Paralyzed North Hollywood Resident Could Get $460,000 : City Attorney Urges L.A. to Settle ’82 Police Case

A North Hollywood man who claimed that a Los Angeles police officer beat him after an argument outside a bar six years ago, leaving him paralyzed from the neck down, will collect $460,000 if the City Council approves a recommendation by the city attorney’s office.

The Police Department said no evidence was found that the attack occurred. But the attorney for Jose Alfaro, the disabled 31-year-old man, said he found two witnesses.

“If a jury were to choose to believe plaintiff and his two alleged eyewitnesses, a verdict against the city in the sum of several million dollars would not be unreasonable,” Assistant City Atty. Ward G. McConnell said in a report recommending settlement of Alfaro’s lawsuit.

“Under the circumstances, there appears to be an unreasonable financial risk to the city in bringing this matter to trial,” McConnell said.

The proposed settlement with the city would add to $762,278 plus free lifetime care from county hospitals that Alfaro received last year as settlement of a lawsuit he filed against the county. That suit alleged medical malpractice arising from the treatment Alfaro received at the county’s Olive View Medical Center after the alleged police beating.

Alfaro, according to his lawyer, walked out of a bar near Lankershim and Victory boulevards shortly after midnight on June 3, 1982, with a bottle of beer. An unidentified officer ordered him to drop the bottle. Alfaro threw the bottle down. Words were exchanged. The officer rushed Alfaro and applied a chokehold--a controversial restraint banned by the Police Department a month earlier, attorney Paul deMontesquiou said.

Alfaro, a cook at the time, was found in a doorway near the bar the next morning. He was unable to identify the officer who he said attacked him.

The Police Department’s internal affairs unit investigated. “Because no officer logs, reports or radio tapes showed police presence at the location, and all officers interviewed denied any knowledge of the incident, the Police Department concluded that plaintiff’s claim was unfounded and

that the incident did not occur,” McConnell said.

Earlier this year, as the case was going to trial, Alfaro’s lawyer said he found two witnesses.

McConnell said the city attorney’s office interviewed the witnesses, and that “their testimony lends some credence to plaintiff’s allegations, although the identity of the officers claimed to have been involved cannot be established.”

Under the proposed settlement with the city, part of the money will be put into an annuity, which will pay Alfaro $2,000 a month for the rest of his life.

The council usually approves the city attorney’s recommendations.