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In a civil rights lawsuit, the only
recourse a citizen has against police misconduct is
at the hands of a jury. Police officers and their departments
are not above the law.
Here are two recent cases that underscore
our competence in the area of civil rights violations;
Jensen v. City of Oxnard and Hernandez v.
City of Long Beach.
In
the first civil rights case, Jensen v. City
of Oxnard, a 30-year old SWAT
officer went to work one day and was killed when he
was shot in the back three times by a fellow SWAT officer
during a botched raid to serve a search warrant. The
shooter mistakenly believed that the killed officer
was a suspect who was pointing a gun at him. The City
of Oxnard asserted that this was only a worker's compensation
case and that no violation of civil rights or police
misconduct had occurred.
This case was
taken to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and the
United States Supreme Court to establish the principle
that police officers do not forfeit their civil rights.
The shooter officer and the city were held accountable
for the violation of the fourth amendment right to be
free from an unreasonable seizure of one's person.
The deceased
officer was survived by his wife and two young children
who sued for wrongful death. Evidence was uncovered
that showed that the shooter officer was impaired because
of migraine headaches, severe sinus disease and medications
he was taking for head pain. The civil
rights case against the City of Oxnard and the
shooter officer settled for $3,500,000 prior
to trial.
In
a second police misconduct
case, Hernandez
v. City of Long Beach, our client, Joe Hernandez
often took walks late at night. He was walking through
an alley in the City of Long Beach on his way home one
night when a police officer mistakenly believed that
he was a suspect who had just robbed a bar. He was shot
in the back of the leg which caused his leg to be amputated.
The police department claimed the plaintiff was running
from the officer and failed to stop when told to do
so. The plaintiff did not fit the description of the
holdup suspect. This police misconduct
case was settled by the City of Long Beach for $250,000.
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