BY KEVIN SAWYER – The city of San Diego is seeking to charge the family of a man who was shot and killed by police $12,000 for research they had to do into the case. It all started one day when Fridoon Nehad was walking down the street and turning into an alley to take a shortcut. A 911 call to San Diego police claimed that he was brandishing a knife and threatening people when, in reality, he was simply twirling a pen in his hand as he was walking along.
Fridoon Nehad
When the police arrived to confront Nehad, they shot and killed him despite the fact that he was unarmed and not posing a threat. The police had not activated their dashcam recorders but the incident was captured on video taken by nearby security cameras. Nehad and his family had escaped from the Taliban in Afghanistan decades ago and it took them all ten years to finally reunite and find one another in the United States. The came to America, they said, because such terrible things don’t happen there. Nehad had fought in the Afghan army against the Taliban but was captured and tortured by them as a POW before he managed to escape.
Though police tried to have the security camera footage squashed, a judge ordered its release and the film shows an officer gunning down Nehad after barely getting out of his cruiser. Nehad’s family, on the advice of their attorney, has launched a $20 million wrongful death suit against the city of San Diego.
San Diego prosecutors, of course, didn’t charge the cop who murdered Nehad with a crime. The judge in the case, however, ordered that all relevant documents related to police shootings for the last three years be released to the Nehad family lawyers. San Diego lawyers decided to ignore the judge stating that Nehad’s family should have to pay for those documents and for all the work involved in putting them together. The fee, the decided upon, was $12,000.
The Nehad family lawsuit against San Diego states, in part, that, “San Diego has a pattern of inadequate investigations into police shootings that ‘whitewash’ officer misconduct and have created an environment that allows officers to act with impunity knowing they won’t be punished”.
The documents were requested six months ago by Nehad’s attorney’s but San Diego won’t likely release them until the $12,000 has been paid by Nehar’s family. The judge in the case has yet to make a final ruling about it all.
PHOTO CREDITS: NBC News / The New York Daily News / CBS News / The Daily Mirror (London)