Seferino Varelas vs. City of Chandler
Police missteps cost Chandler more than $300,000 in settlements
Jerod MacDonald-Evoy, The Arizona Republic | azcentral.com, Published 9:19 p.m. MT May 23, 2017 | Updated 1:15 p.m. MT May 24, 2017
Seferino Varelas vs. City of Chandler
On Feb. 17, 2016, Varelas rode his bicycle on California Street, heading south in a northbound lane, according to his notice of claim against Chandler.
The police report says Officer Joshua Logan was on his police bicycle when he spotted Varelas riding against traffic, which is against state law.
Logan stopped his bike in front of Varelas and told him to stop, but Varelas rode around him and used an expletive toward the officer before saying, "I don't have any warrants," according to the police report.
The officer followed and commanded Varelas to stop but Varelas kept saying "no."
Police and Varelas give a slightly different sequence of events for what happened next.
According to Varelas' claim against the city, Logan jumped from his bike onto Varelas and tackled him to the ground.
The police report says Logan grabbed Varelas' arm in an attempt to stop him and ended up shoving him to the ground.
Both accounts match from there.
Logan was on top of Varelas, who did not resist, and called for backup when he noticed a large amount of blood around Varelas on the ground.
Varelas looked up at the officer and screamed as his right eye hung from its socket, according to the police report.
When the officer brought Varelas to the ground, his right eye had been impaled on the brake lever.
Firefighters treated Varelas before taking him to a nearby hospital. Varelas lost his eye, according to the claim.
One week after the incident, two Chandler police officers patrolled the trailer park where Varelas lives and noticed him riding his bike on the wrong side of the road, according to the claim notice.
They stopped him and cited him for not having a light on his bicycle, failure to yield from a private drive, no brakes on his bicycle and for not being on the right side of the road, the claim says.
Varelas "spat upon" the officer who handed him the ticket, which led the officer to cite him for aggravated assault.
Varelas' notice of claim filed with the city originally sought $490,000, but the settlement paid out $288,000.
A letter of reprimand was issued to Logan for the incident and an internal-affairs investigation found officers had inadequate training for such situations.
Officer David Sitz, who helps train officers in the city's bicycle program, said during the internal-affairs investigation that best practices for pursuing a suspect fleeing on a bicycle "has never come up that I know of, before this incident."
Logan told investigators he had never received training for removing a fleeing suspect from a bicycle and said his inexperience may have contributed to the incident.
The internal investigation recommended that Chandler review its bicycle police policies.
View the Internal Affairs report here.