Jury Awards Mother, Daughters $8.5 Million for Biased Arrest

A Las Vegas mother and her two daughters were awarded $8.5 million this month after a civil trial jury found Alameda County Sheriff's Deputies violated their civil rights after falsely arresting them in front of a Castro Valley coffee shop.

The jury's verdict on March 1 stated that Deputies Steven Holland and Monica Pope had racially profiled the three women while sitting in a rental car waiting to get coffee at the Starbucks on Castro Valley Boulevard and Lake Chabot Road. The women are black. The deputies are white.

On September 20, 2019, Aasylei Loggervale and daughters, Aaottae Loggervale, then 17, and Aasyeli Hardege-Loggervale, then 19, had traveled from Las Vegas on their way to Berkeley City College to take a college math test. The women had been stopped in the parking lot for some time before Sheriff's deputies approached them. 

Body cam footage shows Holland walking up to the vehicle and notifying the family that there had been several break-ins in that parking lot. He then asked why they were just sitting in the car. As the mother explains their situation, the deputy asks for her identification. That's when the mother questions his intent.

"What kind of crime did I commit?" she asks.

Within seconds, the deputies decide to detain the women, handcuff them, and search them and their belongings. The daughters begin to use their smartphones to record the interaction while their mother is being placed in the back of a squad car.  

After 16 hours of deliberation over two days, the jury agreed with the allegations of false arrest, invasion of privacy, negligence, and violations of the 1st, 4th, and 14th Amendments. The ruling holds the deputies liable for damages and the county liable for the deputies' actions.

"I think that everybody recognizes we all have implicit bias," their attorney, Craig Peters of San Francisco, said in an interview with a local TV station. "I have it. You have it. We've all got it. These officers are no different. And so, subconsciously, there was something going on that made them unreasonably suspicious of this family. I think that if this same scenario happened and these were white women, it would have played out very differently."

The award sum is significant because of California's Bane Act (1988), which allows any damages awarded to be tripled if lawyers can prove that a person's civil rights have been violated. 

Alameda County Sheriff Yesenia Sanchez issued a statement following the jury's verdict.

“The community’s trust in my agency is foundational to my mission of maintaining a positive relationship with those we serve. The facts of this case are extremely important to me and our community members, however, I must reserve my comments until the case has been fully adjudicated through the court system,” Sanchez said.