these two police officers in St Petersburg Florida arrested this homeless man for trespassing he was never convicted but he was taken on a ride which resulted in him being paralyzed and a double ampute te AR robberto what are you doing I fall asleep yeah you me to no you're going to take the ride today what I think after a certain many this should be a fing after a certain is after a certain amount of any crime it should be a f keeps coming in contact doesn't change his ways what can we do come on here Berto the family of this homeless man just filed a civil rights lawsuit against the City of St Petersburg the lawsuit filed in Tampa federal court on Monday says that herberto Sanchez Mayan age 61 is seeking damages in excess of $775,000 I would hope so the lawsuit names the City of St Petersburg and police officers Sarah Gattis and Michael ther as defendants according to the lawsuit Sanchez Mayan was not secured to a seat in the jail transport van so a sudden stop sent him flying and knocked him unconscious he sustained injuries to his cervical spine which paralyzed him and resulted in the amputation of both legs above the knee according to the lawsuit neither police officer involved here has faced any discipline both of them are still employed by the St Petersburg Police Department I have the body Camp footage here let's go through it according to the lawsuit Sanchez Mayan was unlawfully detained and placed under arrest by Officer Gattis on June 8th 2023 for trespassing on private property on the 200 block of 15th Street North body cam footage provided Ed by the police department shows Sanchez Mayan sleeping on a cardboard box in an open Green Space before he is woken up by officer gtis in the video gtis appears to recognize him as she addresses him by his first name and asks what he's doing there hey yo AR Roberto what are you doing I fall asleep you know you're trespassing out here right is this yours no no put your shoes on you can come over to my car I'm going write you a ticket okay all right actually officer gtis can be seen on video calling for a police transport van and that's when St Petersburg Police Officer Michael ther arrives and he gets out his chains s41 is the van here by any chance hey can you come over to 251 15 Street and s41 this going to be a trespassing I'll be 15 oh you yeah come on over the car okay you got everything that's yours you leave it your beer cans behind that's M yeah right that's the one you always drink no yes yeah no it's right next to you plus you always drink those yeah but that's what could you please zip up your fly huh zip up your pants do you see this sign right here you see can you see it what's that say that's do you know what it okay so you know that you're not supposed to be here which way did you come in huh which way did you come into this park just I don't know did you walk in from this way or did you walk in from that way that way all right well there's a sign over there too I see it well can't be helped can't be helped go ahead and drop your bag you got anything in there just drop it down you're fine Drop It On The Ground there you go let me get some gloves how are you you got anything in your pockets my cigarette take a b huh I MA okay put them down there anything else not do your arm up got to make sure oh you got more stuff pamphlet oh what is that by by the church okay Chinese Church yeah okay no drugs or nothing no okay nothing in your shoes no not no no oh you got a hernia huh yeah I okay yeah you want to ride me today no you're going to take the ride today what I've decided that you're going to actually go to jail today you had far too many problems with you yes I no absolutely not we're getting all kinds of complaints can't be doing this okay so he's coming now and then he'll take you out D me T please no come on let's go over here you get tickets all the time you don't care you don't change your ways right here your Stu Mayan Sanchez I'll get it for J here what is in there oh my gosh what okay was you charge with trespass trespass yeah I think after a certain minute this should be a fing after a certaine after a certain amount of any crime it should be a f keeps coming in contact doesn't change his ways what can we do you're in jail will probably sett it what's that the year in jail might yeah maybe debatable the officers load Sanchez Mayan into the police transport van which had no seat belts or safety restraints they are shown on the video throwing the rest of his belongings conveniently into a nearby dumpster but they did at least save his cell phone in a couple of his documents all right it's a nice phone you guys good thank you your for your yeah just this bag of stuff like food in there gross oh nice does that thing stin yeah what's it smell on you know what away I'm pretty much done with taking soil stuff yeah they don't need it it's all soiled don't need it I'm going to take now than you sir according to the lawsuit officer ther then drove this van in a reckless manner at an unsafe rate of speed and made a hard stop for what his lawyers believe was a red light a video recording provided by police shows Sanchez Mayan slide across the bench that he was sitting on fall and hit his head on a metal partition that separated him from another man being transported officer ther noticed on his video feed from the back of the van that Sanchez Mayan was laying was lying face down on the floor but did not pull over according to the lawsuit but he continued to drive to the penis County Jail when ther arrived at the penis County jail he opened the doors and he noticed Sanchez Mayan's body was limp fer started Ed to shake him vigorously and said wake up several times but when he didn't wake up officer ther is shown on video trying to lift him up to wake him up when that doesn't work ther then grabs his grabs him by the feet and he drags him feet first out of the van video footage shows that in the course of dragging Mr Sanchez Mayan out of the van fer moved his head which caused Sanchez Mayan to strike his head on the bumper and again on the ground shortly afterwards the video shows that Sanchez Mayan was attended to by medical personnel and then taken to the hospital by ambulance according to the lawsuit pelis County dismissed the criminal trespassing charges against Sanchez Mayan because the property where he was arrested didn't have no trespassing signs in the proper places so what is the law here at the point at which this man was put into handcuffs and other chains and then put in the cargo van that they put him in really the Fourth Amendment no longer applied now we are under the 14th Amendment really I see two major claims here one is excessive force under the 14th Amendment and secondly a deliberate indifference claim um regarding the medical needs that he had let's talk about excessive force first so excessive force under the 14th Amendment is a little bit different at the point at which where we are which is at the pre-trial detain stage so it's basically an objective reasonableness standard it's a little bit different so this is 11th circuit case law which applies in Florida where we are here considerations such as the following May bear on the reasonableness or unreasonableness of the force us used one the relationship between the need for the use of force and the amount of force used two the extent of the plaintiff's injury three any effort made by the officer to temper or limit the amount of Force four the severity of the security problem at issue five the threat reasonably perceived by the officer in six whether the plaintiff was actively resisting just on the law the plaintiff here would win on all of these because if the breaking of the van was a use of force if the facts are determined that the breaking of of the van was purposeful in order to injure this individual we're going to meet every single one of those factors because um it's going to be unreasonable because no force was required there was no active resistance at all it was just a malicious use of force to punish or hurt somebody if those are the facts and that might be a jury issue of whether the breaking was purposeful it's very easily going to meet the excessive force standard under under the 14th Amendment now the other claim is going to be even better and easier here because we don't have to prove that there was this intentional use of force a jury could believe that the officer indeed had to break and it wasn't his fault there were no seat belts and he he just never noticed that the guy was injured in the back of the van jury could believe all that and the plan if could still win on these facts under the deliberate indifference standard so what is that standard so under the 14th Amendment if the plan if can prove he had an objectively serious medical need so he was injured and that the driver of the vehicle um officer ther acted with subjective deliberate indifference to that serious medical need and that the plane have suffered an injury that was caused by that wrongful conduct a serious medical need is one that's been diagnosed by a physician as mandating treatment or one that is so obvious that even a lay person would easily recognize the necessity for doctor's attention so here according to the lawsuit allegations officer ther had a video monitor showing the inmate or the pre-trial attaine in the back of the vehicle so as we see in the video footage that would have been available to him the the inmate is unconscious apparently on the floor after he hit the brakes yet he continues driving to the penelas county jail any lay person could have realized at that point that there was a serious medical issue occurring and that he needed medical treatment as soon as possible even if the breaking was a complete accident or coincidence this man did not get immediate medical treatment the only defense to that is that officer Thacker just failed to even observe the status of the people in the back of his van and if he certainly knew that he hit the brakes so if he knew he hit the brakes and he made the deliberate choice not to check on the people in the back of the van whom he knew did not have seat belts or other restraints then there is a textbook deliberate indifference case there and remember that with each of these claims not only do you have to prove a constitutional violation but you also have to get past qualified immunity and in order to do that you need to point to Prior case law either US Supreme Court or out of the 11th federal circuit theoretically placing police officers on notice that the conduct they're engaging in is unconstitutional and so I did some research uh 11 circuit case law there was a case from 2020 Patel versus lanir County Georgia where the claim was is basically this this guy Patel was left in a police vehicle for like 2 hours with the windows up up and it was too hot he ended up hospitalized after the fact they didn't actually make it past qualified Immunity on the excessive force claim because the facts are just um a little too unusual but the 11th circuit did deny qualified immunity to the police officers in that case just based on the vehicle being too hot so again that was 11 circuit controlling precedent for this jurisdiction that was 2020 so well before this occurred so the the police officers could be denied qualifi immunity in this case just based only on that Patel case and there could be more you can only spend so much time and you could spend weeks trying to find an identical case but that is a pretty close one that should deny qualified immunity in this case so hopefully we'll have an update at some point throughout the litigation process sometimes these Federal section 1983 cases can take up to a year um or a year and a half to litigate and actually that is very very quickly so thanks for watching please subscribe both here and at the blog at the Civil Rights lawyer.com don't forget to 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