The family of Rob Adams, fatally shot by San Bernardino Police July 16, has filed a $100 million class action civil-rights lawsuit against the city.
Their attorneys announced the suit in a press conference Dec. 16 in Los Angeles.
Adams, a 23-year-old black man, was fatally shot seven times in the back in a San Bernardino parking lot across the street from Arrowview Middle School.
San Bernardino police declined our request for comment on the lawsuit, but referenced a video statement that said Adams had a gun, and was a danger to pedestrians and residents in the area.
The complaint says he “had no visible weaponry of any sorts.” The Adams family’s lawyers say Adams was on the phone with his mother when police fatally shot him.
Civil rights attorneys Ben Crump and Bradley Gage of Law Offices of Goldberg and Gage represent Adams’ family. Their websites list high profile civil-rights cases in their histories: Crump lists representation of the families of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd; Gage lists representation of the family of the Notorious B.I.G., and, in 2020, San Bernardino City Manager Andrea Miller in her suit against the city claiming gender discrimination and retaliation stemming from clashes with then-Mayor John Valdivia.
They said at the press conference that they chose to sue for $100 million to make it too expensive for cities not to change their policing policies.
“It’s certainly my mission, my life’s mission, to raise the value of black life in America,” said Crump. “If we don’t shock the conscience, then how many other black mothers and fathers are going to have to bury their children because the police thought it was OK, that it was allowed, that it was justified to shoot our black children in the back?”
Multiple videos of the shooting have been released by both the police and Adams’ family.
In them, Adams is seen with a friend in a parking lot behind Golden Valley Medical & Oxygen Services, by the corner of N. D Street and W. Highland Avenue. An unmarked car pulls up, and Adams walks toward it. Within seconds, two police officers emerge from the car, one of them appears to be shining a flashlight, the other appears to have a gun drawn. Adams runs between two other cars, to the wall. An officer shoots. Six seconds pass between the officers’ emerging from the car and their firing.
San Bernardino Police Chief Darren Goodman released a video statement July 19. In it, he said the officers were responding to a call of a man with a gun.
Goodman’s video account says the officers gave verbal commands to drop the gun. He said Adams had a gun tucked into his waistband, and that he displayed it before he realized they were police.
Crump and Gage said in the press conference that Adams had no visible weapon, and that the object claimed to be a gun was Adams’ cellphone.
“We were on the phone when he was shot. I didn’t know what was taking place until I got the phone call.…He was in good spirits,” said Adams’ mother, Tamika King, at the press conference.
The officers believed Adams was going between the parked cars for cover, Goodman said. He said that Adams’ gun was recovered — a 99mm Taurus G3C with a round in the chamber — and that SBPD has it.
Crump announced in August that in independent autopsy paid for by the Colin Kaepernick Foundation shows seven gunshot wounds, all with a back-to-front trajectory. No shots had a front-to-back trajectory according to an Aug. 8 report of the autopsy findings.
The complaint brings charges for unreasonable seizure of person, civil battery, wrongful death, negligence and violation of California’s Bane Act.
“This lawsuit is not just about Rob Adams. It’s about the pattern and practice that exists with police who use unnecessary, unjustifiable excessive use of force,” Crump said.
“We hope that with lawsuits like this one…, we’re going to raise the awareness and have a new civil rights movement,” Gage followed.
Read the complaint here.
Toni Momberger contributed to this report.
