Two local attorneys announced plans Thursday to file a civil rights claim against the city of Rohnert Park on behalf of a man who made a widely viewed cellphone video of an encounter with a police officer who drew his service handgun.
The city of Rohnert Park, meanwhile, announced Thursday it had placed the officer on paid administrative leave and would bring in an outside investigator to conduct a full review of the incident.
Santa Rosa attorney Daniel Beck said a yet-to-be-filed claim on behalf of Rohnert Park resident Don McComas would effectively “tell the city of Rohnert Park that enough is enough, and it has to stop and it is going to stop.”
Beck and his son, attorney Jarin Beck, said they had recently been retained to represent McComas.
McComas didn’t attend Thursday’s news conference. Asked about the absence, Daniel Beck said the Rohnert Park man was receiving medical attention and under doctors’ orders as a result of the July 29 encounter.
The five-minute video has been viewed more than 360,000 times on YouTube. It begins with McComas outside his home, recording a marked police SUV driving into a cul de sac.
After sitting about two minutes in the SUV, an officer exits, walks up toward McComas and orders him to remove his left hand from his pocket. When McComas refuses, the officer draws his semi-automatic handgun.
“That is a position of assault,” Daniel Beck said. “Mr. McComas did nothing to deserve that position. … So our position is that we have a clear abuse and we’re going to pursue it.”
During the encounter, said Beck, McComas “thought he was going to die. He thought he was going to be shot.”
Jarin Beck described his client as “a very longtime resident of Rohnert Park” who works in Sonoma County and has young children and a son of 18 or 19 years old.
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