San Diego to pay $875K to unarmed man attacked by police dog, shot with bean bags

The city of San Diego has agreed to pay $875,000 to settle a federal lawsuit filed by a man who was unarmed and sitting on a retaining wall with his hands in the air when police officers shot him with multiple beanbag rounds and twice sicced a police dog on him last October outside an Encanto home.

The lawsuit filed by Marcus Evans accused the city, Police Chief Scott Wahl and nearly two dozen individual officers of violating his civil rights. Evans filed the lawsuit in March, and the City Council voted 6-1 during a closed session in July to approve the settlement. The council finalized the settlement last week during a public meeting.

Evans alleged that he was seriously injured during the encounter with police on Oct. 24, which was captured on camera by a freelance news videographer.

A Police Department spokesperson said last year that the Internal Affairs Unit was investigating the officers’ use of force against Evans. A spokesperson said Wednesday that investigation was still ongoing, but he declined to comment on the settlement. 

The First Amendment Coalition, a free speech advocacy group, has also sued the city over the incident involving Evans. The group alleged in a public records lawsuit filed in June that the San Diego Police Department violated California’s Public Records Act by refusing to hand over body-worn camera footage and other records from the incident. That lawsuit remains active in San Diego Superior Court.

The incident involving Evans, 32, unfolded after police responded to a home on Duluth Avenue for a 911 call reporting that a man with a gun had threatened a woman, according to details provided by police and alleged in both lawsuits. Three people inside the home came out with their hands raised and were detained by officers.

Evans exited the home barefoot and shirtless, wearing basketball shorts. He did not surrender to police, but the freelancer’s video footage showed that he appeared calm as he tried to speak with officers from a distance. At times during the interaction, he was seated on a retaining wall, and at times he stood with his hands raised. At one point while seated on the wall, an officer fired a bean bag round that struck him in the stomach, dropping him to the ground in pain.

While on the ground, officers fired additional bean bag rounds at Evans, including one that allegedly broke his leg, and twice sent a police dog at him. The video showed that during the second time, the dog latched onto Evans’ left forearm and violently thrashed as Evans cried out in pain. Officers then moved in and arrested him.

Evans’ lawsuit alleged that he “sustained serious injuries as a result of the unreasonable conduct and excessive force of SDPD officers.” It also alleged that more than a dozen officers, including supervisors, “stood around and watched” as other officers unlawfully escalated the situation.

“You cannot use force if passive resistance is the only thing that you’re encountering,” Dante Pride, one of Evans’ attorneys, said at a news conference last year.

The suit also claimed that the incident involving Evans, who is Black, fit into wider patterns of racial bias and misuse of police dogs by the San Diego Police Department.

“SDPD is and has been on notice of the glaring deficiencies in its policies and practices relating to racial inequality, yet the municipality has failed to address the issues,” the suit alleged.

Evans and his attorneys initially filed the lawsuit in Superior Court, but the defendants had it moved to federal court. The defendants had not filed any detailed response to the allegations before the case was settled.