Local candidate named in 2014 excessive use of force claim: What you need to know

Lily Altavena | The Republic | azcentral.com

It was the subject of an uproar four years ago.

A YouTube clip shows Mesa police officers swarmed around a suspect lying in the middle of a city street, an officer repeatedly punching the man's head.

Not long after the Jan. 30, 2014 incident, Juan Carlos Arizmendi, the man on the receiving end of the officer's blows, filed a notice of claim with the city. He accused several officers of excessive, unjustifiable force.

One of the officers named in the claim is Robert Scantlebury, a candidate running for Mesa City Council in the Aug. 28 election. He's among three candidates running in District Four and has made public-safety funding among his top priorities.

Arizmendi asked for $475,000 in damages. The notice of claim never materialized into a lawsuit nor did Mesa pay any of the requested damages.

The police department at the time claimed Arizmendi was a dangerous fugitive who was carrying a loaded flare gun painted black to look like a firearm.

Detective Steve Berry, a Mesa police spokesman, said on Monday that the department could not confirm the investigation or its outcome, as the records were likely purged after three years.

An internal investigation exonerated the officers, according to Scantlebury, who retired in January after 25 years with the department.

The video is unclear, but Scantlebury said he was not the officer throwing the punches. He said he was a supervisor in the street crimes division on the scene.

"I stand by everything I did on that scene and everything the officers did on that scene, I think they handled it appropriately," he said.

The original video of the incident appears to have been taken down, but still exists on a local television station's website.

Chaotic arrest at a Tempe intersection

The notice of claim filed six months after the incident claims that four officers including Scantlebury, were involved in repeatedly beating and punching Arizmendi in the head, face and body during his arrest at a Tempe intersection.

The Mesa officers were in pursuit of Arizmendi after he escaped from police custody. He was initially arrested on suspicion of trying to cash a forged check at a check-cashing business on Country Club Drive, according to court documents. When he escaped custody, he threatened a man and woman with a flare gun disguised as a real gun and demanded they drive him to Phoenix, the documents claim.

The officers arrested Arizmendi during that ride. Police, in court documents, reported that he resisted arrest. The officers had to pull Arizmendi out of the vehicle, twice striking him with a stun gun. After he was pulled to the ground, police claimed Arizmendi continued to resist arrest by refusing to put his hands behind his back.

A booking photo of Arizmendi shows his face marked with bruises and cuts. In the claim, Arizmendi's attorneys wrote he suffered from "painful, serious and permanent physical and psychological injuries," including to the head.

Scantlebury said the officer punching Arizmendi was not smashing his head into the pavement as it appears in the video, but holding his head with his other hand. He recalls a chaotic scene that day.

"The video does not reveal that (the officer) was holding his head in place on the concrete to punch him to get him in compliance," he said.

Arizmendi was indicted by a grand jury in Maricopa County Superior Court on one count of felony forgery, one count of resisting arrest, one count of burglary in the third-degree and one count of misdemeanor assault. He pleaded down to two lesser charges: possession of a forgery device and possession of burglary tools.

He was sentenced to one year in custody and released in January 2015.

Mesa denied claim

The attorney who filed the claim on behalf of Arizmendi, Lynn Pucino, would not comment on the claim or answer why it did not turn into a lawsuit, citing client confidentiality.

At the time, defense attorneys questioned why so many officers had trouble subduing one man — and whether the repeated blows were justified.

"What matters is they have him under physical control," Joel Robbins, an attorney familiar with these types of cases, told The Arizona Republic in 2014. "They don't need to be hitting him in the head and bouncing his head off the pavement."

Others questioned what the video did not show.

"I mean, they should have no trouble controlling him," Russ Richelsoph, a criminal defense attorney in Tempe, told The Republic in 2014. "The question is, 'Why did they feel the need to punch him, and what's going on that we don't see in the video?'"

Scantlebury said the stun gun did not take and the suspect was not holding his hands behind his back.

"We were fully aware that we were being videotaped, we did all our conduct exactly like we thought we should," Scantlebury said.

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Scantlebury's public safety platform

Public safety is a key part of Scantlebury's campaign for council.

Scantlebury, in The Republic's voter's guide, says he wants to curb the city's spending and "focus on funding the core functions of government," like public safety. He also wants to sell unused city-owned property to pay down ballooning public safety pension debt.

His campaign signs are adorned with the Blue Lives Matter flag: a black and white American flag with one, blue line. The flag has become synonymous with the pro-police movement in response to Black Lives Matter.

Mesa's embattled police department has drawn national attention in the last year for multiple high-profile use of excessive force cases.

Mesa police chief talks about video of officers punching man Mesa Police Chief Ramon Batista talks about surveillance video showing officers punching man in face.

Scantlebury said he believes all cases should include a thorough review before the department releases any statements. In recent high-profile cases, department officials, including Chief Ramon Batista, have made statements before investigations are complete.

"Let me be crystal clear, I'm angry and I'm deeply disappointed by what I saw in those videos. It's unacceptable and it needs to stop immediately," Batista told reporters in June about videos released this year.

"I think the internal affairs division should do the workup and should do the investigation, sometimes our investigations are coming from the chief down," Scantlebury said.

In his own internal affairs case in 2014, he said he remembers a flawed process.

"We had to figure out how to act within a few seconds and they were taking days to figure out how to administratively investigate us," he said. "It was kind of a mess."

Reach reporter Lily Altavena at laltavena@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8927. Follow her on Twitter: @lilyalta

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