Here’s my prior post on why it’s an unconstitutional policy for police departments to perform these types of detentions without specific information that is particular to the subjects being detained.
Bodycam footage was just released following an $8 Million Dollar settlement against the City of Pittsburgh, after Jim Rogers, a homeless man, was tased over 10 times by a Pittsburgh police officer, resulting in his death. The footage had been previously sealed by order of the court. It was released by the law firm that represented the Jones family. The entire graphic footage is available directly here.
The City of Long Beach has agreed to pay $300,000 to a man who sued, alleging he was threatened, beaten and detained by police officers over an expired car registration in 2022. In a lawsuit filed in October, Johnny Jackson says he had just gotten out of the hospital after getting surgery to treat prostate cancer and had driven to Staples to make a copy of a doctor’s note for his employer when police pulled him over on the way back to his Long Beach home.
This poor guy was arrested on suspicion of public intoxication and then had his head slammed into concrete while handcuffed. One of his family members sent me the raw bodycam footage that was just recently released. His mother has now filed a wrongful death lawsuit. In the video, you can see that the man, Anthony Silva, tries to tell the officers that he’s paralyzed. But they tell him he’s fine, and mock him. Apparently he spent nearly a year in the hospital, ultimately dying as a result of this.
Gregory Bombard was driving through his hometown of St. Albans, Vermont, enjoying a coffee and a cigarette. He committed no crime — not even a minor traffic violation. Twenty minutes later, he was sitting in a jail cell. Bombard’s alleged crime? Cursing at a cop and giving him the finger during a traffic stop — conduct that is squarely protected by the First Amendment. A federal civil rights lawsuit has been filed, and the dash cam footage has been released.
Big news: After winning the Family Court Judge Search case in a published Fourth Circuit opinion, facing jury trial in early January, the defendants have decided to settle. So the case is over. This is the final update.
In November 2020, 45-year-old Elisabeth Rehn was preparing for a bath when five Seattle police officers busted through her door and entered her apartment. She barely had time to throw a coat over herself when she was confronted at gunpoint by the officers. However, the officers had the wrong door, and in fact, the wrong building altogether.
Here’s the lawsuit:
You’ve seen videos of cops executing warrants at the wrong home before. It’s a nightmare scenario – one of the most dangerous encounters we can have with our government. Police want the ability to come into a house with a team of men dressed and equipped like soldiers. But they also want to do so in an environment of total immunity, so that they can’t be sued when they make mistakes or act recklessly.
This just happened in Joliet, Illinois, where law enforcement invaded the wrong home. It also recently happened in my client in West Virginia. They came home to find cops on their surveillance footage walking around in their home, guns drawn. What happens when they invade the wrong home? Can you sue them, or can they get away with it?
The Joliet lawsuit:
On October 16, 2021, the life of Silvester Hayes was altered forever. That morning, Hayes woke up early and went out to get breakfast for his four young children. While driving to get their favorite meal, which was french toast from a restaurant only a few blocks away from their home, Silvester encountered two Dallas police officers. He did not return to his kids with breakfast. Now a lawsuit has been filed and the bodycam footage has been released.
The raw use of force clip:
The lawsuit:
The lawsuit alleges the existence of a Texas state law conferring a right to resist an unlawful arrest:
In Texas, the use of force to resist an arrest is justified: (1) if, before the actor offers any resistance, the peace officer uses or attempts to use greater force than necessary to make the arrest or search; and (2) when and to the degree the actor reasonably believes the force is immediately necessary to protect himself against the peace officer’s use or attempted use of greater force than necessary. Tex. Penal Code Ann. § 9.31.