An unarmed man who was attacked twice by a San Diego police dog and shot with multiple bean bag rounds in an incident last month filed a claim Wednesday against the city for injuries he suffered, the first step toward a possible lawsuit.
San Diego-based attorney Dante Pride on Wednesday said his client was passively resisting officers who arrived at a home in the Encanto neighborhood on Oct. 24.
“You cannot use force if passive resistance is the only thing that you’re encountering,” Pride said at a news conference held outside of the department’s Southeastern Division station.
During the incident, Marcus Evans, 31, was contacted by police in connection with a report that a man had threatened a woman with a gun.
In video footage captured by a videographer with SIDEO.TV, Evans can be seen exiting the home on Duluth Avenue with his hands raised, wearing only basketball shorts.
Evans speaks to police and sits on a wall, with his hands still raised, before he is shot with a bean bag round and falls to the ground. While on the ground, Evans is shot twice more with bean bag rounds and attacked twice by a police dog as Evans screams.
Evans was eventually taken into custody, treated at a hospital and released. He was not booked into jail, according to police officials. The criminal investigation into Evans was turned over to the City Attorney’s Office for possible prosecution.
The City Attorney’s Office said Wednesday the investigation was still open and declined to comment further.
“Despite posing absolutely zero threat to officers, SDPD officers inexplicably decided to deploy multiple attacks of force … in contravention of both SDPD’s training policies and POST standards,” the claim, filed by Pride on behalf of the Evans, reads. “This misconduct resulted in serious and traumatic injuries to (Evans).” POST, short for the state’s Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training, certifies California law enforcement officers and sets training standards.
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According to Pride, Evans was “healing” but “not quite ambulatory yet.”
A bean bag round had torn a piece out of one of his shins, preventing him from placing weight on it, Pride said. Evans was also having trouble opening and closing his left hand, Pride said.
The injuries have prevented Evans from returning to work as a construction worker, Pride said.
The claim comes less than a week after the police department announced it was investigating the incident internally.
“Video of this call prompted questions on how the incident was resolved, and a formal complaint was filed,” the department said in a release.
Police Chief Scott Wahl said in the release he was “committed to exploring how the situation could have been handled differently.”
Pride, who spoke to reporters while flanked by Evans’ family members and still shots from video footage of the arrest, said he was seeking “a significant amount” of monetary damages but also injunctive relief that would prevent police dogs from being used on people on the ground.
Glenda Evans, Marcus’ mother and a city employee, spoke briefly of the traumatic effects of the incident.
“We’re trying to get through this,” she said. “It’s a long road to healing and recovery.”