GEN - Officers want to sue arrestees for injuries

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Albuquerque Journal June 20, 2001

Officers Want To Sue Arrestees for Injuries

By Scott Sandlin, Journal Staff Writer

Police are charged with upholding the law. They don't usually sue the people they have arrested.

But Albuquerque attorney Mark Jaffe and his police officer clients say that should change.

Jaffe has filed a lawsuit on behalf of two Albuquerque Police Department officers against two people arrested in a cocaine bust who allegedly tried to run over the arresting officers.

Jaffe wants people to know they may have more to worry about than jail time if they get rough with police.

"Police officers," he said, "are asked to be social workers and mediators and dog catchers and parents and sharpshooters and uncles and aunts and civil rights lawyers on every arrest that they make. People need to stop trying to run over them or wrestle with them when they're trying to do their duty."

In a lawsuit filed in Bernalillo County District Court in May, Detective Robert Dilley and officer James Vautier are suing to recover damages from Denver residents Michael Lee Romero and Stephanie Vallejos for injuries stemming from a Jan. 7, 1999, drug bust.

Vallejos was not charged with any criminal wrongdoing, Jaffe said.

Dilley and Vautier were part of a team making the arrest after Romero attempted to buy a kilo of cocaine.

According to allegations in the lawsuit, Romero ignored police demands and attempted to flee in a Jeep Grand Cherokee — first by ramming the police car and then by attempting to run over it.

Dilley sustained shoulder injuries; Vautier hurt his ankle, head and neck.

They received workers' compensation, but as one experienced police lawyer noted, there are far more compensable injuries than those covered by the workers' comp law.

So the two officers are seeking both actual and punitive damages from the defendants and their insurance companies.

One of the defendants, Romero, entered a plea and agreed to forfeit the Jeep, a cell phone and $13,000 of the $16,460 in cash Romero was carrying at the time of his arrest, according to court documents.

Jaffe just settled a 1999 Colfax County case in which a DWI defendant allegedly beat up the arresting officer, Douglas Dixon. In that case, the defendant owned property and agreed to a stipulated judgment against him of $110,000.

But as Luis Robles, an eight-year veteran of defending APD cases for the city, notes, "You can't bleed a turnip."

"My experience is that it's very rare," Robles said of cases like the Dixon lawsuit.

Robles, now in private practice defending police and corrections officers on contract, said, generally speaking, officers aren't encouraged to bring counterclaims.

"It's not that officers don't want to bring them," Robles said. "They do. But it makes it look like the cop is greedy."

And there's also that turnip matter.

Paul Kennedy and Mary Han, Albuquerque lawyers who sue police more frequently than they represent them, think civil lawsuits are not so unusual, but that it's hard to get any money from them.

Still, they have a case in the works that will involve claims against an electronics store on behalf of three officers who allegedly were beaten up by a shoplifter and a store employee during the after-Thanksgiving sale frenzy.

"It was just one of these completely surprise attacks, where an officer gets clobbered," Han said.

Such cases aren't high profile, she said.

Jaffe also wants punitive damages on behalf of his clients.

"I think a jury will be furious that their officers who protect the citizens are put in this kind of position," Jaffe said. "I think they're going to want to protect officers. ... Maybe this will deter people from doing stupid things like this."

-- Anonymous, June 21, 2001


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