City of Sacramento pays $70,000 settlement to man who was allegedly hit in face by officer
The city of Sacramento paid a $70,000 settlement to a Black man who was allegedly struck in the face by a police officer while lying in a hospital bed recovering from a gunshot wound.
In March 2018, Phayjjon McClellan was at UC Davis Medical Center recovering from a serious gunshot wound to his torso that pierced his liver, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court. He was intubated, with tubes running in and out of his body along with a colostomy bag.
Sacramento police officers Darby Lannom and Vincent Catricala, who were investigating the shooting, forced themselves into the hospital room and said they needed to question McClellan, despite his medically fragile state, the lawsuit alleged.
Lannom demanded McClellan give him the cellphone he was holding, the lawsuit said. Brenda Thomas-Rhodes, McClellan’s grandmother and legal guardian, told him the phone belonged to her granddaughter, who was not present to give permission for the police to search the phone. She said they should leave until they have a warrant to search and seize the phone, the lawsuit said.
Lannom then grabbed McClellan’s arm and attempted to wrestle the phone away, the lawsuit alleged. The officer twisted McClellan’s arm over his face, striking him in the face, the lawsuit alleged. Lannom hit McClellan’s lower lip so hard it became swollen, and applied so much pressure to his wounds that the bullet fragment lodged in his torso moved, endangering his life, and giving him sepsis, a life-threatening medical emergency, the lawsuit alleged.
The officers took the phone and left the room, and also confiscated McClellan’s phone from the hospital’s patient property storage, the lawsuit alleged.
In April 2018, Thomas-Rhodes filed a citizen’s complaint with the department. In August 2019, the department sent a letter to McClellan’s attorney Mark Merin informing him the department’s internal affairs division had sustained the complaint.
Despite that, the officers avoided discipline because the department delayed the investigation so it was not completed within one year, the lawsuit alleged.
According to The Police Officer’s Bill of Rights, officers cannot receive punitive action “if the investigation of the allegation is not completed within one year of the public agency’s discovery by a person authorized to initiate an investigation.”
In a statement, city spokesman Tim Swanson said the settlement agreement was “fair and reasonable.”
“As part of its commitment to fairness, justice and its residents, the City of Sacramento applies due diligence to every case it is involved in to determine the right legal response and best path forward,” Swanson said in an email.
Under a city resolution, the Tort Claims Committee must approve settlements between $50,000 and $100,000. That committee discussed the case in a closed-session meeting June 16. The Sacramento Bee obtained the settlement agreement from a California Public Records Act request.
The plaintiffs signed the settlement agreement in July 2021.
The alleged incident at the hospital occurred just two days after Sacramento police fatally shot Stephon Clark, an unarmed Black man, in his grandmother’s backyard, after they mistook his cellphone for a gun.
The McClellan lawsuit claimed retaliation, false detention/arrest, unreasonable force, unreasonable seizure, unreasonable search, violations of the Rehabilitation Act, Americans with Disabilities Act, and Bane Act. It named the city, the police department, former Police Chief Daniel Hahn, Lannom and Catricala as defendants.
As of April, Lannom and Catricala are still employed by the department, according to a list of city employees obtained by The Bee through a California Public Records Request. Catricala is an officer and Lannom is a sergeant.
This story was originally published February 3, 2022 at 5:25 AM.
