Vallejo Agrees to Pay Carl Edwards $750,000 for Brutal Beating by Police Officers

The City of Vallejo settled a lawsuit for $750,000 brought by a man who accused Vallejo police officers of excessive force, malicious prosecution, and unreasonable seizure stemming from an incident in 2017.

In late July of that year, Vallejo resident and plaintiff Carl Edwards was reportedly on his front porch fixing a fence when he was ambushed by Vallejo police officers, put in a choke hold, slammed into the ground and assaulted in what his lawyer says turned out to be a case of mistaken identity. The incident was captured on body-worn camera footage from former Vallejo Police Department officer Spencer Muniz-Bottomley.

Muniz-Bottomley had received multiple excessive force complaints and lawsuits during his time with the department, and the city previously settled a suit involving him for $75,000. Muniz-Bottomley was also named in a 2017 excessive force lawsuit in which the city settled for $50,000, though his name was removed as a defendant prior to the settlement.

The crime Edwards was suspected of involved shooting at kids with a slingshot. Edwards’ lawyers claim that he was not dressed the same as the description given of the suspect, and the children’s mother told the police that they had the wrong man.

According to the complaint filed by Edwards, the officers were responding to a 911 call that described a Caucasian man in black jeans with a white tank top. Edwards, a Caucasian male, was wearing light brown pants and a grey shirt. The complaint also alleged that the only people who corroborated the police’s assertion that they had the right man were a 10-year-old child and another child with a developmental disability, even as the mother protested that it was someone else.

“Why are you guys doing this?!” Edwards pleads at one point on video.

Muniz-Bottomley had Edwards charged with multiple felonies, including assault upon a police officer. The charges were dropped 14 months later due to lack of evidence, attorney Haddad said in a statement.

In addition to Muniz-Bottomley, fellow officers Mark Thompson, Bretton Wagoner, Sgt. Steve Darden, and former Vallejo Police Chief Andrew Bidou were all named in the lawsuit.Muniz-Bottomley was involved in another incident captured on video in 2019, which showed him beating a man who had reportedly been acting “erratically” in a gas station parking lot and was exclaiming, “I am God!”

Muniz-Bottomley can be seen chasing, tackling, and then striking the man repeatedly with his flashlight.The City of Vallejo ended up paying the plaintiff in that case, Dejuan Hall from Vacaville, a settlement of $75,000.Officer Bottomley left the Vallejo Police Department in 2018 and was later hired by the Sonoma Sheriff’s Department.

The City of Vallejo is looking at millions of dollars in lawsuits as a result of alleged police activity, and as recently as September of this year they paid $5.7 million to the family Ronell Foster, who was killed by police after a traffic stop in 2018.Ryan McMahon, the officer involved in the incident, was subsequently fired from VPD in October. McMahon had also been named among the Vallejo officers involved in the killing of Willie McCoy in a Taco Bell drive-thru in 2019.Mayor-Elect Robert McConnell, who sits on the city council, says he’d like to put the past behind us and focus on improvements in the future.