ANTIOCH — Two Antioch residents filed a federal civil rights lawsuit this week claiming the city’s police officers brutalized them with less-lethal launchers and police dogs as part of a systematic attempt to terrorize the city’s Black residents for sport and pleasure.
The lawsuit by Dajon Smith and Jessie Wilson adds to a mounting pile of allegations against the embattled Antioch Police Department, which saw nine officers indicted last year on a litany of state and federal charges, all while a sprawling racist texting scandal ensnared roughly half of the city’s police force. Already, the city faces several lawsuits stemming from the officers’ actions, as well as a California Department of Justice civil rights inquiry.
The suit comes just five months after this newspaper obtained body camera footage detailing the violent arrest of Smith, a transgender woman who was shot with a sponge round, tackled to the ground and then bit by a police dog during an October 2021 encounter in an Antioch grocery store parking lot. It all happened after Smith threw her hands in the air when those same officers surrounded her with their guns drawn.
“Don’t you see my hands right here?” Smith yelled at officers, two seconds before one of them shot her with the sponge bullet. After being struck, Smith ducked back into the car before a group of officers ran up, pulled her out and sicced a police dog on her as they attempt to put her in handcuffs.
The lawsuit names the city of Antioch and police officers Eric Rombough, Devon Wenger and Morteza Amiri as defendants. Those officers were each indicted in August on charges of federal civil rights violations after a two-year FBI investigation. The suit claims they conspired to “injure, oppress, threaten and intimidate” Antioch residents based on the color of their skin, all while trying to cover up their alleged misdeeds by filing falsified police reports.
In Smith’s case, Wenger fired a less-lethal 40mm round at Smith almost immediately after Antioch police Sgt. Joshua Evans — who was named in the department’s racist texting scandal — told Wenger to “plug (her) a– with the 40,” the lawsuit alleged. The round hit her in the chest, after which she could be heard howling in pain as a police dog bit into her arm while officers held her on the ground.
“Hey, you did this to yourself,” one officer told Smith after police handcuffed her. The officer later added, “All you had to do was comply.”
The lawsuit takes aim at texts that Wenger sent and received after the encounter, with Amiri praising Wenger for firing the launcher and asking to see Wenger’s body camera footage of it, saying “I love this wenger!!”
“#Newyearnewme Hahah jk. Just trying to get on swat bro!,” Wenger replied.
The Oct. 26, 2021, incident is included as the final count of an eight-count federal indictment filed in August, which charged Wenger, Rombough and Amiri with conspiracy and deprivation of civil rights. It happened while Wenger and other officers — most of them not named in the lawsuit — investigated a report that Smith was driving a Maserati that was stolen during a test drive from a Pittsburg car dealership.
Smith told this newspaper in December that it appeared the officers “just had their mind already made up, before they got there.”
“I was like: What’s happening, what’s going on?” Smith said. “I couldn’t really do anything or say anything. I didn’t even swing or take no aggressive action or anything like that.”
The lawsuit also detailed an encounter between Antioch police and Wilson, who was shot two months earlier with a 40mm sponge bullet fired by Rombough while he carried out a search warrant.
On Aug. 24, 2021, the officers barged into a locked bedroom where Wilson had been sitting on an air mattress and playing video games, the lawsuit said. Wilson removed his headphones and raised his hands into the air before an officer took Wilson’s left arm and held it on the bed. That’s when Rombough allegedly fired the launcher at Wilson, injuring him, the lawsuit said.
Afterward, Rombough asked another officer — who was not named in the lawsuit — to get photographs of Wilson, the lawsuit said. The request followed a trend of officers sharing pictures of people they shot in other cases and cracking jokes or glorifying their use of violence. Federal prosecutors have said Rombough was collecting sponge bullets to build a flag on the mantle of his Solano County home.
The lawsuit accused Rombough of falsifying his police report to cover up his actions during the August 2021 raid. He changed his report after another officer raised concerns that “you write that he didn’t comply but he clearly had his hands up at first,” the lawsuit said.
“You need to describe way better what happened,” the officer told Rombough, according to the lawsuit. “He was ordered to put his hands on his head. He didn’t do this. What did he do instead?” The unnamed officer then appeared to offer a few alternatives to Rombough, including that Wilson “leaned to his right,” or that his “arm appeared to be reaching behind bed” once another officer grabbed him.
The instance fit a theme at the Antioch Police Department of officers having “declined to intercede and/or report the incidents to APD superiors, including as required by APD policies,” the lawsuit said.
“Instead, Defendants encouraged one another to continue the scheme to deprive the individuals in and around Antioch of their constitutional rights,” the lawsuit alleged.
This news organization in November reported that the incident was one of four where Antioch commanders found officers’ use of force conformed with department guidelines, while the FBI and a federal grand jury later concluded those same acts constituted violent crimes that carry prison terms and were part of a a years-long scheme to violate the civil rights of citizens.
Messages left with the officers’ attorneys and Antioch Interim Chief Brian Addington were not immediately returned.
