San Bernardino Police Use of Force Ruled Out of Policy: What This Case Shows About Accountability
A widely viewed video of a San Bernardino police officer repeatedly striking a man with a baton during a June 2024 arrest prompted the department to open an internal investigation, drawing renewed attention to how local law enforcement agencies review their own officers' use of force.
What Happened
According to news coverage of the incident, San Bernardino officers responded to a report involving a motorcycle that had been in a crash, with witnesses saying the rider had fled the scene. Officers made contact with a man near a convenience store on East 40th Street who they believed matched the description of the person involved. He maintained that the motorcycle in question was his own and registered in his name.
Reporting on the case describes officers attempting to handcuff the man, followed by an officer deploying a Taser that did not appear to stop him from resisting. Police have said that at that point the man reached for the Taser, and an officer then switched to a baton, striking the man's legs more than a dozen times while two other officers held him. He suffered multiple fractures to both legs. The department released bodycam footage of the encounter and said it was reviewing the incident. You can read the original reporting on the case at ABC7 Los Angeles.
What "Out of Policy" Actually Means
When a police department describes a use of force as "out of policy," it means the department's own internal affairs or use-of-force review process concluded that an officer's actions did not meet the standards set out in that department's use-of-force policy, not that a court, a jury, or an outside agency made that determination.
That distinction matters. An out-of-policy finding can lead to internal discipline, retraining, or a return-to-duty process with added oversight. But it is a separate track entirely from criminal prosecution of an officer and separate from a civil lawsuit brought by the person who was injured. A department can rule its own use of force out of policy and still see no criminal charges filed against the officer involved. Whether the person harmed has a viable civil claim is a distinct legal question, decided under different standards and by a different process.
What a POST Review Covers
California's Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) maintains statewide certification for law enforcement officers. Under a law that took effect in 2022, POST can investigate and, in serious cases, revoke or suspend an officer's certification, effectively barring that officer from working in California law enforcement.
A POST decertification review is a separate, state-level process from a department's internal investigation. It exists specifically to address cases of serious misconduct that a local department's own discipline may not fully resolve, and it is not automatically triggered every time a department makes an out-of-policy finding. The threshold for decertification is high, and most internal discipline cases never reach that stage.
The Six-Month Deadline That Catches People Off Guard
California law requires anyone who wants to bring a claim against a city, county, or other public entity, including claims arising from a police encounter, to first file a formal government claim with that public entity. Under the California Government Claims Act, that claim generally must be filed within six months of the incident.
This is dramatically shorter than the two-year statute of limitations that applies to most personal injury claims against private individuals or businesses in California. It is one of the most common reasons people who have real, valid civil rights claims end up unable to pursue them: they wait, assuming they have years to decide, and the deadline passes before they ever speak with an attorney.
What To Do After a Use-of-Force Incident
For anyone who has been involved in an encounter with police that resulted in injury, a few steps can matter a great deal later on:
Get medical treatment and keep records. Documentation created close in time to the incident carries more weight than a description recreated months later.
Write down what happened while it's fresh, including officer names or badge numbers if known, and the names of any witnesses.
Preserve any video — bystander cell phone footage, security camera footage from nearby businesses, or footage from your own devices.
Understand the six-month clock starts immediately. Don't wait to find out whether charges will be filed or an internal investigation will conclude before looking into your own claim deadline.
Speak with an attorney who handles civil rights and police misconduct cases before that window closes, even if you're not sure yet whether you want to pursue anything.
A Pattern Worth Watching
Cases like this one tend to raise the same questions in the community: how thoroughly do departments investigate themselves, what happens after an out-of-policy finding is made public, and what options exist for someone who was hurt during a police encounter. Those questions extend well beyond any single case, and they're ones our firm follows closely across San Bernardino County.
