LAPD officers go on trial over excessive force claims during 2020 Dodgers celebrations

LOS ANGELES (CN) — Two Los Angeles Police Department officers went on trial Tuesday on claims they violated the civil rights of a college student who says he was hit in the eye by a rubber bullet during early morning celebrations after the LA Dodgers won the World Series in 2020.

Isaac Castellanos, who was 22 years old at the time, had driven up from Long Beach to downtown LA with a group of friends to watch the celebrations on the evening of Oct. 27, 2020, his attorney Pedram Esfandiary told the jury in his opening statement.

“They weren’t violent, they weren’t a threat to anyone, they weren’t rioting,” Esfandiary said. “They were celebrating.”

Nevertheless, a group of 31 LAPD officers in riot gear disembarked nearby to disperse the crowd that had gathered at an intersection near the Crypto.com Arena. Without warning, according to the attorney, two officers fired their 37 mm launchers at the crowd that had already started to retreat from the intersection, hitting Castellanos in the right eye and leaving him with permanent loss of vision.

The officers fired the so-called less-lethal weapons in violation of LAPD policy because they were too far away to be in accurate range for the weapons, they weren’t facing aggressive or combative demonstrators — though the attorney acknowledged that a glass bottle had been thrown in the direction of the police — and they didn’t issue a verbal dispersal order, Esfandiary told the jurors.

“Mr. Castellanos had no opportunity to leave the area before force was used against him,” the lawyer said.

Castellanos sued the city and the police officers in 2022. He claims the police violated his Fourth Amendment right to be free of excessive force and his 14th Amendment right to due process. In addition, he has California state law claims for assault, battery and negligence.

As a result of the injury, Castellanos now has a large, black mark in the center of his vision from his right eye, which renders the eye essentially useless, according to his attorney. The injury has derailed his promising career as a professional esports player.

Castellanos took the stand as the first witness and told the jurors how he and his friends, four young men and four young women, had come to downtown LA to check out the festivities after the Dodgers secured their first World Series victory in more than 30 years.

“We were just taken in the environment,” he said. “People were having fun, playing music.”

Around 1 a.m., police arrived down the street from the intersection where they were standing and started to move toward the crowd.

Some of his friends had already started to move away, but when Castellanos — who described himself as the “dad” of their group — turned around to make sure another one of his friends was with him, he got struck in the eye with what he believed was a rubber bullet.

“I felt immediate pain and pressure on my brain,” he testified. “It felt like my eye was going into my head.”

A friend who lived nearby drove him to their home, from where he called his father, himself a former policeman. His father took him to the hospital in Long Beach, where he was examined.

Michael Williamson, an attorney for the city and the police officers, said in his opening statement that there was no evidence that Castellanos was at the intersection by the time police arrived, and there was no evidence that he had been hit by a police projectile.

The projectiles used in the 37 mm launchers are made of foam, not rubber, Williamson told the jury, and there was no evidence that the velocity of those fired over a purportedly long distance would be able to do the damage Castellanos claims to his eye.

The two officers will testify that they didn’t target anyone but fired a round at the ground in front of the people at the intersection to “skip” the projectiles for crowd control per department policy.

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