Hoping to collect at least $300,000 in damages as alleged victims of unlawful police actions in August 2012, an Anaheim man, who vomited on a cop's shoes, and his mother entered federal court in December and are emerging this month officially on the hook to pay the bills of two triumphant officers.
Plaintiff Steve Perez claimed Anaheim officers Stephen Craig and Stephen Salicos committed excessive force when they dragged him from his family's house during a 1:30 a.m. domestic dispute and beat his face bloody, a scene Perez's mother and co-plaintiff, Petra Feria, said caused her emotional distress.
But U.S. District Court Judge James V. Selna issued Jan. 5 orders that finalized December jury verdicts in favor of Anaheim police officers Stephen Craig and Stephen Salicos, who insisted they'd used lawful force to subdue a heavily-intoxicated, combative Perez.
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Craig suffered a left hip injury during the incident and the city received a related $2,762 medical benefits expense, costs Perez–who'd previously admitted resisting arrest during the incident–must now pay.
The plaintiffs claimed Craig injured himself while committing excessive force ignited by anger about the vomiting, the refusal of Perez to obey an order to go to bed and Feria's attempt to film the officers.
Inside Orange County's Ronald Reagan Federal Courthouse, Selna will also stick Perez and Feria with Anaheim's legal bills to defend Craig and Salicos, but hasn't yet determined the amount.
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CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.