The owner of Cop Blaster filed suit against Multnomah County and several of their employees for excessive use of force resulting in serious body injury, deliberate indifference, deliberate indifference to serious medical needs, assault and battery, medical negligence, and defamation. The suit is in response to Multnomah County Sheriff's Deputy Timothy Barker breaking Cyrus Sullivan's left arm in 2017.
The suit names Barker and several deputies that were present as defendants. It also names the county, the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office, Multnomah County Sheriff Michael Reese, and commanding officers in charge of reviewing incident reports because they continue to nurture a culture that one former deputy (Wallace Montoya) described as, “a strong culture in the corrections division countervailing against the reporting of physical force by a co-worker or more especially by a commanding officer unless the conduct was egregious."
The Multnomah County Health Department, several doctors, and other medical staff are being sued for deliberate indifference to serious medical needs for failing to properly treat Sullivan's broken arm in the weeks following the incident. As a result Sullivan experienced weeks of unnecessary pain and his arm healed slightly crooked.
Common law assault and battery, and medical negligence claims are being made for reasons similar to the excessive force and deliberate indifference claims, Defamation claims were filed against several deputies that made false statements in their incident reports and to investigators that falsely accused him of crimes without any tangible evidence and tried to make it look as if his arm were broken by accident. Those statements are refuted by an expert in biomechanics that concluded with scientific certainty that Sullivan was telling the truth and that Sullivan's arm could not possibly have been broken the way that the deputies said it was.
The case number is 3:19-CV-995-SB and you can read the complaint at:
https://copblaster.com/uploads/files/sullivanvmultcoso.pdf