Woman Shocked With Taser While On Ground Is Suing Police Officer And Chief For Not Reporting It

A woman who was shocked in the back with a Taser while lying on the ground in Pueblo, Colorado, last year is suing the police offi­cer who stunned her and the city’s police chief, accus­ing the police depart­ment of fail­ing to report exces­sive force by the offi­cer to state regulators.

The fed­er­al law­suit filed Sunday by Cristy Gonzales, who was sus­pect­ed of steal­ing a vehi­cle, says the police depart­ment found Cpl. Bennie Villanueva used exces­sive force against Gonzales and anoth­er per­son sev­er­al weeks lat­er. However, it says the agency with­held the infor­ma­tion from a state board which over­sees who is qual­i­fied to serve in law enforce­ment. If it had been report­ed, Villanueva would have lost his cer­ti­fi­ca­tion to work as a police offi­cer for at least a year, the law­suit said. Gonzales was sus­pect­ed of steal­ing a truck in February 2022, and did­n’t stop for Villanueva, accord­ing to a police inves­ti­ga­tion. Eventually the vehi­cle ran out of gas, accord­ing to the lawsuit.
After she got out of the truck, Villanueva pulled up and ordered her to get onto the ground, accord­ing to body cam­era footage released by Gonzales’ lawyer. After anoth­er offi­cer grabbed one of her arms, she got down on her knees and then appeared to be pushed to the ground, when Villanueva deployed his Taser into her back.

According to the law­suit, Gonzales was hit with two probes in the small of her back near her spine. It says she con­tin­ues to have numb­ness and dif­fi­cul­ty using her right hand since the Taser was used on her. Telephone mes­sages left for Pueblo police Chief Chris Noeller and the city’s police union were not returned Monday. Villanueva could not be locat­ed for com­ment. After see­ing the video of Gonzales’ arrest, the assis­tant dis­trict attor­ney pros­e­cut­ing the vehi­cle theft filed an exces­sive force com­plaint, prompt­ing an inter­nal police inves­ti­ga­tion, accord­ing to the law­suit. After the inves­ti­ga­tion, Noeller issued a let­ter of rep­ri­mand against Villanueva for his con­duct in the Gonzales case as well as for vio­lat­ing depart­ment poli­cies in two oth­er cas­es. In the let­ter, pro­vid­ed by Gonzales’ lawyer, Kevin Mehr, Noeller said Villanueva appeared to use the Taser on Gonzales “for no appar­ent rea­son.” However, he also said that the use of the Taser appeared to be “a result of your reac­tion to a high­ly stress­ful call for ser­vice after hav­ing been away from patrol duty work for sev­er­al years.” In a sec­ond case, Noeller said Villanueva deployed his Taser on a sus­pect a sec­ond time appar­ent­ly acci­den­tal­ly while attempt­ing to issue a “warn­ing arc” to get the sus­pect to com­ply. In a third case cit­ed in the let­ter, Villanueva threat­ened to use a Taser on a sus­pect in cus­tody who was not coop­er­at­ing with med­ical per­son­nel but he did not end up deploy­ing it.

Each year, police depart­ments are required to report to Colorado’s Peace Officer Standards and Training board whether their offi­cers have had any “dis­qual­i­fy­ing inci­dents”, includ­ing a find­ing of exces­sive force, that would dis­qual­i­fy them from being cer­ti­fied to work as police offi­cers in the state, accord­ing to the law­suit. It claims the Pueblo Police Department did not report any such inci­dents for any of its offi­cers in 2022. “The Pueblo Police Department lied to the POST board, just plain and sim­ple,” Mehr said.