California to pay $2.5M Settlement to Unarmed Black Man Shot 4 Times in the Back by White CHiPs Cop [White Media Hides Photo of Cop]
Sunday, February 8, 2015 at 06:32PM 
In photo [from Pacovilla] California Highway Patrol Commissioner Joe Farrow. As you recall last summer, in another genocidal episoode involving a white CHP officer, Daniel Andrew, repeatedly punched Marlene Pinnock, a Black homeless woman suffering from bipolar disorder, in the face in broad daylight on the side of a freeway into the asphalt in LA on July 1, 2014. Pinnock received a $1.5 million settlement from a lawsuit filed against the CHP in September 2014. Criminal charges against Andrew are pending. After the incident idiot Farrow said the 'beating shows a need for better training' - not removing racist psychopaths from his "police" force. [MORE] No photographs of the racist suspect cop involved in this latest episode have been made avaialble by the white owned and controlled media. What is white collective power?
From [HERE] The state of California agreed Tuesday to pay $2.5 million to settle an excessive-force lawsuit filed by an African-American carpenter who was shot at least eight times by a white CHP rookie during a traffic stop. Ligon was severely injured.
The state offered the settlement on the first day of trial in federal court, after the officer who shot James Henry Ligon Jr. in 2012 testified that Ligon stepped out of his car and charged directly at him, shouting threats.
The problem with CHP officer Joe Lafauci's account was it did not match the physical evidence in the case, said Ligon's lawyers, Jaime Leanos and Nelson McElmurry. Ligon was shot four times in the back, suggesting he was not coming at the officer.
"Officer Lafauci immediately went for his gun, unlike his more experienced partner, who got out of the patrol car without even taking out his gun," just his Taser, McElmurry said.
Lafauci had only 14 months on the job when he emptied his service pistol of 12 rounds, at least eight of which hit Ligon.
White prosecutors in the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office had ruled in 2013 that the shooting was justified and no criminal charges should be filed against Lafauci.
In a 24-page report, prosecutors said they found it "particularly relevant" that Ligon had prior convictions for misdemeanor resisting arrest, including in 2010 after a high-speed chase. "We cannot review the officer's split-second decisions from the comfort of 20/20 hindsight backed by forensic evidence; we must look at what was reasonable at the time and under the circumstances," the report found. [being aware of prior convictions that were unknown to arresting officers at the time of the incident is HINDSiGHT - unseen by racist prosecutors engulfed in the idiocy of racism]
But federal Judge Ronald R. Whyte had ruled before the start of the civil trial that the jury would only be told Ligon had a prior record, but the details of those prior convictions would be inadmissible because Lafauci didn't know about them at the time of the shooting.
Ligon, now 37, said he had stepped out of his car after leading the CHP on a high-speed chase for three miles because he couldn't hear what the officers were yelling and to show them he was unarmed.
"I feel like justice has been served," Ligon said Tuesday, noting he lost the use of his right hand and arm as a result of his multiple injuries. "It almost took my life."
According to Sunnyvale police, which investigated Ligon's shooting, Lafauci and fellow CHP officer Cory Walczak tried to stop Ligon in a gold Toyota Corolla about 1:30 a.m. on southbound Highway 101 near Ellis Street, suspecting he was driving drunk. It was later determined he had an estimated blood-alcohol level of .25-.32, at least three times above the legal limit of .08.
Ligon did not pull over and instead drove onto city streets in Sunnyvale for about three miles to the 200 block of Alturas Avenue, near where his mother lived. He was driving her car and did not want it to be impounded, Leanos said.
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