A jury awarded the daughter of a man who died after a 2019 encounter with the Los Angeles Police Department in Van Nuys $13.5 million last week after finding two officers used excessive force while lying on top of him for more than four minutes.
The two officers only got off of the 50-year-old Jacobo Juarez Cedillo after he appeared to lose consciousness while pinned to the ground in the 7200 block of Woodman Avenue on April 8, 2019, according to multiple videos of the incident.
More than 10 minutes later, with Los Angeles Fire Department paramedics looking on, Cedillo suddenly appeared to wake back up and writhe on the ground. For about three more minutes, the officers resumed pinning Cedillo, with one pressing his knees into the man’s back and holding his head down as the paramedics prepared a gurney for him.
The second instance of officers pinning Cedillo, captured via the dashboard camera of an LAPD cruiser that arrived at the scene after the initial arrest, was played for the jury during the three-day trial that ended Friday, Oct. 13. The footage was not included in LAPD’s initial video release of Cedillo’s arrest, which began when the two officers were called for a report of a man lying in the gas station’s driveway.
Cedillo died five days later in a hospital. The coroner’s office found Cedillo died from a combination of loss of blood flow to his brain, cardiopulmonary arrest and the effects of methamphetamines in his system. However, his cause of death remained undetermined.
The jury last week agreed the two officers, Dustin Richmond and Joseph Hunt, caused Cedillo’s death through the use of excessive force. They also faulted the city of Los Angeles for failing to train the officers in the risks associated with pinning him in a prone position, leading to what’s known as positional asphyxia.
About a year after Cedillo’s death, George Floyd would die in a similar manner while being held on the ground by police in Minneapolis. A recording of his arrest would lead to nationwide protests over police brutality.
That same year, the Los Angeles Police Commission banned officers from using carotid restraints, chokehold and prone restraints that risk blocking blood flow to a detained person’s brain. California legislators later outlawed such restraints statewide in 2020.
Only now has the full video of Cedillo’s death been released, despite LAPD policy requiring the department to publish video footage of critical incidents involving their officers.
LAPD did not return a request for comment about Friday’s verdict. The department did not answer questions about discipline for either of the officers involved in the incident.
According to court documents, attorneys for the city and the officers argued in court that Richmond and Hunt’s actions “were objectively reasonable given the circumstances.” They said both officers believed Cedillo was under the influence of drugs and might be a danger to himself.
WARNING: Images and language in videos referenced in this story may be disturbing
The original video LAPD posted to its YouTube account is just over 12 minutes, edited together with voiceover from a department commander. The video shows Richmond and Hunt’s initial encounter with Cedillo: As they pull up to the gas station, Cedillo is seated in the driveway. He places his hands behind his back and the officers handcuff him. He tells the officers he has a court date soon and that he is homeless but that he wants to “work tomorrow.”
“I don’t think you’re scared, man,” one officer says. “We’re just trying to figure out why you’re lying down on the driveway.”
“I don’t feel good,” Cedillo tells them. “I want to go to work.”
The officers bring Cedillo over to their cruiser, where they continue to talk to him, telling him they’re going to search his pockets. Cedillo tells them repeatedly that he has nothing in his pockets, but as they begin to search him he begins to struggle with them.
Richmond and Hunt take Cedillo to the ground and the video cuts away — both of their cameras become obscured as they wrestle with the man. LAPD said the officers’ cameras fell off during the encounter.
The longer video, provided to the Southern California News Group by the attorneys for Cedillo’s daughter, Nicole Juarez Zelaya, is nearly a half hour, combining the footage from the officer’s body worn cameras, security cameras from the gas station, and the dashboard camera attached to the cruiser an LAPD supervisor drove to the scene.
The video captures Cedillo’s repeated pleas for help — as the officers struggle with him on the ground, he calls out to a man walking by toward the gas station store.
“Hey, amigo!” Cedillo appears to yell. The man turns around briefly before leaving.
The officers continue to order him to stop resisting as he wheezes.
“Calm down, sir,” one officer says.
Several other officers arrive about three minutes later. One officer tells Cedillo he has a bean bag shotgun trained on him.
One of the first officers tells a supervisor who has arrived that they “just detained (Cedillo) to make sure he’s OK.” They also tell the supervisor they don’t suspect Cedillo of a crime.
“No,” he says, according to the video, “we were just going to check his pockets and that’s when he just started flipping out.”
After about another minute, Cedillo’s shouts slow. The attorneys’ video picks up audio of Cedillo coughing and sputtering before he stops speaking entirely. The officers then roll him on his side, notice Cedillo’s blank expression as they shine a flashlight in his face and call for paramedics. It took another 13 minutes for LAFD to arrive.
As the paramedics set up their gurney, Cedillo suddenly appears to bolt awake and begins screaming.
“No, no, no,” one officer says as they resume pinning him.
Cedillo again goes quiet as the paramedics get him on the gurney and load him into the ambulance.
Speaking outside the U.S. Courthouse in Downtown L.A. on Monday, Oct. 16, Zelaya, Cedillo’s daughter, said she pursued the lawsuit to hold LAPD and the city accountable for her father’s death.
“It’s hard to think about what I’ve lost in terms of losing my dad unjustly,” Zelaya said, according to Fox 11. “My dad was a great man — he loved me, he cared for me, and I knew to my core that I was loved by him.”
This is the second major decision against the city in a police brutality case in just two months. In August, the mother of Jesse Murillo, a 32-year-old U.S. Navy veteran who was running away from LAPD Topanga Division officers in Canoga Park when they shot him to death, won $23 million following a jury trial.
Murillo’s case also involved video of the incident. Dale Galipo, a Woodland Hills attorney, represented the families in both cases.
In August, he said the city requiring officers to wear body-worn cameras that capture incidents they get involved in directly led to the two verdicts.
“To this day I think officers are surprised that people look at their body-worn camera footage and come to a different decision than they do, or their department does, or the (District Attorney’s office) does,” he said following the Murillo verdict.
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