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The slaying last
September of Ugandan-born Alfred Olango, 38, in the San Diego
suburb of El Cajon sparked several days of street protests after
video of the deadly incident emerged online.
It was also one of a spate of deaths of black men at the hands
of law enforcement across the country over the past three years
that have sparked a national debate over racial bias in the U.S.
criminal justice system.
The civil suit, filed on Friday in federal court in San Diego,
came three days after local prosecutors announced that the
officer who opened fire, Richard Gonsalves, would not be
criminally charged for the shooting.
San Diego County District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis said last week
the use of deadly force against Olango, who was shot four times
in the parking lot of a taco stand, was reasonable given that
Olango was pointing what appeared to be a gun at police. The
object he was clutching turned out to be a "vaping" pipe.
The civil complaint, which names Gonsalves and the El Cajon
Police Department as defendants, alleges that Olango was
deprived of his constitutional right to due process when he was
killed.
The police officers who confronted Olango had been dispatched to
the scene after his sister had called 911 emergency operators to
report he was having a mental breakdown at the shopping center,
the lawsuit said.
"Before arriving on the scene, defendant Richard Gonsalves knew
decedent Alfred Olango was having a mental crisis because
dispatch had coded the call as '5150' pursuant to (state law)
which allows a peace officer to detain a person with a 'mental
health disorder,'" the lawsuit said.
Gonsalves should have either waited for members of a special
psychiatric emergency response team to arrive or sought to have
de-escalated the situation instead of drawing his firearm, the
lawsuit said.
Police have said Olango ignored commands to remove his hand from
his pocket before pulling out the vaping device and assuming a
"shooting stance."
El Cajon city officials were not immediately available to
comment on the lawsuit, brought by Richard Olango Abuka, seeking
unspecified damages for the loss of his son.
(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles; Editing by Steve
Gorman and Alan Crosby)
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