Jury awards $3 million to ex-SWAT sergeant who alleged 'mafia' culture in LAPD unit

[ad_1] Timothy Colomey stated his fellow Los Angeles cops had a nickname for him after he transferred out of SWAT: “High Rope.”

It was a reference to knowledgeable wrestler flinging himself from the highest rope of a hoop and flooring his opponent, Colomey stated. A former senior SWAT sergeant, Colomey had aggressively taken down loads of suspects throughout his profession, however in response to his testimony at a civil trial that performed out in a downtown courthouse in current weeks, the nickname insinuated he was attempting to flatten his outdated unit by spilling its darkest secrets and techniques.

Colomey, 55, has made allegations of “illegal killings” by SWAT members and division cover-ups of the alleged misconduct. He claimed a cadre of senior officers, a so-called “SWAT mafia,” exercised “god-like energy” over who was allowed into the elite unit and the way it operated, making a “tradition of violence” that glorified lethal pressure.

Colomey first filed swimsuit in 2020, alleging he was pressured out of SWAT and confronted retaliation for blowing the whistle, and later filed a second declare the next 12 months.

A jury discovered that Colomey’s declare had advantage, ruling in his favor Wednesday afternoon and awarding him about $3.5 million in damages. A visibly emotional Colomey turned and kissed his spouse on the brow as the decision was learn.

In an interview afterward, Colomey stated he was optimistic that the brand new LAPD chief would take a critical take a look at the SWAT unit’s operations.

“I’m hoping that others which can be behind me, that have been right here, that risked lots to indicate up and inform the reality, that they’ll be protected,” he stated.

Throughout the trial, Colomey and his attorneys described how he fell into melancholy and even turned fearful for his life after he blew the whistle on his SWAT colleagues. He stated he was transferred to much less fascinating put up supervising bomb-sniffing canine at LAX, which took away his extra time and stripped him of his supervisory duties.

Earlier than his switch, Colomey thought-about himself a marked man by these loyal to the SWAT mafia, he testified in courtroom. In a single incident recounted by a number of witnesses, one of many unit’s two lieutenants, Chester “Lee” McMillion, convened an off-the-cuff assembly of SWAT officers on the division’s coaching academy in Elysian Park and allegedly instructed them that “we have now enemies inside this platoon.”

A kind of current testified that McMillion additionally made reference to a replica of a grievance on his desk, suggesting that he had learn Colomey’s feedback — although statements to Inner Affairs are supposed to remain secret.

After that assembly, he stated, he was ostracized.

“I'm a ghost. I’m ignored. I’m talked about behind my again. And I do know it: I’m a rat. I’m listed as a rat,” Colomey stated. “Nobody will speak to me. It’s most likely very harmful to speak to me, when you have something to do with SWAT.”

The trial pulled the curtain again on rifts inside one of many LAPD’s most storied — and infamous — models. The LAPD was among the many first police departments to have a devoted tactical staff, forming SWAT within the wake of the 1965 Watts rebellion. The unit developed such a giant popularity worldwide that former Chief Daryl Gates famously boasted in 1980 that his SWAT staff may rescue American hostages being held in Iran. However the unit’s ways and tradition have additionally been the topic of quite a few crucial stories over time.

Colomey first raised his considerations with Inner Affairs in 2018, he stated, when an investigation was launched into an nameless grievance alleging he and the unit’s different supervisor, Lt. Ruben Lopez, had proven preferential therapy and submitted false paperwork in a SWAT coaching academy. The division’s investigation concluded that the allegations have been unfounded.

In courtroom filings, Colomey accused officers of protecting up incidents by which officers have been struck by pleasant fireplace, displaying as much as calls drunk and taking part in hazing rituals with newer members. Division higher-ups, he stated, coated up such conduct.

Though the vast majority of the unit’s operations have been resolved with out firing a shot, Colomey stated the SWAT mafia’s “groupthink” sometimes led to preventable deaths. Stopping wanting calling them murders, he singled out three “illegal” killings by the SWAT unit, together with the 2017 taking pictures of an unarmed man by a sniper in a circling helicopter; a nonfatal taking pictures the identical 12 months of a person holed up inside a shed; and the 2014 loss of life of a mentally ailing homeless man named Carlos Ocana who fell off a billboard atop a downtown constructing after an officer shot him with a Taser.

In his opening arguments, Colomey’s lawyer Greg Smith stated that police leaders sought in any respect prices to guard the picture of SWAT, which he known as “the crown jewel of the Los Angeles Police Division.”’

Christopher Cianci, an lawyer employed by the town of Los Angeles to argue on its behalf, painted Colomey as a bitter and headstrong officer on a downward spiral who lashed out at former associates who tried to assist him. Cianci known as the previous SWAT sergeant’s whistleblower declare the act of a determined man attempting to take his colleagues down with him as he himself got here underneath investigation.

The protection argued that Colomey suspected that the nameless grievance in opposition to him had been lodged by Wilson Wong, a former SWAT officer with whom he had a previous battle. Cianci maintained that Colomey sought to have Wong transferred into his unit, so he may make the junior officer’s “life a dwelling hell,” as Colomey had allegedly instructed one other colleague.

Colomey denied the allegations about Wong from the witness stand and stated he had purpose to be cautious of blowback.

“In an effort to shield the secrets and techniques, and I believe I’m solely the tip of the iceberg right here. ... They may do something to cover 100% what I imagine is going on in SWAT,” Colomey testified.

Colomey stated he ceaselessly nervous for his security whereas participating in often-dangerous coaching workouts by which his life was in his colleagues’ palms, together with these by which the unit would rappel down the perimeters of San Francisco high-rises or practising scuba diving.

On cross-examination, Cianci pressed Colomey on why, if he felt the issues have been so entrenched, he hadn’t raised them with the unit’s management.

“It couldn’t be dealt with inside SWAT; it wanted a right away Inner Affairs investigation into this — it was getting harmful,” he responded.

“Why didn’t you go to the inspector normal? Why didn’t you go to the mayor’s workplace?” Cianci stated.

Colomey stated that on the time he “nonetheless believed” within the division’s resolve to analyze itself, and wasn’t as involved about effecting cultural change as he was about exposing the civil rights violations that he believed had been dedicated.

By reporting the alleged misconduct exterior the division, he nervous about doubtlessly portray a goal on his again.

“This speaking about individuals dying is one thing that’s very harmful to do inside any police division, inside any tradition associated to legislation enforcement,” he stated.

Colomey was at odds together with his direct bosses, Lopez and McMillion, the 2 SWAT lieutenants.

McMillion testified that he felt any perceived points ought to’ve been dealt with in-house at SWAT. He denied that he’d made feedback about “enemies” who had spoken to Inner Affairs, or that he had threatened Colomey. He stated the feedback have been about 4 retirees from the unit who have been “power gripers.”

As their battle escalated, McMillion stated, Colomey turned “straightforward to anger,” and “simply illiberal of opinions apart from his.”

Colomey stated he took his frustrations all the best way as much as Bob Inexperienced, chief of workers to then-Chief Michel Moore. Throughout a 2019 assembly, Colomey stated, he revealed “lots of damaging data,” however Inexperienced tried to speak him out of creating a grievance, saying “that if Chief Moore obtained concerned on this, they must dismantle SWAT. And I’m not going to permit that, Tim.”

Inexperienced allegedly continued: “Tim, I do know we have to get you outta there, however we can't help you blow up the place on the best way out.”

In his testimony, Inexperienced denied attempting to intimidate Colomey into remaining silent. As a substitute, he stated he introduced up an expertise from early on in his personal profession to indicate Colomey {that a} change of surroundings may profit him if he was feeling burned out.

Colomey nonetheless works for the LAPD, however has been on injured depart for months and plans to retire subsequent fall. The ordeal has taken a toll, he stated. He averages about three hours of sleep an evening and took anti-anxiety remedy to attempt to maintain his common panic assaults underneath management, he stated. “I attempt to cover stuff from my spouse, like after I cry at night time,” he stated.

The protection cited Colomey’s look on a division podcast, “Born in Boston: A SWAT Story,” by which he detailed how the “majority” of SWAT coaching emphasised de-escalation. Studying from a transcript of the episode, Cianci requested whether or not Colomey nonetheless stood by his feedback that “99.99%” of SWAT incidents are resolved peacefully.

“I’m extra involved about that point-1 % which can be unnecessarily lifeless at this time,” Colomey stated.

Among the many most damning testimony was that delivered by Lt. Jennifer Grasso. The primary girl in SWAT whose likeness appeared in division recruitment posters, she described Colomey because the unit’s “go-to sergeant,” who at all times struck her as being “calm, cool and picked up.”

Grasso has filed her personal authorities declare in opposition to the town, alleging that she was denied a promotion in retaliation for her determination to testify on Colomey’s behalf. From the witness stand she recounted a dialog with Lopez, the previous SWAT lieutenant and a mentor of hers, by which he ordered her to “maintain her f— mouth shut” after a 2017 incident by which one SWAT officer might have by accident shot one other.

“What did you're taking it to imply when he stated ‘maintain your mouth shut’?” Smith requested.

“I took it to imply that we must always not discuss what occurred that day,” she responded.

Grasso testified that SWAT members mercilessly derided a fellow officer, Phillip Peery, when he selected to hunt cowl throughout the incident as an alternative of placing himself into the road of fireplace. For weeks afterward, the chatter throughout the unit was about him being a coward and that he “didn’t have what it takes.”

Within the fall of 2019, Grasso stated, she was summoned to a gathering with two division higher-ups, one in every of whom was Deputy Chief Pete Zarcone. She was instructed it could be “off-campus” — code for going down away from prying eyes of headquarters downtown. They met at a small restaurant in Carson, close to the campus of Cal State Dominguez Hills.

Zarcone instructed her on the assembly that “he needed me again in SWAT for my management and for my expertise.” She replied that she couldn’t return so long as Lopez and McMillion have been in cost, saying that they “had helped sort of create this tradition that I used to be complaining about.”

“They enabled it, they benefited from it, and I couldn't probably return due to these two males who have been nonetheless accountable for SWAT,” she recalled saying.

Zarcone assured her that she may change tradition along with her management. She stated she doubted it, contemplating that Colomey couldn’t make a dent regardless of his efforts. “Essentially the most highly effective sergeant within the division, he was kicked out,” Grasso stated, wiping away tears.

When it was his activate the witness stand, Lopez testified that the SWAT unit had undergone dramatic adjustments to the best way it operated lately, with a heavy emphasis on de-escalating encounters. Among the many adjustments have been overhauling the choice course of and sustaining a database of makes use of of pressure by officers, in order that they may discover any worrying patterns.

In his closing remarks, Smith instructed jurors that the case was not a lot about believing whether or not the “SWAT mafia” existed as Colomey alleged. Fairly it was about how the division responded to an officer like Colomey when he got here ahead.

“My perception is that the protection used the SWAT mafia incidents to conjure up dust about Colomey,” Smith stated. “We don’t actually care in regards to the SWAT mafia incidents.”

“He thought that the [academies] have been being operated in a manner that created a want to shoot versus a want to finish issues peacefully,” Smith stated. “No person right here is saying that SWAT is a corporation that shouldn’t exist.”

The jury foreperson, Robert Elmquist, stated it took lower than two days of deliberations to succeed in a call, with the one disagreement coming over the quantity of damages they believed Colomey was owed for emotional misery. Two jurors had argued for a decrease determine, stated Elmquist, 60, a truck driver by commerce.

He stated it appeared like many of the protection witnesses “weren’t giving out lots of data,” whereas Colomey had provided a compelling narrative about his efforts to repair the issues he noticed at SWAT.