Surveillance video released showing arrest leading to IPD lawsuit
UPDATE 6:36 p.m.
After working with multiple agencies for two years, KESQ and CBS Local 2 obtained surveillance video showing two Indio Police officers arresting Ruben Joshua Martinez at the Pueblo Viejo Grill in 2014.
In the video, Officers Charles Holloway and Gerardo Martinez are shown confronting Martinez, with Holloway kicking the suspect twice, and punching him multiple times.
“Even though he might’ve been in the wrong, if he’s resisting arrest, then they should take action,” Indio resident Simone Roseborough said. “If he’s given up, then no. They should just handcuff them and put him in the police car.”
Holloway and his partner went to trial for using excessive force, but Holloway’s attorney, Michael D. Schwartz, said the video doesn’t show the full picture.
“The video itself is from a vantage point that’s markedly different than the officer’s,” Schwartz said. “It’s from high up. It’s from a slight angle. The officer is seeing it from horizontal, and the officer is experiencing the event while he’s also watching it, and making decisions about his actions at the same time. The video is doing none of those things.”
While Holloway and his partner have been acquitted of assault and falsifying police reports, many said they found the video disturbing.
“It’s brutal,” Blythe resident Stella Rivas said. “It’s pretty sad that officers have got to treat citizens that way.”
But Schwartz said his clients and others are ready to move on.
“The public expects to have safe streets,” Schwartz said. “The public expects to have safe neighborhoods. And then the public the officers are dealing with, when investigating a crime, the suspects have become much more belligerent, [and] much more challenging and threatening than they ever were before. The officers deserve to be safe too.”
Both Holloway and Martinez were fired from Indio Police.
Indio Police is unable to comment due to the fact one officer is attempting to get his job back.
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Surveillance video has finally been released showing the two former Indio police officers who were recently found not guilty of beating a parolee during an arrest on September 12, 2014.
Watch the full surveillance video on KESQ News Channel 3 at 5 p.m. and CBS Local 2 at 5:30 p.m.
The surveillance camera was perched above the Pueblo Viejo Grill, located in the 81900 block of Highway 111. The video wasn’t released until recently due to the active investigation and the finalization of court proceedings.
The jury delivered its verdict following two days of deliberations in the trial of Charles Holloway, 30, who was charged with assault by a peace officer, and 28-year-old Gerardo Martinez, who was charged with perjury, as well as misdemeanor counts of filing a false police report and being an
accessory to a crime. Both men were discharged from the police department last year.
Zak Dahlheimer will have reaction to the surveillance video and a full recap of the investigation coming up on KESQ and CBS Local 2.
