2 Police Officers to Face Charges of Beating Suspect

Two San Diego police officers were charged with felony assault Tuesday for allegedly beating and kicking a handcuffed drug suspect in a Southeast San Diego cemetery after a high-speed chase.

Officers David A. Nellis and Mark L. Keyser were charged with assault by a police officer under the color of authority and will be arraigned Dec. 7 in San Diego Superior Court.

Police Cmdr. Cal Krosch said the officers were taken out of field service and placed on administrative duties when the alleged beating victim, Keith Anthony Beals, filed a complaint about the Sept. 18 incident.

The police internal affairs unit conducted a review of the complaint and sent it to the officers’ supervisors, who will determine whether the officers should be disciplined, Krosch said.

Beals, a 19-year-old construction-site cleanup worker, said the officers assaulted him after they handcuffed his hands behind his back and ordered him to lay on his stomach.

“They told me ‘Don’t resist arrest,’ and I didn’t,” he said. “But they went ahead anyway and just started hitting me. They pulled my arms behind me and just started hitting and kicking me in the head and the ribs.

Taken to Hospital

“I was in the cemetery, and I didn’t want to resist or anything because they could have killed me. They picked me up and took me up to the car, and one of the officers stood me up and kicked me twice in the stomach and in the testicles.”

Beals said the officers later that night took him to UC San Diego Medical Center.

“The doctor saw bruises all over me,” Beals said. “I had lumps all over my head.”

The officers, who face a maximum sentence of three years in prison and a $10,000 fine, were on personal leave Tuesday and could not be reached for comment.

In his police report describing the arrest, Keyser said the chase began when Beals tossed “several loose rocks of cocaine out the window” of his car when he spotted the officers near the 4200 block of Market Street.

Beals sped away and, with the officers in pursuit, continued to throw out several “white rocks” and plastic bags and run several stop signs before he was apprehended at Greenwood Cemetery, the Keyser report said.

In the car, the officers found “one rock of cocaine” on the driver’s seat, one rock on the passenger’s side floorboard and several “bits of crushed cocaine on the floorboard,” the report said.

The report did not mention any struggle between the officers and Beals, but it did discuss his injuries.

“While contacting Beals in order to obtain his identification, he told Officer Nellis that his neck and back felt stiff and he ached,” the report said. “Beals said he did not know how he may have injured himself, but he requested to see a doctor.

“We transported him to UCSD hospital to be seen by a doctor. Beals was checked and then released to us because the doctors’ findings checked negative.”

Medical records, which indicated that treatment was completed for Beals, stated it was “unknown” how the injuries occurred.

Beals was held on suspicion of evading arrest, of possession of cocaine for sale and of reckless driving. He is scheduled to appear in court Monday.