[Updated] Pasadena city officials conducted a media briefing Thursday afternoon at Pasadena Police headquarters to play a 911 recording and show police videos of the 2017 arrest and jailing of a black Altadena motorist whose attorney last weekend filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the City.
In the lawsuit filed January 20, George Mgdesyan, an attorney representing Kelvin Jankins, 27, alleges police falsely arrested Jankins after an unreasonable search and seizure and that officers and city jailers “threatened, assaulted, battered” and subjected Jankins to excessive force, which left him physically and mentally injured.
The suit claims that Jankins’ head was forcefully shoved against a police patrol car twice and that jailers slammed him onto the ground in the holding cell and bent his toes “in order to cause him pain.”
Jankins was taken into custody for misdemeanor resisting arrest and a vehicle code violation about 10 p.m. on January 20, 2017 after a traffic stop on Navarro Avenue just south Howard Street.
At a jury trial last November, Jankins was acquitted of both charges.
Jankins earlier filed a claim with the City of Pasadena which included medical bills from Arcadia Methodist Hospital totaling $9,286 related, he asserted, to injuries police inflicted on him.
The City Attorney rejected Jankins’ claim on the grounds it was filed past the required six month reporting period. (The arrest occurred January 20, 2017; Jankins’ claim is stamped July 24, 2017.)
Earlier this week, members of the media and at least two City Councilmembers received copies of the new lawsuit via email.
During Thursday’s media briefing, reporters were shown portions of patrol car, body worn camera and jailer videos of Jankins’s traffic stop, arrest and booking, with audio when available.
Police Chief Phillip Sanchez and City Prosecutor Michael Dowd added commentary and fielded questions from reporters as the videos were shown.
Sanchez began the meeting by reminding reporters of the public safety atmosphere in January, 2017. Less than two weeks before the Jankins traffic stop, shootings attributed to local gangs left two people dead and three wounded, one critically, in a pair of incidents in Northwest Pasadena. Police reacted with heightened patrols which netted multiple arrests and weapons, including a loaded AK-47.
Four days before the Jankins traffic stop, a group of girls saying goodbye after a gathering was sprayed by as many as 15 rounds of gunshots, and two suffered non-life threatening wounds.
Police were extremely active and were, as reported at the time, reacting decisively to the gang violence.
Reporters were then showed patrol car video of the traffic stop, with a brief interlude to hear audio of a 911 call made by Jankins to police during the stop.
For more than thirty minutes, Chief Sanchez and City Prosecutor Dowd clarified the videos shown and answered reporters’ questions.
The character and tone of the videos seem strikingly different from the police behavior in the videos which were recently released to the public of the controversial November, 2017 police encounter with a different black Altadena motorist, Christopher Ballew.
In the Jankins videos shown to the media, police patrol officers appear to act with deliberation, to follow proper procedures, and are firm but polite. Jankins repeatedly shouted profanities. None of the officers did, at any time, in any of the videos shown to the media.
Key sections of the lawsuit’s portrayal of the incident do not appear to take into account circumstances seen in the videos shown to local media Thursday, or to exactly match events and chronology.
At every stage of the stop, arrest and booking, Jankins appeared in the videos shown to comply with most police instructions either belatedly, partially, or not at all.
The lawsuit does not address the police report that Jankins was taken to Huntington Hospital after he was booked and complained of pain, but then refused medical treatment at the hospital.
At the meeting’s conclusion, reporters were told they can submit public records act requests for the videos and 911 audio file.
City Prosecutor Michael Dowd said there is a total of 8 hours, 50 minutes and 9 seconds of police videos related to the Jankins arrest, as numerous officers and jailers were involved at some point during the evening in the incident.
Thursday’s news media meeting was unusual in gathering city officials from multiple city departments, including the City Manager, City Prosecutor and Chief of Police, with local reporters notified only shortly beforehand, to watch, listen and hear analysis of police video footage of a specific police incident that was virtually unknown to the public.
City spokesperson William Boyer said officials “felt it was best to be proactive in sharing info in this incident due to media inquiries that had begun to occur regarding the related federal lawsuit, which we have not yet officially received, and to provide information that was already in the public domain due to the misdemeanor criminal trial, but which has up to now gone mostly unreported on by the press.”
Contacted after the meeting’s conclusion, Vice Mayor John Kennedy, who is Chair of the City’s Public Safety Committee, said he was not aware of the meeting.
“What is very good is that the Police Department, the City Attorney’s office, and the City Manager are rising to a level of transparency that is expected by the Council and also by, I think, the residents of Pasadena,” Kennedy said in reaction. “So that’s a good thing.”
Multiple calls by Pasadena Now to Jankins and Mgdesyan, his attorney, requesting clarification of the allegations have not been returned.
Get our daily Pasadena newspaper in your email box. Free.
Get all the latest Pasadena news, more than 10 fresh stories daily, 7 days a week at 7 a.m.
