A deaf man has filed a lawsuit claiming he was brutally assaulted by four Hawthorne police officers while he packed his car with snowboarding equipment just before he went to his regular Bible study class a year ago.
The suit, filed this week by the Greater Los Angeles Agency on Deafness, alleges Hawthorne police committed civil rights violations under the federal Americans with Disabilities Act and used unnecessary aggression against the plaintiff, Jonathan Meister.
Four officers who grappled with Meister during his arrest at 6:30 p.m. on Feb. 13, 2013, said he was wildly resisting and threatened them.
“We’re really concerned about the problem of law enforcement and people who are deaf,” said Meister’s attorney, Paula Pearlman. “He wasn’t doing anything other than trying to get away from people who were hurting him.”
Meister was removing boxes and bags he stored in the backyard of his friend’s home in the 3500 block of West 147th Street when a neighbor saw him, thought he looked suspicious and called out to him. Meister, who didn’t hear the calls, didn’t respond, so the neighbor phoned police.
The neighborhood had experienced a recent rash of burglaries, so when officers arrived they were concerned about encountering a burglar, according to police reports.
Officers “watched Mr. Meister as he walked through the gate, out of the backyard, carrying some of his personal belongings to his car,” the complaint states. When Meister saw the officers, he put down the boxes and gestured that he couldn’t hear them. He walked over to them but, as he approached, officers grabbed his wrists and turned him around.
“Because he is deaf, Mr. Meister depends on using his hands while facing a person to communicate,” the complaint states. “The officers’ sudden aggression, which both caused pain and interfered with his ability to communicate, caused Mr. Meister reflexively to pull his hands away, hop back over the fence and step toward the gate … to create some space so that he could communicate.”
The two officers who initially responded began grappling with Meister for control of his arms to handcuff him, but Meister kept wriggling away, according to police reports. Two more officers arrived and entered the fight.
Hawthorne police Officer Erica Bristow wrote that, when she arrived, Officers Jeffrey Tysl and Jeffrey Salmon were struggling to get handcuffs on Meister.
“I immediately grabbed onto Meister’s legs in an attempt to help them gain control of Meister, but I was unable to get a hold of both legs,” Bristow’s report states. “I felt someone pull my hair so I raised my head up to see that it was Meister grabbing only my hair.”
Salmon then shot Meister with a stun gun, or Taser, and the man fell to the ground, flailing his arms and legs. Officers kicked and grappled with Meister but still couldn’t get control of his limbs, so Bristow Tased him twice. Officer Mark Hultgren also Tased him and deployed a “drive stun” to his abdomen.
According to police reports, officers then flipped him onto his stomach, sat on him and handcuffed him.
Though officers described Meister as being “increasingly more aggressive and violent,” Meister was never charged with a crime. He was taken to the jail at the Hawthorne police station and later released.
According to the suit, “this incident occurred in substantial part because the HPD does not provide its officers the training and resources to serve people who are deaf or hard of hearing.” Hawthorne police failed “to provide effective communication to deaf and hard of hearing individuals, including himself, who come into contact and interact with the HPD, thereby discriminating against them.”
Hawthorne Police Department officials, who just received the complaint Wednesday, said they do not comment on pending litigation.
The complaint alleges that Hawthorne does not have a policy on dealing with deaf or hearing-impaired crime suspects, and the Police Department did not immediately provide the Daily Breeze with any such policy. The suit states the department should have auxiliary aids and services for the deaf, and access to a translator or similar service.
