S.F. man sues police over arrest
Schiffmiller, who pleaded guilty to federal firearms charges, files claim over missing body camera video
A Santa Fe man is accusing police of making an unjustified arrest in August 2016 and violating the state public records law by failing to release an officer’s body camera video of the incident.
In a lawsuit recently filed against the city in the state District Court in Santa Fe, 22-year-old Daniel Schiffmiller says an officer with a “propensity to violate the law when angry” reported a false account of the arrest, in which Schiffmiller was held on suspicion of firearms charges and other counts.
While he was in a holding cell at the Santa Fe County jail, the suit says, Schiffmiller was assaulted by another inmate and continued to fear for his safety during his incarceration.
Charges were eventually dropped, but Schiffmiller pleaded guilty last year to weapons charges in a separate federal case that made its way through the court system concurrent with the local case.
Schiffmiller’s complaint against the city does not mention the federal charges or an FBI raid on his parents’ homes on the same day in September 2016 that he was rearrested by police on an alleged violation of the conditions of his release from jail.
The August 2016 incident involving Santa Fe Officer Christopher Sandoval, named as a defendant in the lawsuit, began when Schiffmiller was using a cellphone camera to record the arrest of a suspect across the street from his home. While recording, the complaint says, he remained a “considerable and safe distance” from the suspect and
police, and was “calm and polite.”
At one point, however, his dog got loose and ran toward an officer’s car, and as he went to retrieve the animal, the complaint says, Sandoval grabbed him and handcuffed him.
According to a police affidavit, Schiffmiller had two 9 mm handguns tucked into his waistband, each with a round in the chamber, and four additional ammunition magazines in his pockets. Sandoval wrote in a report that Schiffmiller did not have a concealed-carry license.
Sandoval thought Schiffmiller identified as a “sovereign citizen,” he said in his report, because of a sticker on the man’s driver’s license that said, “Peace Traveler, I am man, sovereign and foreign to fiction. … I am not a natural person of legal entity of any kind whatsoever.”
Sandoval also wrote that Schiffmiller had charged at him — which Schiffmiller argues is untrue and that there was therefore no cause for the arrest.
He says in his lawsuit that the city had failed to properly supervise Sandoval, who was accused in 2013 of pulling his weapon on a civilian while he was off duty.
According to online court records, Sandoval was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. The charge was later dismissed and a 2015 note indicates the case file was “destroyed.”
City spokesman Matt Ross said Sandoval is now a detective for the police department but declined to comment further on Sandoval or Schiffmiller’s lawsuit.
Following his arrest, Schiffmiller was booked in the county jail on misdemeanor charges of resisting an officer and assault on an officer, and two counts of unlawful carrying of a deadly weapon. He was released a couple of days later.
But on Sept. 14, 2016, he was arrested again, this time on a warrant charging failure to comply with the conditions of his release.
On the same day, state and federal authorities raided the homes of Schiffmiller’s parents.
FBI agents, a bomb squad and police in armored vehicles descended on the Osage Avenue home of his father. And a mile or so away, officers searched his mother’s home as a New Mexico State Police helicopter circled overhead.
What prompted the multiagency raid remains unclear. Federal court documents said the operation was conducted as part of an ongoing FBI investigation.
The probe could be tied to Schiffmiller’s online declarations that he was sovereign. At the time of the raid, the FBI was warning the public about people claiming to be sovereign citizens, described on an FBI website as potentially dangerous “anti-government extremists who believe that, even though they physically reside in his country, they are separate or ‘sovereign’ from the United States.”
A month after the raid, as Schiffmiller was still being held in jail, the FBI filed charges against him, saying agents had found a modified and unregistered shotgun in a storage locker.
Schiffmiller remained in custody for about 10 months as the local and federal charges against him proceeded through the courts.
In late June 2017, his defense attorney in the local cases sought dismissal on the grounds that the police department claimed it had lost video of the encounter that Schiffmiller had captured on his cellphone. The District Attorney’s Office agreed to drop the case.
A few days later, Schiffmiller pleaded guilty to the federal charges, admitting he had a modified shotgun that was not registered and did not have a serial number.
He was sentenced to 19 months in federal prison, but it’s unclear whether he served the time.
Schiffmiller declined to comment for this story.
In February, Schiffmiller filed a motion in the Santa Fe County Magistrate Court to have his two 9 mm handguns released to his father. In the motion, he said his father intended to sell the weapons “to raise money for the psychological treatment that the federal court has indicated Daniel requires.” The court denied that request. Schiffmiller’s lawsuit against the city includes a claim that the city violated the New Mexico Inspection of Records Act by failing to produce video of his arrest from Sandoval’s lapel camera.
The city records custodian responded to a request for video by saying none existed. But the complaint says Schiffmiller’s attorney in the civil case, Hope Eckert, obtained the video from the man’s criminal defense attorney before receiving the records clerk’s response.
When Eckert informed the records clerk that she had a copy of the video, the suit says, she was told there was a “system problem … that would need to be addressed by I.T.” She received no video from the clerk and no further explanation.
Schiffmiller seeks an unspecified amount of compensatory and punitive damages from the city, as well as legal costs.