Use Of Force Blamed On Desert Hot Springs Police Sergeant

A Desert Hot Springs police officer who was sent to a man’s home to investigate a hit-and-run crash testified today that he forced the resident to the ground after seeing a sergeant grab one of the man’s arms.

“You used force against Edward Moore, right?” asked Jerry Steering, one of Moore’s attorneys.

“Yes, I did,” Officer Michael Valentich said.

“You grabbed him and took him to the ground?” Steering asked.

“Yes sir, I did,” Valentich said.

Valentich testified he forced Moore to the ground after seeing his superior, Sgt. Anthony Sclafani, grab Moore’s arm and Moore pull it away. He said he was speaking with one of Moore’s daughters, who was injured in the accident, before he saw Sclafani grab Moore.

“He didn’t hit Sgt. Sclafani, right?” Steering asked.

“No,” Valentich said.

Steering asked if Moore fought Valentich when he forced him to the ground.

“No, he didn’t fight me at all,” the officer replied.

The officer testified that he accidentally fell on Moore when he was already down, then asked him to put his hands behind his back. He said he didn’t remember who handcuffed Moore, who was eventually arrested.

“I based my actions on the belief that Sgt. Sclafani was doing something lawful,” Valentich testified.

He testified that pepper spray got in his face, as well as Moore’s, but he didn’t see anyone spraying it.

“Did you roll on the can of pepper spray on the ground?” Steering asked.

“Yes, I believe I did … that’s how I concluded it went off during the incident,” Valentich said.

Moore, the downtown maintenance supervisor for the Palm Springs Department of Parks and Recreation, and his family allege in a lawsuit that they were brutalized by officers who responded to the accident involving two of Moore’s daughters in front of their Desert Hot Springs home on July 16, 2005.

The daughter got into the collision when she was nearly home, and the other vehicle left the scene. People at Moore’s home wrote down the vehicle’s license plate number, and a family member called 911, according to court documents.

Police arrived to investigate the accident and Moore asked them to find the suspected hit-and-run vehicle.

Sclafani began yelling at Moore “while another officer came up behind Moore, grabbed Moore’s neck, sprayed Moore … in the face with pepper spray, and tackled Moore to the ground,” according to the lawsuit.

Officers ordered several family members to stay inside the house, grabbed the mother of three of Moore’s children, twisted her arm, handcuffed her and “smashed her into the wall, face first,” according to the suit, which says the woman lost consciousness and later awoke pinned to the ground by officers who fired pepper spray in her face.

The complaint alleges that police sprayed other family members with pepper spray and choked another female family member and shoved another against a wall. The officers also shoved Moore to the ground, kicked him and “choked him into unconsciousness,” the lawsuit alleges.

Moore and a female family member were taken to jail and later released. Steering said they were charged with resisting an officer.

Moore and members of his family filed the $15 million lawsuit against the city and police a year later. The complaint states that police had a history of falsely arresting him and denying him police services.

Attorneys for the officers and the city have said Moore was “hostile” and “verbally abusive” when the first officer arrived after the hit-and-run. The officer called for backup because of the number of people milling outside the house and because of Moore’s attitude, defense attorneys stated in a trial brief.

According to the defense court papers, one of the home’s female residents “jumped on Officer Valentich’s back and began to strike him. He pushed her away and when she came back, he then sprayed her with some pepper spray.”

Five officers — Sclafani, Valentich, Matthew Drew, David Henderson and Stephen O’Connor — are named in the lawsuit.