Police must show files

Costa Mesa police will have to show personnel records, including disciplinary actions and suspensions, of four of its officers to an Orange County Superior Court judge next month as part of a man’s defense that he did not resist arrest last year.

Last week the Costa Mesa Police Department filed a Writ of Mandate, a request that the court stop an order for the department to turn over the records of two of four officers involved in a May arrest of two men outside a local bar. Three days later their request was denied.

On May 25, Costa Mesa police were called to the Goat Hill Tavern on Newport Boulevard to talk to two men suspected of a recent burglary. When the officers contacted the men inside and took them outside behind the bar to talk, Patrick Donald Binder, 27, of Costa Mesa and his friend Michael McKee followed.

Binder’s defense attorney, Lewis Crouse, said the two men were witnesses to an incident inside the bar before the police arrived. The burglary suspects were victims of that incident, and Binder and McKee thought police were arresting the men, incorrectly, for that incident, Crouse said.

Officials from the Costa Mesa city attorneys’ office did not return calls for comment.

While police talked to the burglary suspects, Binder interrupted them. When one of the officers told Binder to go away or he’d be arrested, he repeatedly refused, according to police reports. So the officer took Binder to the ground. Binder resisted and did not follow directions to put his hands behind his back, so the officer Tasered him, police reports show.

Crouse maintains, and said he has security video to prove, that his client did not resist and was Tasered and hit with a baton for no reason.

Two more officers responded, and Binder and McKee both were Tasered and arrested and booked on suspicion of resisting arrest. Police said in reports that Binder appeared to be under the influence of drugs. Prosecutors only charged him for resisting arrest.

At a court hearing next month, Crouse said they will learn more about the officers’ histories and if they have complaints of false arrests and excessive force in their files.

He claims the officers arrested his client and McKee to justify using the Taser guns. If they find a pattern, Crouse said, it will be key to Binder’s and McKee’s defense in a trial.