California City Residents Pay $300,000 To Veteran Brutalized By Officer Who Didn’t Want To Be Filmed

The deliberate failure" of a Vallejo, California police officer to respect the rights of a Marine veteran filming him from his own porch will cost city residents $300,000. And that's on top of the money the city spent defending Officer David McLaughlin from the lawsuit filed by the victim of his brutality, Adrian Burrell. Here's how that interaction went down, as summarized by C.J. Ciaramella for Reason.

In January 2019, Adrian Burrell, a documentary filmmaker and former Marine, saw the police stopping his cousin. Burrell used his cell phone to record the traffic stop from his porch. When Vallejo police officer David McLaughlin saw Burrell filming him, he ordered him to get back, although Burrell was standing about 20 to 30 feet. Burrell refused.

Officer McLaughlin apparently felt Burrell's cousin was enough of a threat he needed to keep a gun pointed at him. But when he saw Burrell filming him from his own porch, the threat matrix apparently changed. It was no longer the man on the motorcycle he had pulled over. It was the guy with a camera standing on his own property doing nothing more than passively filming the traffic stop.

You're interfering with me, my man?" McLaughlin asked. You're interfering, you're going to get one from the back of the car."

That's fine," Burrell responded. The officer started handcuffing Burrell, and told him to stop resisting."

I'm not resisting you," Burrell said.

Stop fighting or you're going to go on the ground," McLaughlin said. Burrell's cell phone did not capture what happened next, but his lawsuit claims that McLaughlin swung him to the ground and knocked his head against a wooden pillar on Burrell's porch.

According to Burrell's lawsuit, he suffered a concussion and an injury to his right eye, along with an assortment of bumps, bruises, aches, and pains. It wasn't just the brutality, although that was definitely a rights violation too far. It was also the unconstitutional disruption of Burrell's right to record police officers.

The city decided to settle shortly after discovery began, suggesting it didn't think things would go well for Officer McLaughlin and might result in more public airing of the Vallejo PD's dirty laundry. There's plenty of that. And the officer sued here is right in the middle of the PD's unwashed unmentionables.

A couple of years after this lawsuit was filed, a whistleblower reported the Vallejo PD celebrated" officer-involved shootings by bending badge tips to mark each kill in the line of duty. This badge-bending often occurred during celebratory barbecues held by other members of the bent badge tip club. This is from the Vallejo Sun's report on the $300,000 settlement.

McLaughlin testified in Solano County Superior Court last March that his badge was bent by former Vallejo Lt. Kent Tribble following McLaughlin's involvement in a 2016 shooting. Tribble testified that he brought badge-bending to Vallejo after leaving Concord police in 2003.

On top of being a badge bender, Officer McLaughlin is a particularly expensive cop. More from the Vallejo Sun:

This isn't the first excessive force settlement involving McLaughlin. The city agreed to a $270,698 settlement with Santiago Hutchins last year after McLaughlin held Hutchins at gunpoint while off duty in a parking lot outside a Walnut Creek pizzeria in August 2018 in an incident that was also caught on camera.

More than half-million paid out by city residents to cover for one abusive cop. And, given the Vallejo PD's extreme disinterest in policing itself, Officer McLaughlin will likely continue to brutalize residents and be named in civil rights lawsuits for the remainder of his career, if past results are any indication of future results.

The city is apparently fine with blowing other people's money to buy its way out of litigation ushered into existence by the regrettable actions of officers neither the PD nor the city have shown any interest in holding accountable. Taxpayers may be able to choose their representation, but they can't choose who polices them, at least not directly. And as long as the city of Vallejo is willing to cover for its bad cops, city residents will continue to overpay for inadequate service.