A lawsuit claimed that Fresno, California police constantly ignored ladies’s claims of home violence and threats, resulting in the demise of 1 girl and the paralysis of one other by the hands of an abusive former accomplice. This week, an lawyer for the ladies’s households introduced that town has agreed to pay $500,000 to settle the lawsuit, ending an almost nine-year authorized battle.
The lawsuit claimed that a number of Fresno cops responded callously and inadequately to ladies’s stories of abuse and threats by ex-partners, and didn’t arrest the lads who attacked them regardless of ample trigger to take action. Because of the officers’ inaction, one of many ladies, Pamela Motley, was paralyzed, and one other, Cindy Raygoza, was killed when their former companions assaulted them.
In accordance with the go well with, Motley repeatedly reported violent threats from Paul Motley, her estranged husband, to the police. Regardless of Paul’s repeated violation of a brief restraining order, police made no try to arrest him.
In a single April seventh, 2014 incident Paul explicitly threatened to shoot Pamela if she did not return to him by April 14th. Nonetheless, when Pamela reported this risk to the police, the responding officer “seemed insensitive and rude to both Pamela and other witnesses who were present and available to give corroborating statements,” in accordance with the lawsuit. The officer “did not even exit his vehicle or turn his engine off when speaking to Pamela,” and even “told Pamela that she should not be too worried because ‘These guys only follow through 1 percent of the time.'” On April twelfth, 2014, Paul shot Pamela within the face, paralyzing her, earlier than taking pictures and killing himself. Pamela died in 2020 after contracting COVID-19.
Police handled Raygoza with comparable apathy. In accordance with the go well with, Raygoza referred to as Fresno police after her ex-boyfriend, Michael Reams, broke into her house and attacked her. When police arrived, Raygoza advised an unnamed officer that she had been a sufferer of home violence in a earlier marriage. The go well with claimed that the officer then “took it upon himself to berate Cindy and criticize her choices of men,” and advised Raygoza that “if she continued to associate with [Reams] she would be ‘crying wolf’ and would not receive any responses to her calls or service to her address.”
Police by no means tried to arrest Reams, and regardless of continued threats, Raygoza by no means contacted regulation enforcement once more. On July 14th, 2014, Reams stabbed Raygoza to demise in her house.
Along with claims from Motley and Raygoza’s household, lawyer Kevin Little mentioned that greater than thirty ladies finally joined the lawsuit with claims of mistreatment by Fresno police when reporting home violence. This week, after greater than eight years of litigation, Little introduced that the Metropolis of Fresno agreed to a $500,000 settlement.
“Today marks the end of a long road for the families, the Motley and the Raygoza families,” Little mentioned throughout a press convention this week, including that the 2 ladies had been fatally and near-fatally attacked “as a result of inaction on the part of the Fresno police department in the face of multiple complaints that they made regarding their abusers that went unresponded, unanswered, unaddressed.”
Whereas the hefty settlement cannot convey Motley and Raygoza again to their households, it does ship a uncommon—and robust—message to native police departments that encourage officers to brush off home violence, and even blame ladies for turning into victims of their ex-partner’s violence.
“She was loving and giving, and she would be there for anyone. And then the time that she needed help, no one was there to protect her and help her,” Amanda Sylvester, Motley’s daughter, mentioned in a press convention. “No one took her [seriously], and she feared for her life for months.”