Fired Piedmont Police Officer Sues Department

PIEDMONT, CA — A former Piedmont police officer who was terminated last year sued the department this week, accusing police officials of firing him after a campaign of harassment for reporting misconduct by another officer, including excessive force and falsifying reports.

Oakland attorney Na'il Benjamin, a former deputy city attorney in San Francisco, filed the suit in Alameda County Superior Court on Wednesday on behalf of former Piedmont police Officer Matthew Ornellas.

The lawsuit alleges that Ornellas witnessed a colleague, Officer Kristina Foster, use excessive force against an elderly woman walking in a bicycle lane, but Foster changed his reports to justify the force. Foster then changed another of Ornellas' reports the next day, but when Ornellas complained to superiors, he was told to back off and targeted with discipline and eventually termination.

Officials in the Piedmont Police Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

According to the suit, Piedmont police recruited Ornellas as a college student and because of his exceptional qualifications, paid for him to attend the police academy and his time while he completed the 22-week
program. He finished the academy and joined the department in December 2014. He received positive reviews from his superiors, including a positive performance evaluation in June 2015.

He led the department in arrests, he was told, and received a letter of commendation from a grateful citizen in
February 2015, according to the suit.

On Nov. 20, 2015, he was called to cover Foster. Foster stopped an elderly woman walking in the bicycle lane and asked the woman for her identification, but she refused to provide it, saying she was walking to her home about a block away.

Ornellas put his hand on the woman's back to guide her to the sidewalk. The woman turned toward him, and then Foster put her in a twist lock and wrestled her to the ground. The woman was screaming in pain and
Foster threatened to use her Taser.

Ornellas didn't find that the woman had been resisting or acting as a threat and found that Foster was using excessive force. He was worried that using a Taser on an elderly woman could seriously hurt or even kill her.
The woman was taken to a hospital to be treated for an abrasion from the scuffle. Foster recommended the woman be charged with resisting arrest and public intoxication, but the district attorney's office never
prosecuted.

Later, Foster read Ornellas' report and said she would change it. Despite saying he didn't want her changing his report, Foster allegedly substantively changed most of the report in front of him, making the woman appear more threatening to justify her use of force, according to the suit.

The next day, Ornellas was called to a medical incident where an elderly man was on the ground with his walker at his side. When he arrived, Officer Dave Cutler told Ornellas that the man had a pulse. He was wheezing and breathing.

Foster arrived and performed CPR on the man until an ambulance arrived. The man later died at the hospital.
Foster allegedly told Ornellas to write in his report that the man never had a pulse, despite Carr telling him he did, which was captured on body camera footage. Ornellas said he didn't want his report changed, but again, Foster changed most of his report in front of him, according to the suit.

After the man died, department superiors started looking into the incident, questioning the officers at the scene and reviewing their body camera footage. Ornellas gave his original report to Sgt. Catherine Carr to
clarify the incident.

A few days later, on Nov. 26, Carr met with Ornellas, where she allegedly ripped up his report in front of him and threw it in the trash. "Do not mention this report! It will be the biggest mistake of your career. Officer Foster already has it bad enough from the captain! Do not talk about Officer Foster changing reports!" Carr told Ornellas, according to the suit.

Disturbed by the meeting, Ornellas spoke with other officers about it, eventually working his way up the chain of command to Capt. Jeremy Bowers. After that, Carr allegedly retaliated against him, including
admonishing him for not giving CPR to the elderly man and counseling him that he should have used force against the elderly woman.

Carr told him the counseling had been approved by the department's use of force sergeant, but the sergeant denied that. Ornellas was eventually investigated by internal affairs for both incidents.

On Jan. 23, 2016, then-police Chief Rikki Goede told Ornellas that the internal affairs investigation had made no finding. Despite that, the department terminated Carr without cause, according to the suit.

Carr and Foster were both sued separately last year for an incident when a woman alleged they used excessive force and improperly searched her home in March 2014. The woman's son suffers from Tourette's syndrome and was making a lot of noise inside the house, but had stopped and was sleeping by the time Carr and Foster arrived.

Despite being aware of her son's condition, Carr and Foster ordered her outside the house, eventually wrestling her to the ground and pinning her while they called for backup to search the home, according to
court records.

The case was settled in March, but the settlement terms have not been publicly disclosed.

Foster also received the department's Lifesaving Award in 2012, for an incident when she saved the life of a suicidal juvenile on Sept. 12, 2011.

— Bay City News; Image via Shutterstock