It was a video that shocked a city still reeling from a police shooting of a seemingly out-of-it man just weeks before: A San Francisco Police Department officer appearing to attempt to dump a quadriplegic man from his chair. And now we're all going to pay for that act, as the city is reportedly prepared to sign off on a settlement in that case for an as-yet undisclosed amount.
The video of the incident was posted on January 20, 2015, just a few weeks after the December 2, 2014 shooting of Mario Woods by San Francisco Police, an incident that was also caught on tape. According to the Free Thought Project, Devaughn Frierson (the man in the wheelchair) had been paralyzed from the neck down in an accident two years prior, and "has enough limited movement in one arm to control the wheelchair only."
Here's the video of the encounter, which contains loud profanity, so turn it down if you're at work.
"He f**king ran my foot over," the police officer who attempted to eject Frierson from his chair says in the video. "You don't run my foot over."
According to a Vice report at the time, the video was under investigation by both SFPD's internal affairs division and by the office of citizen complaints. By June, Frierson had filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city in the incident, the Chron reported at the time.
In the suit, which was filed by Oakland attorneys John Burris and Lateef Gray, Frierson said an officer identified in the suit only as "Carrasco" “purposely and maliciously” tried to shake him out of his chair and onto the pavement below.
Frierson said he was near the corner of Sunnydale Avenue and Hahn Street when he saw officers physically restraining his cousin and a friend. Frierson said he twice asked the officers something to the effect of, “What are you guys doing,” according to the lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco.That’s when an officer grabbed his wheelchair and turned it around, the suit says.
Police told him to leave, and Frierson started to comply by backing his wheelchair up...But Carrasco grabbed the wheelchair “and tried to dump plaintiff out of the wheelchair while saying words to the effect of ‘take your punk ass home.'"
“Plaintiff was in mid-air dangling for several seconds while defendant Carrasco repeatedly attempted to dump him over the curb,” the suit says.Once Carrasco realized that bystanders were filming the incident, “Carrasco then lied and said that plaintiff had run over his foot, which plaintiff absolutely did not do."
Between then and now, it appears that the city of San Francisco realized that this was a fight they could not win, as 48 Hills reports that the San Francisco Police Commission will be deliberating on a proposed settlement for Frierson that was reached on April 6 of this year.
According to 48 Hills, the Police Commission will mull the mutually agreed upon settlement in closed session, and assuming they OK it, it'll then go to the Board of Supervisors for approval.
At present, the settlement amount hasn't been disclosed, but it's worth noting that the payout in the case, which the Chron says named SF, then-Police Chief Greg Suhr and Officer Carrasco as defendants, won't come from SFPD's budget. According to 48 Hills, the settlement "comes out of the General Fund...So all of us are paying for it."
Related: Two SFPD Officers Who Shot Mario Woods Previously Faced Excessive-Force Lawsuits