Lawyer files Federal Lawsuit Filed against Pasadena; Pasadena Police in Chris Ballew Beating

Attorney Says Both Officers should be fired

By Terry Miller

A 19-page lawsuit was filed January 26 by attorney John Burton on behalf of Chris Ballew. The suit names defendants as: City of Pasadena (“City”); Terry Tornek, Mayor and Defendant Steve Mermell, City Manager; Pasadena Police Department (“PPD”); Phillip A. Sanchez, PPD Chief of Police; and finally Zachary Lujan and Lerry Esparza Pasadena Police officers.

The suit claims, in part that, “the City or the PPD and was involved in one or more deprivations of Plaintiff’s federal constitutional or statutory rights either as a direct participant or supervisor.” In a November 9 beating of motorist Chris Ballew and two Pasadena Police officers which was caught of video released on social media.

The lawsuit also states that the city “hired unqualified and potentially dangerous officers laterally from agencies such as the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department (LASD) and the Bakersfield Police Department (BPD). “ The suit alleges both agencies have “well known reputations for maintaining internal cultures that sanction misconduct, including excessive force, false arrests and frame-ups, and fabricated police reports, especially directed against African Americans.”

The suit continues that “Defendant Lujan was a jailor in LASD jails before becoming an LASD deputy sheriff in 2012, and thereafter he again worked in the jails before Pasadena hired him as a patrol officer in 2015. While Defendant Lujan worked in the LASD jails, official lawlessness was so pervasive that the United States Department of Justice initiated an investigation, resulting in multiple criminal charges and the convictions of LASD employees and top managers, including LASD Undersheriff Paul Tanaka and Sheriff Lee Baca.”

In this incident, the suit states “Officer Lujan acted like a thuggish and unaccountable jailor rather than as a professional law enforcement officer, treating Plaintiff with contempt, as if he were a complaining inmate rather than a law-abiding civilian exercising rights under the First Amendment to question perceived official misconduct and to ask for a supervisor.” Plaintiff is informed and believes that during the late afternoon or early evening of Thursday, November 9, 2017, Doe PPD supervisors assigned Officers Lujan and Esparza to a car designated “S95” without a sergeant as field supervisor, as part of the “black gang task force” function of the “Special Enforcement Section.” The two named defendant officers, along with other task force members, were directed to use various pretexts, including trivial and common vehicle equipment violations such as tinted windows and missing front license plates, for traffic stops.

The express purpose of the traffic stops was not vehicle code enforcement, but the detention, searching and cataloguing of young African Americans as potential gang members or associates, without the need for reasonable suspicion that they were engaged in criminal activity,” the suit states.

To Read the entire 19 page Federal suit filed: go to www.pasadenaindependent.com

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