MINNEAPOLIS — A new lawsuit filed in federal court Tuesday accuses former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin of using excessive force in the arrest of a 37-year-old woman in January 2020 – months before George Floyd was murdered.
Citing other cases in which Minneapolis has already paid out more than $35 million, the lawsuit accuses city officials of allowing “Chauvin’s unchecked use of excessive force” to continue for years.
If successful, the lawsuit could leave local taxpayers on the hook for millions more.
The case involved the arrest of former city employee Patty Day. At the time, she served as the communications and public outreach director for the Minneapolis Department of Public Works and had previously served as a policy aide to a Minneapolis City Council member.
Stuck in a snowbank
Patty Day admits she had been drinking on Jan. 17, 2020, when someone called 911 to report a female who appeared intoxicated had gotten her car stuck in the snowbank in south Minneapolis.
Records show Derek Chauvin was one of the officers who responded.
The lawsuit claims that without even asking her to get out, Chauvin and his partner reached into the car and grabbed her.
“I was not resisting. I was not being belligerent,” Day said during an interview with KARE 11. “I was simply trying to show them that there were no keys in the ignition of my car.”
Day’s attorneys say Chauvin “violently yanked Patty from her vehicle and, without justification, threw her to the ground in the middle of the street, fracturing her tooth, injuring her arm and shoulder, and causing other significant injuries before handcuffing her.”
Once on the ground, the lawsuit claims Chauvin pressed his knee into her back “and remained that way well after Patty was controlled.”
“He took his signature pose on top of Patty,” said Kathryn Bennett, one of Day’s attorneys. “The one we’ve seen, the one he used to kill George Floyd.”
The lawsuit also accuses a second officer, Ellen Jensen, of participating in the arrest – and failing to intervene while Chauvin allegedly held his knee on Patty’s back.
She was arrested that night and charged with drunk driving.
Despite photos showing her injuries from the encounter, the lawsuit says neither Chauvin nor Jensen filed a required “use of force” report about the arrest.
Bodycam video
The best evidence of what happened is likely the police bodycam of the incident.
Although Patty’s lawyers say she requested it more than a year ago, so far, they say the city has not released it.
“I deserve to see the video. It’s my life, it happened to me, and they need to produce it,” Day said.
Earlier court records reveal some of what the video shows.
KARE 11 reviewed a copy of a 2021 judge’s order in Patty Day’s criminal drunk driving case. After viewing the bodycam video as part of pre-trial motions in that case, Judge Julie Allyn ruled that neither officer had asked Patty Day “to exit her vehicle” before opening the door and grabbing her.
Judge Allyn found that Chauvin and Jensen grabbed her arms and “both began pulling her out of the vehicle” even though she was saying, “don’t touch me please.”
Judge Allyn found Patty did not resist arrest but did not rule on whether the officers used excessive force. However, in a written brief filed in the case, the prosecution itself seemed critical of Chauvin’s actions.
A prosecutor wrote, “the state does not condone the conduct of former officer Chauvin, in the sense that the extraction of Defendant from the vehicle likely could have been dealt with much differently and in a way that did not cause so much injury.”
Even if the court were to find “that Chauvin’s conduct constituted excessive force,” the prosecutor argued that should not be grounds for dismissing the charges.
Judge Allyn ruled that the officers “did not have probable cause” to arrest her in the first place. As a result, the drunk driving charges against Day were ultimately dropped.
Mollycoddling misconduct
The new lawsuit argues that the way Patty was treated is part of a disturbing pattern of misconduct by Chauvin – and other Minneapolis officers before him.
It claims the pattern continued because police and city leaders condoned it.
Citing a laundry list of earlier police brutality cases dating back decades, the lawsuit claims “MPD officers were mollycoddled by the City, despite clear use of improper and excessive force.”
It specifically cites two earlier cases – both from 2017 – in which the city failed to discipline Chauvin despite video evidence documenting excessive force.
In one case, reported earlier by KARE 11 investigates, records show Chauvin hit a 14-year-old boy in the head repeatedly with a metal flashlight, and pinned him down with a knee on his back for more than 15 minutes even after he had been handcuffed.
When John Pope sued, the city paid $7.5 million to settle the case. It also agreed to pay $1.3 million to another of Chauvin’s victims.
In June 2017, Zoya Code said she was slammed to the ground and Chauvin pushed his knee on her back for several minutes after she had been handcuffed.
It’s the same tactic he used years later when arresting Patty Day – and, a few months after that, against George Floyd.
Instead of disciplining Chauvin, the lawsuit says MPD supervisors in both incidents approved Chauvin’s conduct. Examples, it says, of how Minneapolis officials repeatedly failed to hold officers accountable.
Fatal 2010 incident
Attorneys say the dangers of so-called “prone restraint” – holding people face-down with pressure on their back like Patty Day, Zoya Code, John Pope and George Floyd were held – had been known for years.
In 1995, the Department of Justice warned against prone restraints. The DOJ recommendations state: “As soon as the suspect is handcuffed, get him off his stomach.”
Yet, they say Minneapolis allowed prone restraint to continue to be used despite a decade-old legal settlement that required training about the dangers.
The $3 million settlement came after a fatal incident involving David Smith, a man in the midst of a mental health crisis. Responding to a disturbance call at the Minneapolis YMCA, two Minneapolis officers Tased and handcuffed him.
Smith died after police held him face-down on the ground with pressure on his back for more than four minutes. An autopsy showed he died due to “mechanical asphyxia” caused by prone restraint. In short, he couldn’t breathe.
As part of the settlement in the multi-million-dollar wrongful death lawsuit brought by Smith’s family, MPD promised to “require its sworn police officers to undergo training on positional asphyxia.”
Robert Bennett is one of the lawyers who represented the Smith family. More than a decade later, he now represents Patty Day.
In addition to damages against the individual officers, the lawsuit seeks “in excess of $9,000,000” in damages against the city for what he called “deliberate indifference” in allowing a pattern of improper use of force to continue so long.
Patty says her snowstorm arrest should have sounded the alarm before the firestorm to come.
“I was arrested in January and George Floyd was murdered in May,” Day told KARE 11. “So, there was time for them to act. They knew what happened to me and they did nothing.”
The City of Minneapolis has not yet responded in court to the latest lawsuit. A police spokesperson told KARE 11, "MPD is unable to comment on pending or ongoing litigation."
When the city settled earlier cases, Mayor Jacob Frey and current Police Chief Brian O’Hara criticized past police practices.
"To John Pope, Zoya Code, and anyone else that has experienced this kind of egregious conduct at the hands of Derek Chauvin, our city deeply apologizes," Frey said.
Chief O’Hara was even more critical. "This is an example of the cancer that has infected this department,” he told reporters. Apologizing to the families, O’Hara added, "Nearly six years after these two incidents occurred, we are forced once again to reckon with the deplorable acts of a person (Chauvin) who has proven to be a national embarrassment to the policing profession, and the continued harm he has caused members of our community."
If you have a tip for our investigative team, email investigations@kare11.com.
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