City agrees to pay $35,000 to settle suit against police

The city of San Antonio has agreed to pay $35,000 to settle a federal lawsuit filed by relatives of a man who died as he struggled with police at a house party in 2018.

Chief U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia approved the deal at a hearing Thursday, putting an end to a case that lawyers for relatives of Gaspar David Guzman, 36, acknowledged would be difficult to win.

“I’m just here for my children,” Vanessa Garcia, the mother of Guzman’s two children, told the court. “It’s just difficult. The kids don’t understand what happened. I just tell them that their dad is gone.”

A lawyer for the Guzman family and Vanessa Garcia, Richard Hoffman, acknowledged that officers did what they could to control Guzman, who showed up to a party in the 100 block of Rosemont Drive in May 2018, downed 18 beers and wound up paranoid before calling police to report someone was after him.

Responding officers tried to calm him down and to put him in a police car, according to an account given in court Thursday. They also tried to get him to leave the party with a family member. He refused and struggled even with emergency services workers who tried to treat him.

Struggles ensued in which Guzman was tased and ended up face down, according to accounts given at the time by police and at the summary given Thursday. He was unresponsive when he was turned over.

“He was resisting, I have to admit,” Hoffman told the judge.

Guzman was determined to have died in the struggle from a variety of things, including his enlarged heart and the alcohol and cocaine in his system, an autopsy concluded.

The lawsuit alleged police used excessive force, though all parties involved said it would be difficult to prove. Internal investigations cleared three officers named as defendants in the lawsuit and determined they did not violate any policies or procedures.

“Plaintiffs have a very steep hurdle to overcome,” Charles Frigerio, who was appointed by the court to represent the interests of Guzman’s two children, told the judge.

The city said it opted to settle to save money on lawyers and not risk a decision that might side against the officers, given the social climate over the past year calling for police reform. The officers were represented by a law firm on contract with the city.