LAPD Cop Found Liable For Protester’s Injury In $375,000 Verdict

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.