Tracey Kaplan
marinij.com
A San Jose police officer who broke a cyclist's nose and dislocated his elbow after stopping him for a missing headlamp three years ago used excessive force, a federal jury has found.
The verdict in the civil case was viewed as vindication by community activists who have long complained about what they describe as the department's record of police brutality.
"I'm glad the truth was told," said the plaintiff, Danny Piña. "I'm glad the officer was brought to justice."
But City Attorney Rick Doyle noted that the panel on Monday awarded Piña only $11,000 in damages, as well as attorney's fees and costs that are likely to exceed $100,000.
While the eight-member jury found that Officer Allan De La Cruz used excessive force, it concluded that his partner, Jean Jimenez, did not.
"It's one of those things where reasonable people can differ over what happened," Doyle said. "At the end of the day, it was a gang neighborhood and the guy ran from them."
The April 19, 2009, incident began about 11 p.m. when the officers from the Violent Crime Enforcement Team stopped Piña on the grounds of the missing headlamp after misidentifying him as a gang member. He was apparently wearing something red, the signature color of Nortenos.
Such "pretext" stops are legal, as long as the minor transgressions exist. San Jose police say the stops give them a chance at catching people with outstanding warrants, drugs or weapons.
Police say Piña resisted being detained.
But neighbors, who testified at the trial, heard Piña asking, "Why did you hit me in the head?" and "Why did you punch me?" according to police reports. The district attorney declined to file resisting-arrest charges against Piña.
Piña's case was cited in a Mercury News report in late 2009, which reported San Jose had been charging far more people with resisting arrest, compared with its population, than any other major California city, and that a disproportionate number of those charged were Latino residents.
About 70 percent of cases reviewed by the paper involved the use of force by officers, and the district attorney declined to file charges more than one-third of the time.
The jury in the Piña case told defense attorney Jaime Leanos that they found retired Los Angeles police Lt. Roger Clark's testimony particularly persuasive. Clark testified that the degree of force was unwarranted.
Leanos said the $11,000 award was more than twice as much as the $5,000 the city offered Piña to settle the case. Piña, who works in a body shop, hadn't missed a day of work in nearly three years, which led the jury to believe he was not terribly injured, Leanos said. But Piña worked despite persistent pain in his arm, Leanos said.
San Jose police declined to comment on the verdict while activists called it a crucial win.
"This may be an important litmus test for SJPD. Are they just going put the officer back on the streets as if nothing happened?" said Raj Jayadev, director of Silicon Valley De-Bug, a community organization for young adults. "We are hoping they take this jury finding seriously and evaluate this officer's role within the department, as well as use this as a learning moment to evaluate their use-of-force practices."
