One agenda item the Long Beach City Council is to decide or not on the Long Beach City Attorney Charles Parkin’s recommendation that $2.5 million plus attorney’s fees and costs in full settlement be paid to the cousins, Miguel Contreras and Miguel Vazquez, and their attorneys, to lawsuits filed.
Court records show, in October 2016, a jury, in the Los Angeles courtroom of Magistrate Judge Patrick J. Walsh, awarded the two cousins more than $1.5 million in a lawsuit filed against the city and the two Long Beach Police Department officers, alleging they used excessive force.
The Long Beach Press-Telegram story, “Cousins win $1.6 million verdict after graphic video shows Long Beach police hitting them with batons,” of Oct. 11, 2016, identified the police officers as David Faris and Michael Hynes and pointed out the LBPD did not “deny striking Contreras and Vazquez with the batons.” In the story, Long Beach Deputy City Attorney Howard Russell, said, ‘Our contention was and is that the officers acted reasonably and lawfully.’
According to the same story, it was in late November of 2010 in the early morning hours “when Contreras and Vazquez were returning from The Falcon bar in Long Beach…(w)hen they got back to Vazquez’s apartment in the 1600 block of Broadway, Vazquez saw officers Faris and Hynes yelling at a small group of people that included a friend of his, according to Vazquez’s lawsuit, Vazquez claimed that when he tried to find out what was going on, one of the officers told him to go home and pushed him away.” Then the altercation between the two LBPD police officers and two cousins was video-recorded on a cellphone.
To watch the video, click here.
Barry Saks 
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