Court Settlements

A Texas cop remains on the job after the department he works for settled the third excessive force lawsuit against him Thursday.
Austin police officer Eric Copeland was sued three times for using excessive force between April of 2011 to April of 2015.
Austin City Council members approved the latest $150,000 settlement November 9 for unnecessarily tasering Adrian Aguado, 20, after removing him from handcuffs and telling him to exit the police cruiser.
Video from inside the patrol car shows Copeland tasering Aguado immediately as he slowly exits the vehicle.

Salt Lake City has agreed to pay nurse Alex Wubbels a $500,000 settlement just two weeks after the detective who arrested her for refusing to allow a blood draw on her unconscious patient filed an appeal to get his job back, claiming had it not been for a camera he would still have a job.
Now Wubbels plans to use a portion of the settlement to help other police abuse victims obtain access to body cam footage.

A Florida man received a $37,500 settlement after police arrested him, mistaking Krispy Kreme doughnut glaze in his car for meth.
A series of roadside drug tests yielded positive results for the street drug, landing him in jail for ten hours.
But another test determined it was only glaze from a Krispy Kreme doughnut.
Dan Rushing, 65, was arrested in December 2015 following a traffic stop after Orlando cop Cpl. Shelby Riggs-Hopkins observed flakes on his floorboard, which she first suspected was crack, then crystal meth.

A Maryland jury awarded a family $1.26 million Tuesday after deciding a cop wrongly shot and killed their dog, Vernon, on February 1, 2014 – the largest award in American history for such a case.
“The verdict sends a strong message to the police about community expectations,” attorney Carl J. Hansel said after the verdict, according to the Capital Gazette.
“The duty to serve and protect extends to our animal family members as well.”

These days it is not uncommon for cops to get arrested for assault.
But Officer Christopher Reiter, 36, of the Minneapolis Police Department took things way too far when he kicked Mohamed Osman while he was already down on the ground.
Osman suffered severe brain injuries, brain bleeding and ended up with fractures in his face, including sinus fractures in his nose.
Because of the injuries, Osman is unable to work.

The Fort Lauderdale police department got it wrong when they arrested the wrong man thinking he was a burglary suspect.
But the Florida police department still kept him in jail for eight months for the crime he did not commit.
Dmitry Lyubimov was not released until authorities finally acknowledged that they lacked physical and DNA evidence.
Now the city has reached a wrongful arrest settlement of $150,000 with the 26-year-old man.

NYPD cops brutally beat 19-year-old Jateik Reed for resisting arrest and carrying drugs in 2012. Drugs were never found and the case was dismissed in court. Reed then filed a civil rights lawsuit against the city.
Now New York City has settled the lawsuit with Reed, who is now 24, for the amount of $614,500, his lawyers announced earlier this month.

California cops who sicced a police dog on a naked man tripping on LSD, allowing the dog to maul him for more than 40 seconds while officers held him down, claimed they had no way of knowing if he was unarmed despite body cam video showing he had nowhere to hide a weapon in his nakedness.
But the city of San Diego opted to pay David Aceves a $385,000 settlement last week anyway, apparently realizing no jury in the world would buy that argument.

Chicago will pay a $3 million settlement to the family of a teenager shot and killed while fleeing police on a busy street, claiming he had a black object in his hand that made them fear for their lives.
The black object turned out to be an iPhone case.
And surveillance cameras do not show Cedric Chatman, 17, pointing the object at officers as he fled as police initially reported, although the videos are grainy.

The family of a man who fell off a police boat while handcuffed and allowed to drown by the Missouri state trooper operating the boat will receive a $9 million settlement, attorneys announced Thursday.
And there is still a chance the cop will be convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the death of Brandon Ellingson, a 20-year-old college student from Iowa who had been arrested for boating while intoxicated.