A Concord man is suing the Vallejo police officer who pulled a gun on him during an August 2018 off-duty argument outside of a pizzeria.
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in federal court, alleges Vallejo Officer David McLaughlin used excessive force when he “unlawfully brandished his gun” before taking Santiago Hutchins to the ground and striking the man repeatedly in the head.
The lawsuit also names a yet-to-be-identified San Francisco sheriff’s deputy, who was also off-duty at the time of the incident, and an unknown Walnut Creek police officer, for failing to stop McLaughlin’s alleged excessive force.
The Burrell incident wasn’t the first time mobile phone recordings revealed what looks like abusive behavior on the part of McLaughlin.
Roughly six months before, on August 11, 2018, McLaughlin was walking into a pizzeria while off-duty and out of uniform when he locked eyes with Vallejo resident Santiago Hutchins. Hutchins claimed McLaughlin asked him what he was looking at. The two started jawing at each other, but instead of shrugging it off, McLaughlin drew his gun and pointed it at Hutchins.
“We made eye contact,” Hutchins told local news outlets. “He asked me what I was looking at, and I asked him what he wanted. We got into a verbal altercation. At that point, he pulled out his gun.”
Witnesses, unaware McLaughlin was a cop, pulled out their cellphones, called 911, and started recording. Hutchins’ family, sitting inside the pizzeria, watched as several Walnut Creek police officers arrived and tackled Hutchins.
Cellphone footage obtained by local news station KTVU shows McLaughlin then punching and elbowing Hutchins while two other officers hold him down. The beating bloodied Hutchins’ face, and he required stitches above one of his eyes. Hutchins was arrested on suspicion of disturbing the peace, according to the East Bay Times, but the charges were later dropped.
Sanjay Schmidt, Hutchins’ attorney, filed an internal affairs complaint with the Vallejo Police Department on Hutchins’ behalf in October. The response? “Crickets chirping,” he says.
Schmidt says no one from the department followed up to interview Hutchins, or even acknowledged it had received the complaint.
McLaughlin was put on leave on Feb. 4, three days after local news obtained the footage and reported he was the same officer from the Burrell incident.
Hutchins filed an excessive force claim, a precursor to a civil rights lawsuit, against Vallejo several days later. In April, Vallejo rejected his claim, writing that McLaughlin was not on-duty as a city employee when the incident happened.
Without the cellphone video, the public wouldn’t have had the opportunity to witness McLaughlin’s actions for themselves, and he might never have been put on leave. “To me it was interesting that there were now two incidents in which Mclaughlin was caught—two incidents in which individuals had the presence of mind to get out their cellphones and record,” Schmidt says.
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Hutchins v. City of Vallejo et al
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