Santa Cruz police to review excessive force complaint after multiple officers arrest Westside cyclist

The Santa Cruz Police Department said it is looking into a community complaint that several officers used excessive force when arresting a cyclist for a traffic infraction on the Westside.

Marlene Sosa lives in Clearview Court Mobile Home Park near the intersection of Bay Street and West Cliff Drive. On Wednesday morning, Sosa said, she heard the quick whoop of a siren and looked out her window to see a young Black man on a bike talking to an officer along Bay Street near the front of the mobile home park.

Sosa said she heard the officer ask the man for identification, and heard the man say he didn’t have it because he was biking. She added that the man on the bike kept asking what he had done wrong and requested a ticket so that he could know what he had done. “That’s when the officer told him, ‘You’re escalating this,’” said Sosa.

Sosa called the officer’s tone “aggressive” and said that he eventually called for backup, which she said brought eight police cars to the scene. She said that each responding officer left their vehicles and “pounced on that young man.” 

“There was no time in the altercation where that man was rude or disrespectful, he just wanted to know why this was happening to him,” she said, adding that the man kept telling officers that they were hurting him. “At one point we saw a baton raised and that’s when I started screaming to stop. Everybody started screaming.”

Witnesses Phyllis and Justice Galvan told Lookout in an email they didn’t see the initial arrest but saw several officers pinning the man to the ground as a crowd at the mobile home park gathered to watch the arrest, some recording the altercation on their phones.

Police arrested a 29-year-old Santa Cruz man, charging him with three misdemeanors: resisting a police officer in the performance of their duties, possession of marijuana over 1 ounce, and giving a false ID to police. He was not charged with a traffic infraction. Lookout attempted to contact the man by phone Thursday but couldn’t reach him.

Sosa said she found the police response “horrendous” and plans to file a complaint, and added that she knows of two others who have already filed complaints.

“It was traumatizing for me. I understand it wasn’t about me, but I couldn’t think of anything else but wonder what happened to that kid,” she said. 

Deputy Police Chief Jon Bush told Lookout the man was initially stopped for a traffic infraction, “something like running a stop sign or failing to yield to a pedestrian in a crosswalk.” Bush said he didn’t know what the specific infraction was, why so many officers were called to the scene or why they had to pin the man to the ground. 

He said he couldn’t comment on witness accounts that the officers used excessive force because he has not yet investigated the call. He added that the man was not injured during the arrest.

However, Bush said SCPD has received a community comment concern from a member of the public. He said the department will look into the incident to “determine whether or not the force and enforcement of the stop was appropriate and reasonable.”

“Depending on the seriousness of the allegations, that can be assigned to our professional standards unit for an internal investigation,” he said. “That would involve a review of body camera witness statements, interviewing the officers on scene, and a legal assessment and policy assessment to determine if the officers were within the policy and law in regards to their actions and force that they used.”

Bush said the man was released from jail Wednesday.

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