Preliminary Hearing Held For Civil Suit Against City, Police Dept.

A civil trial against the city of Desert Hot Springs and its police department will soon get under way.

Edward Moore, Jr. and his family claim they were victims of police brutality in 2005.

In court Tuesday at the Larson Justice Center in Indio, Riverside Superior Court Judge Randall White presided over a hearing to determine what evidence will be admissible in the trial.

The plantiff claims that after two family members were involved in a hit-and-run incident in front of their home in July 2005, they were met by hostile police officers.

Moore alleges when he presented Sgt. Anthony Sclafani with a piece of paper with the license plate number of the vehicle that fled the scene, he was punched and pepper-sprayed by the officer.

The suit also claims several of Moore’s family members were roughed up and/or pepper-sprayed.

Attorneys representing the city of Desert Hot Springs aren’t commenting at this point, but Jerry Steering, one of the attorneys representing the Moore family, did weigh in on the case.

“It’s really about a police department gone wild, and about what happens when you have leadership in a police department that exhibits cruelty toward fellow creatures and doesn’t care about the constitutional rights of anybody,” said Steering. “It shows callous disregard and really, a cruelty on the Desert Hot Springs Police Department.”

Sclafani and former officer David Henderson, who are named in the suit, were brought up on federal charges of police brutality.

Henderson has already pleaded guilty.

Attorneys hope to select a jury by early next week and then begin opening statements late in the week.