A resident of Salt Lake City is suing the city, the Utah Department of Corrections, Salt Lake City Police Chief Mike Brown and several SLCPD officers in Utah’s Third District Court, claiming police tased him and beat him until he was unconscious, according to court documents filed Friday.
The court documents say that on August 18, 2017, Matthew Garcia-Bengochea was sitting in the parking lot of an Econo Lodge hotel at 715 West and North Temple in Salt Lake City. The lawsuit alleges that three officers emerged from an unmarked sedan and shouted at Garcia-Bengochea before surrounding him.
The officers who allegedly approached Garcia-Bengochea did not identify themselves or the department they worked for, the documents state, and he’s hoping to identify the officers as part of the discovery process of this lawsuit.
Garcia-Bengochea says he asked if he was under arrest, according to court filings. The officers told him he wasn’t. Garcia-Bengochea attempted to walk away in “hopes to de-escalate the situation,” the filings state. As he turned away, one of the officers fired their Taser without warning and hit him in the back, sending him to the ground, the case alleges.
One officer lifted Garcia-Bengochea and slammed him into the ground face first, the documents state. The other officers surrounded him and “kicked, kneed and otherwise brutalized” him, according to the filings.
One officer “dropped his or her knee onto the side of Garcia-Bengochea’s head,” and rested their body weight on it, the documents state. The officers eventually beat him until he was fully unconscious, according to the filings.
Garcia-Bengochea says he awoke 30-40 minutes later at the LDS Hospital. The lawsuit states that his intake paperwork was signed by a temporary caregiver who signed their name as “Officer Archuleta.”
Brent Weisberg, a spokesperson for the Salt Lake City Police Department, said in a statement Monday that the department, “takes all allegations of police misconduct very seriously.” He says that SLCPD did not employ a law enforcement officer on August 18, 2017 with the last name “Archuleta.”
The attack left multiple complex fractures in Garcia-Bengochea’s face and skull that have caused “serious, permanent damage,” the documents state. He is suing for relief in excess of $2 million.
According to Weisberg, SLCPD’s records show that officers contacted Garcia-Bengochea on August 18, 2017 around 12:30 a.m. in the area of 960 W. North Temple but allowed him to walk away from the interaction. They had no more interactions with him on the day the beating allegedly took place, according to their records.
At a later point, Garcia-Bengochea was cited for providing false information to a peace officer. The charge against Garcia-Bengochea was ultimately dismissed without prejudice at a preliminary court hearing.
“The SLCPD vigorously disputes the accusations made in the complaint and looks forward to defending the claims in court,” Weisberg said.
The documents state that the officers told Garcia-Bengochea they knew who he was but also asked him to identify himself in the lead-up to the incident.
The filings also allege that Salt Lake City or the Department of Corrections “failed to provide the officers... with training in methods to achieve law enforcement objectives without inflicting injury or violating constitutional rights” and that their “failure to investigate allegations of excessive force properly contributed to a culture within the SLCPD that encouraged the officers’ treatment of Garcia-Bengochea.”
Garcia-Bengochea’s lawyer, Steven Sumsion, was unavailable for comment Friday.
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