(CN) — The bulk of wrongful death claims against Las Vegas police officers accused killing a 50-year old Black bicyclist during an arrest five years ago will continue on after a federal judge ruled Tuesday that they may have used excessive force in the arrest and are not shielded by qualified immunity.
In 2021, the family of Byron Williams sued the city of Las Vegas, Clark County, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and the four officers who interacted with Williams the early morning of Sept. 19, 2019, when they stopped him for purportedly not having his bike lights on.
During the subsequent pursuit and arrest, the family says two Las Vegas police officers, Patrick Campbell and Benjamin Vasquez, put their weight on Williams while handcuffing him and kneeled there even though Williams told them he couldn’t breathe. They plaintiffs also say officers at the scene did not summon a medic despite Williams’ complaints that he couldn’t breathe, and body camera footage showed some officers joking while Williams was being restrained.
U.S. Senior District Judge James Mahan denied summary judgment to the officers on excessive force and battery claims, ruling that the officers’ conduct during the stop may not be reasonable because of how minor the offense was.
The officers argued that the bicycle stop was not the underlying offense, but that it was the more major crime of evading arrest. Mahan was unconvinced, writing that the underlying offense is the offense which the officers first tried to stop Williams: the bicycle light infraction.
In allowing the excessive force claims to survive, Mahan noted that while Williams did initially run from the officers, he had given himself up by the time they attempted to handcuff him.
“By the time the officers reached him, Williams was no longer ‘actively’ resisting arrest. And — at least two officers were present to handcuff Williams and maintained weight on Williams even after he was successfully handcuffed,” Mahan wrote. “A jury could reasonably find that Williams ‘posed only a minimal threat to anyone’s safety’ once on the ground and handcuffed and that the officers used excessive force by continuing to kneel on him post-handcuffing.”
The officers argued that Williams struggled for 41 seconds while they tried to handcuff him, which justified their decision to maintain their weight on him.
Mahan wrote that that argument was an attempt to frame disputed facts in the officers’ favor, and said that body camera footage from the scene contradicts the officers’ arguments because it shows the officers keeping their weight on Williams well after he was placed in handcuffs.
Mahan also determined that the officers do not have qualified immunity for Williams' handcuffing, though they did still retain it for moving him to secondary location afterwards. The judge also determined that the plaintiffs could not claim the police department signed off on the officers' actions, as "it did not make an explicit finding that the officers’ act of kneeling on Williams was an LVMPD-approved policy."
The judge also ruled in favor of the officers on the claim that they disregarded Williams' medical needs, finding they did call for medical assistance and had no way of knowing he was already suffering from heart and lung conditions beforehand.
The officers had also argued that they should not be held liable because the restraint was not the primary reason that Williams died.
His official cause of death was from heart disease, scarred lungs and methamphetamine, they argued, but this leaves out their role in Williams' death, Mahan said.
“The coroner who performed the autopsy in this case, Dr. Corneal, stated that placing Williams in a prone restraint was one of the contributing factors to his death. She explains that the officers’ placement of Williams in a prone restraint position could have ‘compromised his ability to breathe out,’” Mahan wrote. “She additionally adds that, though she cannot say how much of a contributing factor the prone restraint was to Williams's death, it was ‘significant’ and ‘part of why he is deceased.’”
Attorneys for both parties did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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