California City Pays $300,000 to Marine Veteran Tackled for Filming a Cop From His Porch
The city of Vallejo, California, has paid millions in recent years to settle excessive force lawsuits against its heavy-handed police force.
A Marine veteran who was tackled on his own porch for filming a police officer has settled an excessive force lawsuit against the city of Vallejo, California, for $300,000, the Vallejo Sun reports.
The settlement is yet another in a string of costly excessive force lawsuits against the city of Vallejo. Despite its relatively small size, the Vallejo Police Department has generated a large number of civil rights lawsuits and settlement payouts.
In January 2019, Adrian Burrell, a documentary filmmaker and former Marine, saw the police stopping his cousin. Burrell used his cell phone to record the traffic stop from his porch. When Vallejo police officer David McLaughlin saw Burrell filming him, he ordered him to get back, although Burrell was standing about 20 to 30 feet. Burrell refused.
Multiple federal appeals courts have upheld a broad First Amendment right to film the police, so long as one isn't obstructing them from their duties. This is where the interaction between Burrell and McLaughlin should have ended.
Instead, McLaughlin holstered his gun, turned his back on the suspect he had moments ago considered an apparent threat, and approached Burrell. "You're interfering with me, my man?" McLaughlin asked. "You're interfering, you're going to get one from the back of the car."
"That's fine," Burrell responded. The officer started handcuffing Burrell, and told him to "stop resisting."
"I'm not resisting you," Burrell said.
"Stop fighting or you're going to go on the ground," McLaughlin said. Burrell's cell phone did not capture what happened next, but his lawsuit claims that McLaughlin swung him to the ground and knocked his head against a wooden pillar on Burrell's porch.
Burrell was then detained in the back of a police car. He has said that McLaughlin released him after finding that he was a military veteran.
Last year, Vallejo paid $270,698 to Santiago Hutchins to settle another excessive force lawsuit filed against McLaughlin. Hutchins and McLaughlin, who was off-duty and out of uniform at the time, got into an argument in a parking lot outside of a pizzeria. McLaughlin pulled a gun and held Hutchins at gunpoint until several other officers arrived and took Hutchins to the ground. A cellphone video taken by a bystander showed McLaughlin then savagely punching and elbowing Hutchins as he was being held down.
According to his lawsuit, Hutchins suffered "a concussion, right eye hematoma, facial pain, headache, swelling in the head, face contusions, face lacerations, muscle strains, and rib contusions" as a result of the beating.
McLaughlin is also one of several Vallejo police officers alleged to be part of a group of Vallejo officers who bent the tips of their star-shaped badges to mark fatal shootings. McLaughlin testified in court earlier this year that a Vallejo police lieutenant bent the tips of his and his partner's badges following a 2016 shooting.
"I was assaulted by a police officer who participated in blood rituals, the bending of badges to celebrate murders of Black and Brown folks," Burrell declared in a statement to local news outlets through his attorney. "No amount of money can give back what was taken from me during this violent assault nor during the dehumanizing, patronizing and disrespectful litigation process." But with the money awarded to him, he continues, he plans to found "a non-profit organization that will provide the families of individuals who are affected by police violence, and the survivors of community violence time and space to heal."
McLaughlin is still a Vallejo police officer.
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Words fail me. If the taxpayers of Vallejo aren’t tired enough of funding their criminal law enforcement officers to vote their elected officials out of office and replace them with rational supervisors, then it’s unlikely that an appeal to their humanity will work.
It’s enlightening to consider how fast this problem would self-resolve if cops had to pay for their own malpractice insurance and employers were forbidden paying it for them. This guy’s premiums would have priced him out of the police job market long ago.
It would resolve a lot quicker if cops went to prison for assaulting people.
Yeah, but that requires prosecutors to actually file charges. And those prosecutors are dependent on the same police for their job success in all their other cases. As a practical matter, it’s just not going to happen except in the most extreme of cases.
Malpractice insurance isn’t a perfect final outcome (the bad cop still walks free) but it is more likely to achieve a better outcome.
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Not to mention being rough on the imprisoned cops.
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You say that like it’s a bad thing.
Funny how that rarely happens. It takes burning a city down to get any action.
These cops need to be fired and their pensions revoked.
McLaughlin is still a Vallejo police officer.
——————————–
Why ? If not for malfeasance nor incompetence … at least fire him for the cost to the city.
Officer Neckvein: Hold still. Stop resisting. Quit moving, damn you.
Citizen: Gasp. Choke. Wheeze.
Officer Neckvein: You’re moving. I can feel you moving. You’re still trying to breathe, M-F. Stop resisting. I told you to hold still. If you keep resisting I will use this Tazer on you.
Citizen: Gasp. Wh . . . . (no further movement noted)
Like most unions, this police union protects members that are criminals. They demand contract clauses making it nearly impossible to fire a criminal cop – and irresponsible elected officials sign those contracts.
But that’s only half of the problem. This cop could be convicted of two counts of assault and battery and one count of kidnapping – even before getting into the evidence tampering and obstruction of justice charges that should be prosecuted every time a cop tries to prevent the recording of his actions in public and under the color of the law. Convict a cop of a felony and even when he gets out of prison, he can’t do the job because it’s a federal felony for him to even touch a gun.
What we need is for a group to run ads in every election telling voters about the “law and order” candidates that are actually soft on crime: DA’s that don’t prosecute bad cops, and officials that signed police union contracts giving cops under investigation far more rights than citizens.
And, here is the problem. Any reasonable person watching the video of McLaughlin’s interaction with Burrell would come to the conclusion that he’s not fit to be a police officer. Zero gray area here. This guy is a retarded bully with a badge.
Too ugly to fuck
Too dumb to steal
Let’s give him a gun
And an automobile
Vallejo PD is known to be a cesspool of shitheads.
Vallejo PD is known to be a cesspool of shitheads.
^
This is the Zodiac speaking. Stay out of Vallejo…my old stomping grounds, but alas, it’s become far to crazy and dangerous, even for someone like myself….murder rate is 3 times national average….and the police have more nuts than a fruitcake….
McLaughlin is also one of several Vallejo police officers alleged to be part of a group of Vallejo officers who bent the tips of their star-shaped badges to mark fatal shootings.
That group being the cool kids who had the opportunity to kill someone, making them the envy of the department.
I’d happily get gently tackled like that for $300k. Every day and twice on Sunday.
“Gently tackled” is an oxymoron. He was assaulted by a police officer on his own porch. You do also realize that after attorney fees, the victim may not have enough left to even pay his hospital bills. There’s no money in this.
There’s plenty of money in this for cop unions. JFK thought legalizing cop unions would be a good idea.
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Vallejo has a pretty bad reputation, but I do believe Colorado Springs is trying to beat them. The state of Colorado has realized that local PDs and prosecutors will not go after the local bad cops. So they change the law so that now police can be individually sued in federal court. The cities and counties cannot stand before them and say you have to sue us.
State court, not federal.
Thanks but how do so many money scams sneak in.
Faith-Based Asset-Forfeiture sharing, shoot-first prohibitionism, no-knock Thought Police raids, unqualified immunity, jury-rigging, murder of jurors who delivered the “wrong” verdict… Why else do you imagine it is so important to these looter soft machines that “the people” be prevented from keeping and bearing arms?
Correction: McLaughlin is not a Vallejo police officer, but rather a sanctioned thug for the city of Vallejo. I don’t know much about the Vallejo police department and if they actually have any police officers, but from the article there appears to be several sanctioned thugs.
Solzhenitsyn was right.
It’s time.
No, it’s not. It’s too late.
“McLaughlin is still a Vallejo police officer.” Besides, there are plenty more violent ku-klux rednecks where they hired that one. I’d bet money the cop unions put the ones that get fired back to work as masked sockpuppets. What better pastime than spewing venom into Reason magazine’s comments section to disgust new subscribers unfamiliar with the Mute Loser button?
All I have to say is a piece of shit. Officer comes on my property. He’s fucking dead on arrival.
Until they take money and freedom from the offending officers instead of just burdening the taxpayers, this will continue unabated.
The unfortunate truth is – that some people go into law enforcement so they can let their inner bully out of the box.
“McLaughlin is still a Vallejo police officer.”
Of course he is.
It would take an act of God to get rid of him no matter how crooked and mentally unstable he obviously is.