For the record:
7:32 a.m. March 11, 2023: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this arti­cle said that at a protest on May 30, 2020, in the Fairfax dis­trict of Los Angeles, a police car was sev­er­al blocks away from Deon Jones. The car was across the street from Jones.

In the first ver­dict of its kind since mass protests swept Los Angeles in 2020, a fed­er­al jury on Thursday found an LAPD offi­cer per­son­al­ly liable, for shoot­ing a pro­test­er in the face with a pro­jec­tile — award­ing the man $375,000.

The ver­dict fol­lowed a find­ing by the jury that the offi­cer, Peter Bueno, vio­lat­ed pro­test­er Deon Jones’ civ­il rights.

Jones lis­tened with his head bowed as a judge read the jury’s deci­sion in a Santa Ana court­room. Afterward, he said it was “a good day.”

“This vic­to­ry isn’t just mine. It is for all the folks who his­tor­i­cal­ly have went out and protest­ed,” Jones said. “It sends a mes­sage that … law enforce­ment can­not bru­tal­ize folks.”

Bueno stared straight ahead as the ver­dict was read. His attor­ney, Janine Jeffery, declined to com­ment afterward.

LAPD offi­cers have rarely been held account­able for force used dur­ing the mass protests against police bru­tal­i­ty after the mur­der of George Floyd, despite hun­dreds of alle­ga­tions of exces­sive force lodged with the department.

The jury issued its deci­sion after a week of tes­ti­mo­ny in which Jones and Bueno offered stark­ly dif­fer­ent descrip­tions of the chaot­ic scene where the shoot­ing, which was only par­tial­ly cap­tured on video, occurred.

Jones, who suf­fered mul­ti­ple facial frac­tures when he was hit with the hard-foam pro­jec­tile, accused Bueno of fir­ing indis­crim­i­nate­ly into crowds in vio­la­tion of depart­ment pol­i­cy, and of dis­re­gard­ing the clear dan­ger that posed to peace­ful pro­test­ers like him.

Jones’ attor­ney, Orin Snyder, said he hoped the case would deter sim­i­lar force by LAPD offi­cers in the future.

Bueno, assigned to work as a “cov­er” offi­cer that day, described fir­ing only at spe­cif­ic indi­vid­u­als in the crowd who posed a threat to him and oth­er offi­cers. He denied shoot­ing Jones, and Jeffery ques­tioned whether Jones’ injuries were from a police pro­jec­tile at all

The eight-mem­ber jury delib­er­at­ed for about four hours Wednesday after­noon. The jurors recon­vened Thursday morn­ing and delib­er­at­ed for under an hour, com­ing back with their ver­dict in Jones’ favor short­ly after 9 a.m.

The jury ruled that Bueno had vio­lat­ed Jones’ 4^th Amendment rights against unrea­son­able search­es and seizures by law enforcement.

It reject­ed oth­er claims that Bueno had dis­crim­i­nat­ed against Jones and that he had vio­lat­ed Jones’ 1^st Amendment rights.

The jury first award­ed Jones $250,000 to com­pen­sate for his pain, suf­fer­ing and asso­ci­at­ed finan­cial loss­es since the shoot­ing. It then heard addi­tion­al argu­ments as to whether it should award Jones addi­tion­al “puni­tive” dam­ages, as pun­ish­ment for Bueno.

Jeffery asked the jury to be fair to Bueno, a 27-year depart­ment vet­er­an who she said is “going to con­tin­ue to pro­tect and serve” as a mem­ber of the LAPD.

Snyder said Bueno vio­lat­ed the trust placed in police offi­cers and should be held accountable.

“When things get chaot­ic on the streets of Los Angeles,” he said, “that’s when we need police to be at their best.”

After delib­er­at­ing fur­ther, the jury award­ed Jones anoth­er $125,000.

How the dam­ages will be paid remained unclear Thursday.

The city may choose to indem­ni­fy Bueno and cov­er his costs, but Jeffery said there was “no guar­an­tee” of that giv­en the com­po­si­tion of the L.A. City Council, which includes fierce crit­ics of the LAPD and its response to the protests.

The tri­al, which focused on Jones’ alle­ga­tions against Bueno, was the first phase of a broad­er law­suit that Jones filed. Future pro­ceed­ings will con­sid­er Jones’ alle­ga­tions that the LAPD and the city of L.A. were neg­li­gent in their over­sight of offi­cers dur­ing the protests, and could result in more dam­ages to be paid out by taxpayers.

Jones’ win in court stands out for sev­er­al reasons.

Few indi­vid­ual offi­cers have been dis­ci­plined by the LAPD for actions tak­en dur­ing the 2020 protests, despite the hun­dreds of alle­ga­tions of exces­sive force and oth­er mis­con­duct, accord­ing to LAPD data reviewed by The Times.

A half-dozen pro­test­ers have agreed to end their own lit­i­ga­tion against the city in exchange for cash set­tle­ments that did not include any acknowl­edg­ment of wrong­do­ing by offi­cers or the city.

Jones had turned down a set­tle­ment offer from the city. It turned out to be less than what he was award­ed Thursday.

He told his lawyers that he want­ed to hold Bueno account­able for shoot­ing him, and the city and the LAPD account­able for allow­ing exces­sive force against pro­test­ers. He want­ed them to be found in the wrong and not to silence him using tax­pay­er dollars.

Jones, 31, who is Black and works in enter­tain­ment and brand con­sult­ing, was wound­ed dur­ing a mas­sive May 30, 2020, demon­stra­tion in the Fairfax dis­trict. Activists had gath­ered to decry the mur­der of Floyd by police in Minneapolis and the killings of oth­er Black Americans in police custody.

The Times pub­lished an arti­cle two weeks lat­er out­lin­ing Jones’ and oth­er pro­test­ers’ claims that police beat them with batons and shot them with pro­jec­tiles with­out jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, which prompt­ed an inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion by the LAPD that result­ed in no dis­ci­pline for Bueno.

Jones filed his law­suit in December 2020.

Over the span of two days on the wit­ness stand, Jones recount­ed the sequence of events, telling jurors he felt a moral duty to join oth­ers protest­ing injus­tice at Pan Pacific Park.

When oth­er pro­test­ers set a police car on fire across the street, he and a friend wor­ried that offi­cers would respond with force and moved to the park­ing lot of a near­by Trader Joe’s.

Jones was livestream­ing the scene with his phone when he noticed an offi­cer, whom he lat­er iden­ti­fied as Bueno, point­ing a weapon in his direc­tion. Jones said he turned his face to avoid being struck head-on, and the round struck him in the cheek.

Jones tes­ti­fied that he suf­fered severe emo­tion­al dis­tress and lost job oppor­tu­ni­ties due to his facial injuries.

“The hurt that you feel because of what hap­pened to you. The flash­backs that you have because of what hap­pened to you. The dreams that you have because of what hap­pened to you,” Jones told jurors. “If I’m being hon­est, it just flat-out hurts. It’s hurt­ful. It hurts. It’s some­thing — I didn’t do any­thing wrong.”

The top­ic of Black Lives Matter and the world­wide move­ment against racial injus­tice that fol­lowed Floyd’s death only occa­sion­al­ly sur­faced dur­ing the trial.

Both Jeffery and Bueno paint­ed a pic­ture for the jury of an out-of-con­trol crowd that pelt­ed offi­cers with rocks and bot­tles. Jeffery showed video and still images of a squad car on fire and oth­ers with win­dows bro­ken and cov­ered with anti-police graffiti.

“It was chaos out there. I mean, there was peo­ple throw­ing rocks, bot­tles,” Bueno tes­ti­fied. “They were vio­lent. People com­ing up to us, they were hostile.”

Bueno admit­ted that fir­ing a 40-mil­lime­ter hard-foam pro­jec­tile at a per­son­’s head could cause seri­ous injury and that the weapon was­n’t intend­ed for fir­ing into a crowd.

He said he was fir­ing at a “spe­cif­ic tar­get” — an uniden­ti­fied per­son who emerged from the crowd and threw a water bot­tle that land­ed at his feet.

He recount­ed how, after he worked more than 20 hours the day before, he and his pla­toon were ordered to respond to the area of South Fairfax Avenue and West 3^rd Street.

He blamed a faulty on/​off switch for his body cam­era being off for 4½ of the six hours that he was on duty that day.

Bueno remains assigned to the LAPD’s Metropolitan Division, an élite unit that, among oth­er duties, han­dles crowd control.

Jones’ friend Niara Hill broke down in tears on the stand while recount­ing the moments before and after Jones was shot.

After spend­ing most of the day togeth­er at the protest, Hill said, the two of them were briefly sep­a­rat­ed. She was about 10 feet away when a pro­test­er with­in “touch­ing dis­tance” of Jones hurled a water bot­tle in the direc­tion of an offi­cer who was hold­ing a green 40-mil­lime­ter pro­jec­tile launch­er, she said.

Moments lat­er, that offi­cer fired at Jones, she said.

Later, Jeffery asked Hill whether her social media posts about the case were for publicity.

Hill said no.

“I want­ed peo­ple to know that there were police offi­cers who were shoot­ing peo­ple in the face with rub­ber bul­lets,” she said.

In clos­ing remarks, Snyder said that Jones and Hill thought they were doing the right thing by head­ing to the park­ing lot after con­fronta­tions between some pro­test­ers and police turned vio­lent on 3^rd Street.

“They did the right thing and removed them­selves from the tumult of the street. They did what every par­ent would want them to do. They sought safe­ty,” Snyder said. “And this is an irony in this case: This is where the police want­ed peo­ple to go.”

The only defense wit­ness, LAPD tac­ti­cal flight offi­cer Chad Zipperman, tes­ti­fied that from his van­tage point aboard a depart­ment heli­copter, the sit­u­a­tion on the ground had spi­raled out of con­trol. He esti­mat­ed that at one point, the crowd around Bueno and Jones had swelled to 2,000 to 3,000 peo­ple, some of whom swarmed and van­dal­ized an MTA bus.

“The vast major­i­ty of the crowd that lin­gered was vio­lent,” he testified.

Jeffery seized on what she deemed were dis­crep­an­cies in Jones’ descrip­tion of the offi­cer who fired the 40-mil­lime­ter round and of the extent of his injuries. She showed the jury mes­sages from Jones to his friends in the days and weeks after the inci­dent, telling them he was phys­i­cal­ly OK.

Jones tes­ti­fied that he was nev­er diag­nosed with a trau­mat­ic brain injury by a physi­cian, say­ing it was because he lacked health insur­ance at the time.

Jeffery also argued that there was­n’t enough evi­dence to show that her client shot Jones, or that Jones was even shot — sug­gest­ing that he may have been injured in oth­er ways dur­ing the protest.

Snyder accused Bueno and Jeffery of try­ing to dis­tract the jury by tar­nish­ing Jones’ name with­out ever explain­ing why Bueno had fired his weapon — “just attack­ing, attack­ing, attack­ing these young peo­ple who came here to share their truth.”

After the award was announced, both Snyder and Jones said their sights were now set on the sec­ond part of the case and hold­ing the city and the LAPD account­able, too.

This sto­ry orig­i­nal­ly appeared in Los Angeles Times.

More argu­ing ensues before Allan hands the offi­cer a pass­port. The offi­cer then orders Allan to step out of the vehi­cle. At this point, the video shows oth­er offi­cers have arrived at the scene. Allan is seen refus­ing to step out of the car. He is still wear­ing his seat­belt and hold­ing his cell phone. “I am not required to,” Allan tells the police. The body­cam footage then stops and high­lights what police allege is a “hol­ster on Mr. Allan’s hip.” The hol­ster is “flex­ing upward,” as seen through the dri­ver’s win­dow, police said. Allan, wear­ing a kha­ki coat and a truck­er hat, still refus­es to step out when anoth­er offi­cer warns him that if he does­n’t com­ply, “we’re going to break the win­dow and pull you out.” Allan is then seen trans­fer­ring his cell phone from his left hand to his right hand as an offi­cer opens the dri­ver’s door. The police video then stops to high­light what it claims is Allan’s right hand mov­ing toward the hol­ster. As anoth­er offi­cer wear­ing a beanie leans into the front seat and tries to get Allan, one of the offi­cers yells, “gun! gun! gun!”

The police offi­cer slams the door shut, and five offi­cers are seen draw­ing their guns and rapid­ly fir­ing sev­er­al rounds at the BMW. An offi­cer then yells, “cease fire,” and the shoot­ing stops. The offi­cers pull Allan’s body out of the car. The footage again stops to high­light an “emp­ty” hol­ster on his hip. The video then shows a gun on the floor, par­tial­ly vis­i­ble under the mat of the dri­ver’s seat. The five offi­cers involved in the shoot­ing have not been iden­ti­fied. “I feel like they deserve pri­va­cy right now,” Johnsen said Wednesday. Allan’s fam­i­ly has accused the police of “bru­tal mur­der,” say­ing they have been “stonewalled” by the depart­ment, accord­ing to a state­ment released to local media last week. Allan’s fam­i­ly said he was “study­ing law the last few years and was a patri­ot doing what he could to defend the peo­ple’s free­dom and lib­er­ty in his com­mu­ni­ty,” accord­ing to the Salt Lake Tribune. Four of the five offi­cers have been with Farmington police for between sev­en and eight months, and the fifth offi­cer is a 12-year vet­er­an of the depart­ment, Johnsen said. The sta­tus of the offi­cers was not clear, but Johnsen said he was down 20% of his force and thanked oth­er police depart­ments for help­ing with dai­ly oper­a­tions. Allan’s fam­i­ly has said the offi­cer who pulled him over “request­ed mul­ti­ple oth­er offi­cers to the scene a cou­ple of blocks pri­or to the stop,” accord­ing to the Salt Lake Tribune. At the press con­fer­ence, Johnsen dis­put­ed the fam­i­ly’s state­ment. “I want to point out there has been a state­ment, an alle­ga­tion made that back-up was called for before this, that is absolute­ly untrue,” the police said. “It’s a trag­ic end­ing to what start­ed out as an every­day traf­fic stop,” Johnsen said.

The shooting

The shoot­ing last Friday fol­lowed a stand­off between Seabrooks and police that last­ed more than four hours, accord­ing to Paterson Press. Police had respond­ed to calls of a men­tal­ly dis­turbed per­son in his home, and when they arrived at the scene Seabrooks had alleged­ly bar­ri­cad­ed him­self inside the apart­ment. After pro­longed nego­ti­a­tions, police claim, Seabrooks let offi­cers into his homeand then charged at them with a knife. According to the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office, two offi­cers fired their weapons at Seabrooks, strik­ing him. He was lat­er pro­nounced dead at St. Joseph’s Regional Medical Center in Paterson. On Wednesday, the attor­ney general’s office released the names of the offi­cers who deployed their weapons: Anzore Tsay and Jose Hernandez. Both were mem­bers of the emer­gency response team. Officials say they could not deploy their Tasers because Seabrooks had bro­ken pipes in the apart­ment and start­ed a small fire that left sig­nif­i­cant amounts of water on the floor, mak­ing the use of the elec­tri­cal device too dan­ger­ous. “The police was here for hours try­ing to calm him down and bring him out of the apart­ment, but he decid­ed to turn the apart­ment on fire,” Councilman Luiz Velez told NBC New York. Paterson police did not respond to sev­er­al requests for com­ment from Yahoo News.

The state attor­ney general’s office is cur­rent­ly inves­ti­gat­ing the shoot­ing. “Any loss of life is a tragedy, and we express our deep­est con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly, loved ones and friends, and col­leagues of the dece­dent,” Dan Prochilo, a spokesper­son for the attor­ney general’s office, told Yahoo News. “Our office is com­mit­ted to thor­ough­ly, fair­ly and inde­pen­dent­ly inves­ti­gat­ing fatal police encoun­ters.” Prochilo added that the office will make all infor­ma­tion avail­able, includ­ing video, when the inves­ti­ga­tion is com­plete. Paterson Mayor André Sayegh has been qui­et since Friday’s shoot­ing, accord­ing to local res­i­dents. On Saturday he issued his only state­ment on the inci­dent, wel­com­ing the attor­ney general’s review and say­ing that “prayers and con­do­lences are with Mr. Seabrook’s [sic] fam­i­ly, friends and our impact­ed com­mu­ni­ty.” When con­tact­ed by Yahoo News, his office shared the same state­ment, adding that it had “no fur­ther com­ment at this time.” During one of the speech­es Tuesday night, an attendee shout­ed, “Where is the may­or? He knocked on my door to vote for him dur­ing elec­tion time, but I don’t see him here!

Community distrust in Paterson leadership

For many crit­ics in the com­mu­ni­ty already on edge fol­low­ing Seabrooks’s killing, each pass­ing day with no addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion only adds to the angst and frus­tra­tion. “In Memphis, they fired the cops with­in two weeks,” Larry Hamm, chair­man of the People’s Organization for Progress, a social jus­tice advo­ca­cy group, said, ref­er­enc­ing Tyre Nichols, the 29-year-old Black man fatal­ly beat­en by Memphis police fol­low­ing a traf­fic stop in January. “If they had let the Paterson Healing Collective inter­vene, he would be alive today.” “How many Black men need to be killed before they take us seri­ous­ly?” Councilman Michael Jackson said before enter­ing a City Council meet­ing where only 20 res­i­dents were allowed inside.

The Black Lives Matter chap­ter in Paterson has pre­sent­ed a list of demands for the city, which include the imme­di­ate release of police body cam­era footage of the inci­dent and plac­ing the offi­cers involved in the shoot­ing on admin­is­tra­tive leave. The group, spear­head­ed by leader Zellie Thomas, also demands a restruc­tur­ing of the city’s police depart­ment that would include cre­at­ing a civil­ian com­plaint review board to inves­ti­gate alle­ga­tions of police wrong­do­ing in addi­tion to invest­ing more mon­ey in com­mu­ni­ty groups that give Paterson res­i­dents pos­i­tive out­lets. “We have to open up people’s eyes that police offi­cers are not the only solu­tion to crises,” Thomas told Yahoo News, not­ing that conver­sa­tions about actu­al change come to a halt once the con­ver­sa­tion about the real­lo­ca­tion of police fund­ing comes up. The Paterson Police Department rep­re­sents more than 16% of the city’s bud­get, receiv­ing more than $43 mil­lion last year, which is more than dou­ble the per­cent­age that New York City allo­cates to its police depart­ment.

History of Paterson police violence

Seabrooks’s death isn’t the first case in which Paterson police have come under scruti­ny for their han­dling of peo­ple hav­ing a men­tal health cri­sis. In January 2019, 27-year-old Jameek Lowery died after con­sum­ing ille­gal drugs and express­ing feel­ings of “para­noia” before being repeat­ed­ly struck by police offi­cers try­ing to restrain him on an ambu­lance gur­ney. A law­suit filed by Lowery’s fam­i­ly cites at least three oth­er instances — two of them fatal — since 2012 in which Paterson police shot indi­vid­u­als expe­ri­enc­ing men­tal health episodes. There was also the death of 25‑year-old Thelonious McKnight, who was killed in late 2021 while flee­ing police. Hamm believes that the issue of race can­not be ignored. Paterson has just over 157,000 res­i­dents, made up of 87% Black and Hispanic res­i­dents and 8% white res­i­dents, accord­ing to the lat­est cen­sus data. Meanwhile, 1 in 3 Paterson offi­cers are white, while about 62% are Black or Hispanic. “There is a dif­fer­ent way that they treat Black peo­ple in dis­tress from white peo­ple in dis­tress,” Hamm said. Michael Mitchell, an assis­tant pro­fes­sor of African American stud­ies and crim­i­nol­o­gy at the College of New Jersey, told Yahoo News that the need for trans­paren­cy is urgent. “It is no secret that the Paterson Police Department is inun­dat­ed in a legit­i­ma­cy cri­sis due to the city’s tox­ic cop cul­ture,” he said in an email, point­ing to a recent Paterson police cor­rup­tion case. “Therefore, the urgency in releas­ing pub­licly the body-worn cam­era footage from the police emer­gency respon­ders involved can­not be over­stat­ed. A time lag in trans­paren­cy only exac­er­bates com­mu­ni­ty dis­trust in the insti­tu­tion pub­licly fund­ed to pro­tect and serve them.”

Police intervention with mental health crises under scrutiny

While many men­tal health advo­cates believe that offi­cers need addi­tion­al train­ing to deal with indi­vid­u­als expe­ri­enc­ing men­tal health crises, oth­er advo­cates say police should not be involved at all unless the per­son is armed and an imme­di­ate threat to oth­ers. They say police are sim­ply unqual­i­fied to han­dle the nuances of such sit­u­a­tions. In New Jersey, Mitchell notes, the pilot pro­gram ARRIVE Together, which pairs police with men­tal health pro­fes­sion­als dur­ing cri­sis calls, is show­ing promise, and Gov. Phil Murphy recent­ly announced a $10 mil­lion invest­ment in expand­ing the pro­gram statewide. “It is crit­i­cal that police agen­cies and offi­cers under­stand and oper­ate under the recog­ni­tion that you can­not respond to every per­son the same,” Mitchell said. “There can be no ‘one size fits all’ approach to polic­ing, espe­cial­ly when deal­ing with indi­vid­u­als expe­ri­enc­ing a men­tal health cri­sis.” Last year a three-dig­it National Suicide Prevention Lifeline num­ber, 988, offi­cial­ly launched, allow­ing any­one wit­ness­ing or expe­ri­enc­ing a men­tal health cri­sis to call, text or chat to talk to some­one. But a Yahoo News report found that many states did not have the resources to staff and sup­port the line adequately.

Over the last few years, sev­er­al cities, includ­ing New York, Chicago and Denver, have launched pro­grams that replace police response with men­tal health emer­gency respon­ders and have seen suc­cess. But crit­ics argue that the move­ment exists in far too few places and is expand­ing far too slow­ly. In Paterson, progress on the imple­men­ta­tion of a task force has been incon­sis­tent at best. Mayor Sayegh intro­duced a cit­i­zens’ de-esca­la­tion task force in December 2021, but, accord­ing to Thomas, the group has nev­er met and has not rolled out a sin­gle new reg­u­la­tion. “This task force was sup­posed to be able to research best prac­tices and best poli­cies for offi­cers to be equipped with de-esca­la­tion prac­tices and poli­cies, and over a year lat­er, that de-esca­la­tion task force still has not met,” Thomas said. “What if that task force had met and was already research­ing some of the things we are propos­ing now and imple­ment­ed it? It could have saved his life.”

Seabrooks’s legacy

According to those who knew him best, Seabrooks will be remem­bered by the com­mu­ni­ty as some­one who would do any­thing for those in need. His fam­i­ly start­ed a GoFundMe to cov­er funer­al expens­es and cre­ate a trust fund for his daugh­ter. His moth­er, Melissa Carter, told the CBS News local affil­i­ate in New York that her son loved his city so much that he gave of him­self in spite of his own per­son­al cir­cum­stances. “He planned toy give­aways, he donat­ed, he had home­less dri­ves,” Carter said. “All he want­ed to do was help the community.”

_​_​_​_​_​

mmm