The county has paid $727,500 to settle a civil rights lawsuit by a South County woman who accused sheriff’s deputies of storming her house, slamming her face into the ground, taking her to jail and seizing her children – all because she refused to answer the door.

Nancy Butano’s lawsuit – stemming from her arrest Feb. 2, 2010, inside her home in San Juan Capistrano – is one of a series of excessive force complaints against South County sheriff’s deputies that have cost Orange County taxpayers more than $5.7 million in settlements and verdicts in the past four years.

County officials say this case provided some lessons for the Sheriff’s Department. The department has retrained deputies to be more cautious when entering homes without warrants. Additionally, the department ended its longtime practice of automatically jailing people picked up on suspicion of resisting arrest instead of citing and releasing them.

“Has the department gotten better at holding people accountable? The answer is yes,” said Steve Connolly, the head of the county’s Office of Independent Review, which monitors the Sheriff’s Department. “The department has come a long way in terms of using these litigation issues as a basis for examining its practices and identifying shortcomings.”

The 2010 incident began when deputies Charles Stumph, Cory Martino and Alexandra Flores were called to the home on Via Ordaz after neighboring gardeners complained they were threatened by a man with a knife, according to a case summary by U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney.

The deputies identified the suspect as Butano’s boyfriend, veterinarian Paul Luddy, and arrested him after he stepped out of the house. He did not have the knife with him, said court papers.

Stumph and Martino returned to the open door and heard Butano speaking on a wireless telephone. They called her to the door, but she declined, saying she was on an important business call. The deputies continued urging her to come to the door. And she continued to refuse.

In her lawsuit, Butano said the deputies entered the home, shouting, cursing and telling her to get off the telephone. She told them that she did not invite them in and did not want them there.

Stumph grabbed Butano, described as 35 years old and 120 pounds, and they both ended up going out of the home’s open sliding glass door into the back yard, court papers say. She said the deputy slammed her head against an outdoor sauna and smashed her face five times into the ground while handcuffing her, his knee on her back.

In court documents, the deputies said they entered because they feared that evidence – the knife – was being destroyed or hidden, one of the conditions allowed for warrantless entry under Fourth Amendment search and seizure laws. The deputies also said they were concerned with the safety of the children, given the missing knife.

As deputies escorted Butano outside to a patrol car, a neighbor asked why she was being arrested. Stumph replied, “She’s a bitch … she wouldn’t go with the program,” said the court summary.

Butano’s two 18-month-old toddlers were taken from their strollers and sent to Orangewood Children’s Home, where they were kept for six days.

Butano was held for one day until she posted a $500 bail bond, although by law she was eligible to be cited and released.

The jail – at the time – by practice incarcerated those picked up for resisting arrest for as long as possible to punish speech critical of law enforcement, according to interviews and court records. Lt. Jeff Hallock said all misdemeanors are now being reviewed for their eligibility to be cited and released.

Deputies searching the home found the knife, as well as a handgun, crossbow and shotgun, court records say.

No charges were filed against Butano, but she was accused in juvenile court of abandoning her children because of the arrest.

Butano’s attorney, Jerry Steering, said she ultimately moved to Oregon.

“This case shows how poorly trained OCSD deputies are,” Steering said. “And how creepy the Sheriff’s Department is regarding requiring persons arrested for misdemeanor crimes against peace officers to post bail, when (state law) provides (citing and releasing).”

The most expensive South County excessive force complaint came from the family of Marine Sgt. Manuel Loggins Jr., who was shot to death by a deputy Feb. 7, 2012, inside his GMC Yukon while his two young daughters sat in the back. Loggins was unarmed and his only crime appeared to have been attempting to drive away from a deputy who confronted him after he crashed his truck through a gate barricading a parking lot at San Clemente High School.

The county agreed last year to pay $4.4 million to settle the case.

In an incident similar to Butano’s case, an Orange County jury awarded $259,000 to a Mission Viejo woman named Toy White in 2010 after she alleged that deputies stormed into her house, threw her to the floor and blackened her eye after she refused to surrender her Old English sheepdog to animal control.

The dog was accused of biting a trespasser in White’s back yard (although White always denied that any bite had occurred). White had wanted to quarantine her dog inside the house, as allowed by law, but the deputies broke into her house and arrested both her and her dog. She was never charged with any crime. The county also had to pay for White’s legal bills and court costs. The total amount was $449,000.

Contact the writer: tsaavedra@ocregister.com or (714) 796-6930