In Gomez v. Village of Sleepy Hollow, Southern District Magistrate Judge Judith C. McCarthy granted the Village summary judgment in this police excessive force case. The husband and wife Plaintiffs alleged that they were tasered multiple times by several police officers, as well as being punched and kicked in the face and head while handcuffed. Plaintiffs alleged improper training, failure to supervise and the existence of a pattern of excessive force by the Sleepy Hollow Police Department. To support his claim, plaintiff pointed to ten (10) incidents involving one of the police officers in question.
In granting the Village summary judgment, MSSSV convinced the Court that plaintiff failed to establish deliberate indifference by the Police Department towards the use of force by its police officers. Sleepy Hollow provided use of force training and annual taser training to its police officers. So too, MSSSV was able to distinguish the other alleged incidents raised by plaintiff in support of his claim. In this regard, the Court agreed with our position that the alleged incidents of excessive force that occurred after the incident with the plaintiff could not be used to establish the requisite policy. Further, the Court also adopted our position that off-duty incidents involving police officers could not be used to establish a policy, and that the department investigated the other incidents.
We thus avoided a very costly trial in these potentially high exposure Federal cases. Michael A. Miranda and Maurizio Savoiardo worked on the case.