Attorneys for a documentary filmmaker who sued the city of Los Angeles for excessive police force said Wednesday that they had reached a settlement over claims their client was assaulted by an LAPD officer at a 2021 protest.
The settlement came abruptly after the first day of the civil trial, when the plaintiff, Vishal Singh, was accosted by a man, with his phone out recording, as Singh walked out of the federal courthouse downtown. Christian Contreras, an attorney for Singh, identified the man who confronted his client as Tomas Morales, a prominent alt-right livestreamer.
Proceedings had just wrapped up for the day Tuesday when Morales approached Singh, Contreras and others as they walked out of the glass-paneled building at 1st and Hill streets, according to video posted on social media.
Morales posted a clip on his Instagram account in which he can be heard demanding to know whether Singh still wants to “burn LAPD to the ground” and asking whether he is a member of “antifa.” The barrage of questions continued as the group walked up Hill away from the courthouse, the video shows.
Morales didn’t immediately respond to a message sent Wednesday to his account on X.
Contreras said Singh was so shaken by the encounter that his attorneys pushed the judge to declare a mistrial on the grounds that Morales was trying to intimidate a party to the case. After the judge declined to grant their motion, the two sides agreed to settle for an unspecified amount of money, Contreras said.
Larger settlements require a final sign-off from the City Council.
Even if the case ended in an “anticlimactic” fashion, Contreras said that “there has been some accountability” since jurors saw videos of Los Angeles Police Department officers using excessive force against Singh and others.
“He was looking forward to taking this case to a full resolution at trial, and this issue came up,” Contreras said. “It’s unsettling, but he just wants to move forward in his life.”
Singh said in the lawsuit and interviews with The Times that Singh was standing in the middle of Coronado Street outside a Koreatown establishment called Wi Spa, filming a confrontation between left-wing and far-right groups. Bystander video showed Singh rapidly walking backward as instructed by police and filming with a phone from behind a parked car when an officer leaned over and swung his baton at Singh like it was a “baseball bat.” The impact fractured a joint in Singh’s right hand and two of Singh’s fingers, the lawsuit said.
The officer, John Jenal, argued in court documents that he did not perceive the object in Singh’s raised and outstretched hand to be a phone, and that he saw Singh as an immediate threat.
“I’m relieved that there’s both compensation and validation for what Vishal has experienced through this settlement,” said Adam Rose of the Los Angeles Press Club, adding in a text message that Singh has been a “figurative and literal punching bag for far-right extremists for years.”
In one instance, the online harassment threats got so bad that Singh was forced to bow out of a speaking appearance at the Asian American Journalism Assn.’s annual conference, Rose said.
“It shows that there is this prevailing threat toward journalists of all types, but in particular it can happen to independent journalists,” he said.
The settlement comes as a federal judge is expected to make a ruling in two lawsuits brought by press advocates against the LAPD and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for the treatment of journalists covering the recent pro-immigration protests.