What happened during an arrest Aug. 15, 2012, in St. Paul was a matter of dispute between the city and the man arrested, but a lawsuit over the incident is expected to end in a $23,000 settlement.
Garvin Warren Bryant, 43, said that when police pulled up and “swarmed” his car, he didn’t try to flee. But officers smashed Bryant’s car windows, pulled him out the window by his neck and ripped out his dialysis tubes in the process, his lawsuit said.
The St. Paul city attorney’s office denied that Bryant was compliant and said officers had to take him out of the car because they were trying “to prevent him from swallowing the narcotics he just placed in his mouth,” according to the city’s answer to the suit.
The St. Paul City Council is due to approve the settlement to Bryant and his attorney Wednesday. The city doesn’t admit liability in settling lawsuits.
Interim City Attorney Laura Pietan said it was in the city’s best interest to settle the case.
Pietan wrote in an email that the settlement amount “was reasonable given the costs and risks of continued litigation (i.e., trial depositions, witness fees and the resources and expenses associated with trial preparation and a jury trial) and the city’s liability exposure (damages and plaintiff’s attorney fees) if the jury believes the plaintiff’s version of the incident.”
The case unfolded in 2012, when officers said they got information from a confidential informant that a woman was going to meet a man at the SuperAmerica at Snelling and Englewood avenues to buy drugs, according to a criminal complaint filed against Bryant. The only charge, drug possession, was later dismissed.
Officers set up surveillance and saw a woman and man who fit the descriptions of the buyer and seller, and the informant confirmed that they were the ones involved, according to the complaint.
Bryant’s attorney, Frederick Goetz, wrote in the lawsuit that Bryant had pulled into the gas station, put his car in park and “was suddenly blocked in by two large, black SUV-type vehicles; one from the front and one from the back. Eight police officers, many with guns drawn, got out … (Bryant) immediately raised his arms.”
Bryant had tubes in his abdomen because he required dialysis for a chronic renal disease, and the tubes were ripped out when the officers dragged him out of the car, the lawsuit said.
Officers “threw Mr. Bryant on the ground and, though they had complete control of him and he was nonresistive, they punched him repeatedly in the torso and sprayed chemical irritant in his face,” the complaint said. “Many of the officers then filed false police reports.”
The federal lawsuit claimed unreasonable seizure and use of force and sought more than $50,000 in damages.
“Mr. Bryant is pleased he was able to come to a resolution with the city and is looking forward to putting this matter behind him and moving on with his life,” Goetz said Monday.
In police reports obtained by the Pioneer Press, an officer wrote that Bryant’s car was still in drive when they tried to stop him, and his vehicle continued to move forward and “made contact” with the bumper of a police vehicle. Bryant put his vehicle in reverse to try to flee the area, an officer wrote, but he couldn’t, because the other police vehicle was behind him.
Officers wrote in police reports that Bryant didn’t comply with their orders and they saw him put something in his mouth.
An officer wrote they needed to get into the vehicle immediately to stop evidence from being destroyed and “prevent Bryant from getting ill from the consumption of narcotics.”
The drugs were identified as 1.6 grams of cocaine, the criminal complaint said.
Goetz moved to suppress evidence in the criminal case, saying Bryant and the car were illegally searched because officers didn’t have probable cause to believe he had committed a crime. The judge agreed, and the Ramsey County attorney’s office dismissed the case because they no longer had enough evidence to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, according to a spokesman for the prosecutors’ office.
In 2009, Bryant pleaded guilty to a drug possession case in Ramsey County; that charge was dismissed when he completed probation.
Bryant’s lawsuit in the 2012 case named officers Teip Vixayvong, Steve J. Anderson, Kevin R. Sullivan, James D. Labarre and Christian A. Larsen. Some have been named in excessive-force complaints in the past that resulted in settlements.
Sullivan was one of the St. Paul officers involved in a January 2012 case that ended in a $95,000 settlement last year.
Anderson was one of the officers involved in a case that settled for $42,500 in 1999.
Mara H. Gottfried can be reached at 651-228-5262. Follow her at twitter.com/MaraGottfried.
