A former Upper Saucon Township man who crashed into an undercover Allentown officer’s vehicle as police moved in to arrest him received $25,000 to end an excessive force lawsuit.
The May 9 settlement, released Tuesday in response to a Right-to-Know request by The Morning Call, ends Jose Luis Torres’ claims against the Allentown Police Department and the Lehigh County District Attorney’s Office.
Torres, who is serving a seven- to 15-year state prison sentence for a 2012 conviction on burglary charges, sued police officers from Allentown, Upper Saucon and the Lehigh County Drug Task Force claiming they used excessive force during his 2011 arrest.
The suit alleged the officers punched, kicked and demeaned Torres as they pulled Torres from his sport utility vehicle and handcuffed him after Torres crashed into a minivan driven by an undercover officer.
In September, U.S. District Judge Thomas O’Neill denied a request by the police officers and law enforcement agencies to decide the case in their favor based on the evidence available before a trial.
O’Neill cleared one officer of wrongdoing but ruled that a jury had to decide what roles the seven remaining officers had in Torres’ arrest, whether four of them used excessive force and whether any is to blame for failing to intervene to stop the alleged assault.
According to O’Neill’s opinion, Allentown police were investigating Torres for a string of burglaries. On June 3, 2011, detectives had a confidential informant call Torres and ask him to sell her a gun. They followed Torres to an Allentown garage, where he received a gun wrapped in a shopping bag and moved in to arrest him.
Torres testified in a deposition that he saw a man with a gun running toward him and thought he was being confronted by “a crazy guy, ” the opinion says. He put the SUV in reverse and floored the gas pedal, immediately crashing into the minivan driven by Hough.
O’Neill found Torres has presented sufficient evidence to raise a question about whether Frey struck Torres through the open window of the SUV, even though he was not resisting arrest. Torres suffered cuts and bruises during the arrest, the opinion says.
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