When video cameras seem to be everywhere, police officers are finding themselves under greater scrutiny while in the performance of their duties.
Here are some of the largest lawsuit payouts that have cost taxpayers in the state of Alaska when officers have been found guilty of police misconduct.
In May 2015, the city of Bethel, Alaska, paid a $175,000 settlement in a police brutality case that occurred in 2014 and was caught on a store's security camera,
the Alaska Dispatch News reported.
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The man in the case, Wassillie Gregory, was intoxicated when police spotted him walking across the parking lot of the Alaska Commercial Co. store. Officer Andrew Reid pepper-sprayed and assaulted Gregory as the cameras caught Reid slamming the man's face repeatedly into the ground, according to the ADN.
Reid was later fired.
Gregory's lawsuit claimed the officer “without warning or justification, physically attacked him and discharged pepper spray into his face.”
Gregory suffered multiple injuries to his shoulder and ribs, requiring surgery. He had to be flown to Anchorage for treatment.
“Obviously the city paid a significant amount of money because they did not approve of what happened,” Bill Ingaldson, an Anchorage lawyer who represented the city of Bethel told the ADN. “They are trying to make things right.”
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In May 2013, the city of Anchorage paid $60,000 to settle a police harassment lawsuit filed by Anchorage resident Matt Newman, 35, who said he was injured in a 2010 assault by police,
the Anchorage Press reported.
He was charged with two misdemeanors in the case that the paper reported "ended with at least one officer pointing a gun at him and two officers taking him down and handcuffing him on a concrete stairway."
At the time of his arrest, Newman said that he was trying to find a car on Fourth Avenue, when officers who were working a nearby crime scene approached. According to the paper, he said "officers verbally hounded him and approached him as if they were going to beat him up."
Newman was later found not guilty by a jury of the charges. He had sought an initial settlement claiming $450,000 in damages.
In the wake of his settlement, the city agreed to offer training in "de-escalation and verbal communication" for patrol officers, the paper said.
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