"When plaintiff regained consciousness, he was lying face-down in a pool of blood with an officer's knee in his back," Kopf said.

Both sides say Deezia hadn't been aggressive until officers made physical contact with him. All he'd done up to that point was verbally refuse to provide information to officers, not itself a crime, Kopf said.

"Plaintiff has presented sufficient proof in support of his claim, if believed, to allow a reasonable jury to find that after 'seizing' plaintiff ... the officers used a degree of force in arresting him for two misdemeanors that was not 'objectively reasonable,'" the judge wrote in the Oct. 29 order.

Deezia, who was a business owner in Lincoln at the time but since has moved to Texas, said in a tort claim (a precursor to the lawsuit) filed within a month of the incident that he has profound respect for law enforcement.

His father, a longtime police officer in Nigeria, was killed in the line of duty in 2012, and his uncle and sister both are police officers there.

Deezia, a Doane University graduate who was pursuing a master's degree, said he never had been involved in any violent confrontations with law enforcement before the incident in Lincoln.

Neither he nor his lawyer, Rick Boucher, commented on the settlement.

Reach the writer at 402-473-7237 or lpilger@journalstar.com. On Twitter @LJSpilger.

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