The city of Santa Clara assures that the payment of a tremendous amount of money does not imply that they are recognizing irregularities on the part of their department of cop
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Sunday, September 29
Hispanic family killed by police in psychiatric crisis received $ 5.7 million
The city of Santa Clara paid $ 5.3 million last month to settle a lawsuit against the police brutality. It was the case of Jesús Geney Montes , who died more than four years ago at the hands of the police while experiencing a psychiatric outbreak.
The agreement is one of the largest which stems from a shooting carried out by the police in the region and is the second largest in the recent history of Santa Clara , according to The Mercury News . The previous one took place in 2017, when the city had to pay $ 6.7 million to a woman whose leg was broken when police forced her into their home without a warrant while officers attempted to arrest her teenage daughter.
The local government did not announce the agreement with the Montes family until he was required to answer a request for public records presented by the aforementioned media. The federal civil rights lawsuit, filed on behalf of Geney Montes’ parents Richard and Amanda Sommers, was scheduled to go to trial this month. But the monetary agreement came before.
“Nothing is going to bring Jesus back. Money will never make Amanda whole again, ”said the family’s attorney, Fulvio Cajina. “But the $ 5.3 million sends the message that the city did something wrong . In that sense, we are very happy with the agreement because we believe that we obtained justice for the family, “added the lawyer.
For its part, the city said in a statement that It was “a mutual agreement to help the family cope with the loss of a family member and did not is an admission of wrongdoing by the city police department or its staff. ”
“It is in the sincere hope that solving this case will help the family to begin to deal with the loss of his son , ”the statement continues. “The City Council felt that it was in the best interest of the Sommers family and the Santa Clara Police Department (SCPD) staff to approve the settlement of this case by their insurance company and not expose the parties involved to a difficult judgment. and emotional ”, he explains.
On March 9, 2017, Geney Montes received in her apartment five police visits while going through a mental health crisis . During the shooting, he barricaded himself in his room but later told police he had a gun and would fire if they entered, according to an investigation report from the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office.
In the video of the meeting you can see how the agent Colin Stewart shoots the Hispanic multiple times , but the prosecutor’s office cleared him of any responsibility for the deadly shooting.
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