Man sues Keller officers after he was arrested, pepper-sprayed in what he says was retaliation

A Keller man has filed a lawsuit against two police officers who pushed him to the ground and pepper-sprayed him after he filmed his son’s arrest following a traffic stop.

Marco Puente, 39, is suing Blake Shimanek and Ankit Tomer in federal court, alleging that the Keller officers used excessive force and retaliated against him.

The lawsuit also says Dillon Puente was racially profiled during the traffic stop and that Shimanek arrested him and took him to jail for making “a wide right turn” solely to search his car for narcotics, which he didn’t find.

Body-cam video of Puente’s arrest has gone viral on social media, and an online petition demanding that Shimanek be fired and face criminal charges has drawn more than 12,000 signatures.

An attorney who represents both officers in the civil case declined to comment Thursday.

Keller Mayor Armin Mizani said in a written statement Wednesday night that the police command staff had reviewed the situation within hours of the arrest in August and that charges against Puente were dropped.

Police Chief Brad Fortune didn’t respond to an email seeking comment Thursday, but Puente said the chief apologized to him two days after his arrest.

“It’s unfortunate they had anything to apologize for,” said Scott Palmer, one of the attorneys who is representing Puente. “No one’s saying that they didn’t take the right approach after the fact, but the fact is that this should never have happened in the first place.”

The mayor said Keller police initiated an internal affairs investigation into the case, which found that Shimanek arrested “an individual for an offense that was not committed.”

That ultimately led the police chief to demote Shimanek from the rank of sergeant to officer in September. He may reapply for the sergeant rank after a year.

The city released Shimanek’s body-cam and dash-cam footage Wednesday, as well as a copy of the internal affairs complaint and findings that center on his conduct during the arrests. The attorneys who are representing Puente shared additional body-cam and dash-cam footage from two other officers, including Tomer, with The Dallas Morning News.

“Keller PD is a state-recognized and nationally accredited department, and those designations come with extensive protocols and policies,” Mizani said in his statement. “Police encounters like these, however, remind us that as a city and as a department, we must continually work to strengthen our standards.”

Another attorney for Puente, James Roberts, said the purpose of the lawsuit is to increase officers’ accountability.

“It’s about making sure that when an officer steps out of line and does something wrong, he’s held accountable, and other officers see that and realize that they can’t do something wrong, or they’re going to be held accountable,” Roberts said.

The footage of the arrests showed that after Shimanek pulled over Marco Puente’s son, Dillon Puente, he walked up to his car, telling him to roll his window down. While Dillon Puente was stopped, he kept the window about a fourth of the way open.

Then Dillon Puente, who was 22 at the time, complied when Shimanek ordered him to get out of the car.

“Why are you acting so suspicious?” Shimanek asked as he handcuffed him.

“Because I’m scared,” Dillon Puente replied.

Marco Puente then pulled up in his truck, and his son told him the officer got upset after he rolled up his window while he was being pulled over.

Shimanek told Marco Puente he was about to be arrested for blocking the roadway and told him to go park elsewhere. After Marco Puente parked elsewhere and walked back to where the officer was questioning his son, he had his cellphone out to record the incident.

When the second officer, Tomer, arrived, Shimanek told him to watch Marco Puente, who was standing on a sidewalk across the street from Shimanek.

“Watch me what? Watch me stand here?” he asked.

“Yep,” Shimanek said. “Better yet, arrest him,” he told Tomer.

The officers pinned him down in the grass, and Shimanek ordered Tomer to pepper-spray him.

“I’m not even doing anything,” Marco Puente said as Tomer sprayed him twice. “Dude, what the heck, man? What is this about?”

Marco Puente repeatedly told the officers his eyes were burning and asked for a towel as they walked him to a squad car and put him in the back seat.

“I’m asking for medical assistance,” Marco Puente said in the video. “I can’t even breathe, bro.”

Tomer told Puente he’d get medical help at the jail. When they arrived at the jail, the officers waited several minutes before helping Puente.

From the moment he was pepper-sprayed to when another officer at the jail helped him rinse his eyes, more than 15 minutes passed.

“He was begging for help the entire time,” Palmer said.

Puente said that during the arrest, one of the officers took off his sunglasses to pepper-spray him. That tore his nostril, leaving him with a scar.

He was born and raised in Keller, and still spends time there often with his family even though they moved away about five years ago, he said. Now, they’re wary when they’re in town.

“Every time we go there, my son included — for that matter, my wife and daughter who weren’t even involved — you’re always kind of looking over your shoulder,” he said.

The Keller City Council will discuss the case in executive session during its next meeting at 6 p.m. Tuesday. The mayor said in a written statement that he hoped to share more information with residents after that.