City of Oakland Agrees to Settle Two Separate Lawsuits

The city of Oakland recently agreed to pay $2 million to settle a lawsuit over an injury crash caused by a public works employee more than two years ago and $75,000 to settle a separate suit over a fatal officer-involved shooting almost four years ago. The Oakland City Council voted in a closed session late last week to approve both settlements.

On Sept. 28, 2012, a city employee driving a city public works vehicle ran a red light at 14th and Franklin streets in downtown Oakland and struck a vehicle, according to the city’s summary of the case. That vehicle was then propelled onto the sidewalk and struck a pedestrian, Linda Smith. City officials said Smith suffered arm fractures, a lacerated spleen, broken ribs, skin lacerations and other significant injuries and was taken by ambulance to a local hospital where she was placed in the intensive care unit. Smith then required surgery to place rods, pins and screws to address her fractures, according to city officials.

Smith filed a lawsuit stating that she suffers pain and other medical problems that she said resulted from the accident and asserting that she will need additional surgery and in-home care for the rest of her life. Smith said the cost of future care and surgery is estimated to be more than $2 million dollars and the city agreed to settle the case for that amount.

In the unrelated lawsuit, the city agreed to pay $75,000 to the family of Matthew Cicelske, 39, a former Marine who was fatally shot by police officers after he allegedly pointed a fake assault rifle at them in the 5500 block of Taft Avenue in Oakland’s Rockridge district at about 9:35 a.m. on Jan. 29, 2011. Attorneys for the city said police officers responded to the home of Cicelske’s former girlfriend after she made a 911 call reporting that he was outside her home with a BB gun, acting as if he was on military patrol.

Based on additional information from neighbors and yelling from the house, officers were concerned that Cicelske was mentally disturbed and could become violent, according to the city’s attorneys. They said Cicelske then burst through a door of the house holding an airsoft pellet gun that closely resembles an AR-15 assault rifle and was shot by police. But the family’s attorney, Ben Rosenfeld, said today that he thinks police mishandled the incident in several ways. Rosenfeld said police dispatchers knew the rifle was fake but did a poor job of relaying that information to the officers who were at the scene. He said Oakland police also haven’t had officers go through sufficient crisis intervention training to respond to people such as Cicelske who suffer from emotional issues.

Rosenfeld said, “A lot of missteps led to this tragic confluence of events” and alleged that police missed opportunities to defuse the situation. Cicelske’s family decided to settle the case because they didn’t want to continue reliving the incident, he said. “We hope that Oakland police will revisit their policies so this kind of tragedy won’t happen again,” Rosenfeld said.

By Bay City News

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