In a mixed verdict, a jury on Friday awarded a Vallejo man
$50,000 in damages in a racially charged police brutality case stemming from a
2003 incident.
The seven-year-old lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in
Sacramento, charged three officers with a host of civil rights violations,
including racial discrimination, false arrest and imprisonment and excessive
use of force.
Plaintiffs Jason Eugene Deocampo, Jesus Sebastian Grant and
Jaquezs Tyree Berry, all of Vallejo, claimed in court documents they were
accosted and assaulted by one or more of the officers in North Vallejo on March
28, 2003. However, the 10-person jury only awarded damages to Deocampo.
According to their lawsuit, Berry claimed he was walking
with his girlfriend in the 100 block of Mark Avenue in Vallejo's Country Club
Crest neighborhood when officer Jason Potts -- currently a Vallejo detective --
and now-retired officer Jeremy Patzer ordered him to stop. Berry contended the
officers then started kicking him and slamming him into the ground after he
complied, causing him to hit his head on a wooden fence.
Deocampo and Grant, both friends of Berry, said they were
told to get back and go away as they tried to intervene. Deocampo claimed he
was walking away when Potts followed him into the street and pushed him hard in
the chest.
At some point, Deocampo claimed Potts, now-retired officer
Eric Jensen and other officers assaulted and battered him, hitting him in his
legs and back with their batons. Deocampo said he got up and ran inside of
nearby King's Market on Fairgrounds Drive, where the officers continued to
engage him.
Deocampo claimed officers never asked him to get down on the
ground or to stop walking away.
Defense attorneys for the officers, however, argued Deocampo
made threatening gestures and denied he had been singled out due to his
previous run-ins with the law.
For his part, Grant claimed in court documents he told
several police officers they were wrong to attack Berry and Deocampo and asked
them to stop. When he said he was going to call for an ambulance, he said
officers responded by pepper-spraying him and shoving him to the ground.
All three men were arrested following the incident on
suspicion of resisting arrest and obstructing police. However, their cases were
later dismissed.