Pastor Accusing Simi Valley Police of Wrongful Arrest

A pastor has accused the city’s Police Department of causing him bruises, heart trouble and emotional trauma when officers mistook him for a man with a gun and subdued him.

Pastor Willie Gray, leader of the Second Missionary Baptist Church of Simi Valley, filed a civil claim Friday alleging he was wrongfully arrested at gunpoint and held by police for 20 minutes May 21 before they let him go.

“He was ordered out of the car [and got out] on his own volition, he was handcuffed and placed down on the curb, sitting,” said Gray’s attorney, Frank C. Lincoln of Los Angeles. “He experienced chest tightening from stress and bruises to his lower back.”

However, Lincoln said there was no evidence of racism or brutality in the police’s handling of Gray, who is black. Gray declined to comment, saying the case is in litigation.

Simi Valley Police Chief Randy Adams said his officers “handled that like they would any other call of an individual potentially armed with a weapon. . . . My understanding is that as soon as they were able to make sure the situation was under control and he wasn’t a danger to anyone, Mr. Gray was released.”

Gray’s claim alleges that he was waiting in his car with a dead battery at the Yosemite Shell station that evening just before 10 for his wife to drive up and give his car a jump-start.

A customer told the gas station clerk that a “black male in a gray vehicle is requesting a jump and is pointing a handgun at other subjects,” according to police records attached to the claim. The clerk then called 911.

“The clerk alleges that two anonymous persons at the station came up and alleged my client was waving a gun around,” but Gray does not own a gun, Lincoln said. And the numbers given by the tipsters proved to be bogus, according to the claim.

The police let Gray go once they determined he was unarmed, Lincoln said.

“The gist of the complaint against the police is that the law is fairly clear that when you get an anonymous tip like this, the police have to conduct a further investigation,” Lincoln said. “That they didn’t do.”

Chief Adams said the complaint was hardly anonymous; it came from a commercial establishment, and dispatchers noted the clerk’s name when she called.

“We certainly want to act on the information we receive and try to handle the situation with the minimum level of force possible, but in a way to protect everyone involved,” Adams said. “You have to handle those [calls] in a manner which will protect the officers responding as well as the citizens in the surrounding area.”