Have a great day, Laguardia McEachin
Check out what’s going on in your neighborhood and the community on Wednesday.
A Sacramento-based law firm has been hired to defend a Vallejo police officer in a federal excessive force case after he was recorded on video holding a man at gun point while offduty.
On Monday, attorneys with Angelo, Kilday & Kilduff, LLP, filed an official response, on behalf of Vallejo Ofc. David McLaughlin, to a lawsuit filed earlier this year alleging McLaughlin used excessive force against Santiago Hutchins after the two men argued outside a business in Walnut Creek.
The response admitted “a verbal exchange occurred” between the two men during the Aug. 11, 2018 incident in the parking lot of a Walnut Creek pizzeria.
Video of the incident, recorded by a bystander, shows McLaughlin dressed in shorts and a white T-shirt, pointing a gun at Hutchins, who had his hands raised above his head.
In his response, McLaughlin admits he identified himself as police after Hutchins threatened him, “challenged him to fight, (and) used offensive language inherently likely to provoke an immediate violent reaction…” McLaughlin also admitted he wasn’t on duty at the time of the incident and “completed a citizen’s arrest form.”
In the same response, McLaughlin confirmed he pointed his department issued weapon at Hutchins, told the man to “stay back and get on the ground,” that Hutchins was going to jail and that he would be charged with a crime.
The lawsuit also names a yet-to-be identified city San Francisco sheriff’s deputy, who was also offduty at the time of the incident, and an unknown Walnut Creek police officer, for failing to stop McLaughlin’s alleged excessive force.
The response confirms all three took Hutchins to the ground. McLaughlin also admitted to striking Hutchins in the head after he “resisted attempts to be taken into custody, and refused to comply with commands to stop resisting…”
Hutchins’ lawsuit alleges McLaughlin slammed his head several times in the pavement. An allegation McLaughlin denies.
Court records show that the city of Vallejo, also named as a defendant, is still being defended by Timothy Smyth, deputy city attorney, in the case.
McLaughlin was put on administrative leave after a KTVU news report publicized the August 2018 incident. The news report came out days after a January incident in which McLaughlin was caught on video tackling and detaining a Bay Area filmmaker who was recording the officer conduct a traffic stop.
Adrian Burrell retained civil rights attorney John Burris, who filed an excessive force lawsuit against McLaughlin, alleging the officer gave Burrell a concussion and other injuries as he filmed from the porch of his Vallejo home in early 2019.