Jackson Files Claim in Videotaped Arrest

Activist Don Jackson filed a claim this week against the city of Long Beach, asking for damages arising from a nationally publicized incident in which an officer allegedly pushed Jackson through a plate-glass window.

The claim, received Wednesday by the city clerk, asks for unspecified damages after Jackson and a colleague, Jeffrey C. Hill, were “illegally detained, arrested, cited and criminally charged on fictional accounts in police reports and criminally prosecuted in bad faith.”

The claim stems from the Jan. 14 incident in which Jackson, a former Hawthorne police sergeant, and Hill, an off-duty federal corrections officer, were stopped by two officers as they drove along Pacific Coast Highway. They had come to Long Beach with an NBC television crew to conduct a “sting” amid reports that the city’s police were racist and brutal.

The crew videotaped Officer Mark Dickey as he appeared to smash Jackson’s head through a storefront window and throw him onto the hood of patrol car. Dickey and fellow officer Mark Ramsey now face misdemeanor charges of filing a false report. Dickey alone is charged with assault.

Dickey and Ramsey are among those named in the claim, which alleges that Jackson and Hill were deprived of their civil rights and subjected to false arrest, racism and brutality.