The city of Fresno has reached a $4.9 million tentative settlement with the family of an unarmed teenager killed when an officer shot him in the back of the head, Councilmember Miguel Arias said Saturday. The city has faced a lawsuit for about three years after it was filed by…
San Francisco Chronicle/Otis R. Taylor, Jr. Handyman Carl Edwards was welding the fence at the side of his Tennessee Street building when a Vallejo police officer approached him. Seconds later, Edwards was bleeding — tackled to the ground, choked and punched repeatedly in the head. Blood gushed from his busted…
On Tuesday, November 10, 2020, San Francisco Chronicle reporter Rachel Swan informed me that back in March of this year, the San Francisco District Attorney, Chesa Boudin, had quietly dismissed the criminal cases against the Alameda County Sheriff’s deputies who brutalized our client, Stanislav Petrov, in November 2015, on video.…
San Jose Mercury News/Nate Gartell PITTSBURG — The city has agreed to pay $7.3 million to settle a lawsuit by the family of a man who was killed after an officer placed him in a carotid hold for 50 seconds, using a controversial technique that has since been widely banned…
Los Angeles Times/Richard Winton The family of a San Quentin inmate who contracted the coronavirus has filed the first death claim against the California correctional system related to the pandemic, citing the botched transfer of infected prisoners as the cause of his death. Daniel Ruiz, 61, is one of 27…
San Francisco Chronicle/Otis R. Taylor, Jr. Last week, the city of Vallejo agreed to pay $5.7 million to the family of Ronell Foster. According to the city attorney’s office, the settlement is the largest for a civil rights violation in the city’s history, but Paula McGowan, Foster’s mother, isn’t in the…
San Francisco Chronicle/Bob Egelko A federal appeals court on Thursday allowed the family of a Pittsburg man to sue the city and its police over a fatal struggle in which an officer choked the man and two officers knelt on his back until he lost consciousness. … [In July, 2016, officers…
Fresno Bee/Robert Rodriguez The family of Gerald Johnson, a 55-year-old Fresno man shot and killed by police in March, has filed a wrongful death claim against the City of Fresno. The claim, filed on Monday, alleges police used excessive force when trying to convince Johnson to get out of a broken-down…
KQED News/Sukey Lewis A federal appeals court in San Francisco is considering whether six Pittsburg police officers can be held liable for killing a man during a violent arrest in 2016. At the center of the officers’ appeal is a legal doctrine called qualified immunity that broadly shields public officials…
Cara Bayles/Law 360 Wednesday, the Minnesota attorney general charged four former Minneapolis police officers for their roles in the murder of George Floyd, the black man whose death has sparked days of worldwide protests. Derek Chauvin, the officer filmed pressing his knee into Floyd’s neck while he begged for his life,…