Jerry L. Steering is a Police Misconduct Attorney who has sued the police since 1984. Mr. Steering sues police officers in Palm Springs and the Coachella Valley area, and otherwise throughout the State of California. Mr. Steering is a Specialist and Expert in suing the police for false arrests, police brutality / excessive force, malicious criminal prosecutions and wrongful deaths. Notwithstanding Palm Springs’ fairly liberal reputation, even the Palm Springs City Council cannot control the Palm Springs Police Department. No police officers or deputy sheriffs “rat-out” their fellows officers. If they do, they need to find employment in some other profession, because they will not be peace officers much longer. Palm Springs Police officers, as are most modern police officers, are acutely aware of what they can and cannot get away with. As a practical matter, they all know that with few exceptions, they can beat, falsely arrest, maliciously prosecute and even kill civilians, anytime that they want to do so, and get away with it. Most Palm Springs Police Department police officers don’t drive around town in their patrol cars, looking to pick fights with innocents. However, when they do come into contact with the public, such as a traffic or pedestrian stops, if the civilian verbally protests or challenges their authority (“contempt of cop”), the civilian often soon finds himself with a fat-lip, a black eye, taser burn marks, an now being taken to to jail for some bogus “resistance offense”, against the very officer who beat them up. The Riverside County District Attorney’s Office is then all too anxious to prosecute that innocent civilian for beating-up / “resisting” the police; to beat the innocent down into taking some sort of plea agreement that will protect the police from any civil liability to you. This is how things work in Riverside County, and in the Palm Springs area (See, The Contempt of Cop Game”; How Well Can You Play?). Palm Springs Police Department police officers routinely beat-up, falsely arrest and maliciously prosecute their victims for bogus “resistance offenses” such as violation of Cal. Penal Code Sections 148(a)(1) (resisting / obstructing / delaying peace officer), 69 (resisting or deterring peace officer with threat or actual violence), 241(c) (assault on peace officer) and 243(b) (battery on peace officer). To make things worse, Riverside County District Attorney Mike Hestrin has created a new Crimes Against Peace Officers Unit. The role of that Unit is to falsely and maliciously prosecute the innocent victims of police misconduct, to prevent / preclude those innocents from suing the police. It is shameful. JERRY L. STEERING HAS SUED POLICE OFFICERS IN THE COACHELLA VALLEY. Mr. Steering recently obtained $375,000.00 from the City of Palm Springs for an hourly long false arrest of a Palm Springs woman for violation of a restraining order. Palm Springs Police Department police officer Michael Delaney failed to read the Riverside County Superior Court Judges handwritten notes on the Temporary Restraining Order that specified that the wife was not restrained from being at her own home (the permanent order was ultimately denied). By the time that the Officer arrived at the Palm Springs Police Department station, he realized his mistake, and the falsely arrested woman was driven back home. She never made it into the Palm Springs Jail. Rather than discipline Officer Delaney, the Palm Springs Police Department promoted him to the rank of Sergeant. See, Amy Barnett v. City of Palm Springs, United States District Court, Central District of California Case Number Case No.: 5:21-CV-00386-JWH-(KKx) Mr. Steering has also represented many bogus criminal “resistance offense” cases (i.e. Cal. Penal Code Sections 148(a)(1) (resisting arrest) and 243(b) (battery on a peace officer) in the Coachella Valley since the mid-1980s. His most notorious cases are Edward Moore et al. v. City of Desert Hot Springs, et al, and Andrea Heath v. City of Desert Hot Springs, et al., Ryan Risk et al. v. Cathedral City et al.. In the Edward Moore v. Desert Hot Springs case, Mr. Steering obtain $825,000.00 for the plaintiffs for the unlawful use of pepper-spray of innocent plaintiffs, who complained to the DHSPD Officers about their failure to attend to their daughter, whose vehicle was struck by a drink driver in her own driveway. The Andrea Heath v. Desert Hot Springs case was more bizarre. During the 2000s Desert Hot Springs Police Department was basically a crazed gang of murderous cops. They had two factions at DHSPD; the “lettuce eaters” and “meat eaters”. The “lettuce eaters” were those DHSPD officers who refused to use force as a first resort. The “meat eaters” were those DHSPD officers who used and enjoyed to use crippling source as a first resort. The leader of the “meat eaters”, Lt. David Henderson, used to go out on his patrol shift with two cans of pepper-spray, because one can would not be enough for one of his duty shifts. Lt. David Henderson even essentially murdered a man named Michael Sanchez while on-duty. Mr. Sanchez was in a pursuit with Riverside County Sheriff’s Department Deputy Sheriffs, and the Sheriffs Deputies claim that Sanchez shot at them. The Sheriff’s Department had already captured Michael Sanchez and had him on the ground, so when David Henderson got to the scene The other leader of the “meat eaters”, Sgt. Anthony Sclafani, ended up going to prison for torturing prisoners at the Desert Hot Springs Police Department Jail. The Andrea Heath case handled by Jerry L. Steering involved DHSPD Detective Andrea Heath suffering incredible retaliation for telling the FBI and a federal Grand Jury how bad DHSPD really was treating the public. DHSPD retaliated so badly against Det. Heath ended-up committing suicide. Local District Attorney’s are simply not competent to criminally prosecute the police and will use any excuse and will find any justification for an Officer-Involved-Shooting. If you don’t believe this, then just take a gander at the ever growing list of bad-police-shootings that have been found to have been justified by the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office in the past few years. None of the 963 fatal police shootings of civilians in 2017 ended-up with the prosecution of those officers who unjustifiably killed a civilian. Police Misconduct Specialties: Excessive Force Concealing Evidence Destroying Evidence False Arrest K-9 Maulings Malicious Prosecution Police Beatings Police Brutality Police Shootings Whistle Blower Retaliation Wrongful Death FREE CASE EVALUATION It’s not easy to get justice for resistance offense cases; civil or criminal. Jerry L. Steering, Esq., has been doing just that since 1984. Defending bogus Criminal Cases and Suing Police Officers for Violating your Constitutional Rights since 1984 for Excessive Force, Police Brutality, False Arrest, Malicious Prosecution, K-9 Maulings, Police Beatings and Shootings and Wrongful Death, Concealing & Destroying Exculpatory Evidence and Whistle Blower Retaliation. Tel: (949) 474-1849; jerry@Steeringlaw.com
