Indio police sued for caught-on-tape beatdown

Brett Kelman | The Desert Sun

A Coachella Valley man who was beaten by two Indio police officers after a foot chase has filed a civil rights lawsuit against the Indio Police Department, claiming officers used excessive force when they punched, kicked and stomped on him during an arrest in 2014.

The beating of Ruben Martinez, 25, was captured on the security cameras of a nearby restaurant, and later led to the arrest of the two officers involved. In recent court arguments, one of the officers claimed the blows were “distraction punches,” a legal police tactic used on suspects who are resisting arrest.

The two officers, Charles Holloway and Gerardo Martinez, are currently facing felony charges in Riverside County Superior Court. Both have pleaded not guilty, and are scheduled to face trial in January. The prosecution of the officers and the civil rights lawsuit will now proceed side by side in state and federal court.

Video footage will likely be the key to both cases, said Donald Cook, a Los Angeles attorney who represents Martinez in the new lawsuit.

“Having done this for 30 years, you never win a police chase without the facts, but generally, even the facts are not enough,” Cook said. “Because of the bias at the department, then tend to ignore reliable evidence. Video is much harder for them to ignore.”

The Indio Police Department declined to comment on the lawsuit, citing a policy that forbids public discussion of pending litigation.

The events that led to the beating of Ruben Martinez occurred in the early morning hours of Sept. 12, 2014, when officers responded to a report of a man disturbing the peace near an Indio Starbucks. Outside the store, Officer Martinez spotted Ruben Martinez, who was on parole for a 2009 burglary conviction but was not wearing his court-ordered GPS ankle monitor. The two men made eye contact, then Ruben Martinez began to run.

Officer Martinez caught up to the fleeing suspect a few minutes later, behind Pueblo Viejo Grill on Highway 111. The restaurant's motion-sensing video cameras captured the beating.

The footage has not been released to the public, but prosecutors have summarized it in court documents. According to those documents, the video shows Ruben Martinez surrender to Officer Martinez, who was prepared to strike him with a police baton. Ruben Martinez drops onto his stomach, then Officer Martinez kneels on his back, pinning him to the ground as he prepares to handcuff the suspect.

Holloway then arrives on the scene and gives Ruben Martinez two “full-force kicks” to the left hip area, the court documents state. Holloway then circles to Ruben Martinez’s right side and punches him six times in the body, once in the head and then stomps on his neck.

Holloway has been charged with felony assault by a police officer. Officer Martinez has been charged with felony perjury and misdemeanor accessory after the fact because of a police report he filed two days after the arrest, which left out any mention of the beating. Instead, Officer Martinez wrote that he put handcuffs on the suspect “with no further incident,” according to court documents.

Earlier this month, Officer Martinez’s attorneys filed a motion to dismiss the charges against him, arguing that the officer didn’t cover up anything illegal because the punches and kicks were, in fact, perfectly legal. The motion claims that Ruben Martinez was resisting being handcuffed, and Holloway’s punches and kicks were “assisting in effectuating the arrest.”

“If the court really looks at the strikes, the punches are not huge punches,” attorney Nicole Naleway wrote in the motion. “They were distraction punches to get suspect Ruben Martinez’s attention, so Officer Gerardo Martinez could get control of his hands.”

Cook dismissed the “distraction punches” argument as a flimsy excuse for police brutality. He added that because the beating involved two officers, instead of one rogue cop, it suggests the officers trusted each other to cover up the beating because of a culture of secrecy among Indio police.

“I’ve seen the distraction punch stuff a lot over the years,” Cook said. “It’s just an effort to explain away the damning images and video.”

Ruben Martinez pleaded guilty to misdemeanor resisting arrest in May. Earlier this year, he pleaded guilty to felony assault with a gun in a separate case in which he threatened his mother in 2013.

Reporter Brett Kelman can be reached by phone at (760) 778-4642, by email at brett.kelman@desertsun.com, or on Twitter @TDSbrettkelman.