A video has surfaced of a couple getting tased, beaten with batons and shot with a less-lethal riot gun after a noise complaint at a San Jose hotel last spring in an incident that ultimately led them to file a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city and multiple police officers.
The incident unfolded in May 2019, when San Jose Police Department officers responded to a noise complaint at a Holiday Inn on North First Street, according to the January lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court of Northern California. Marissa Santa Cruz and Paea Tukuafu were celebrating a few days ahead of Santa Cruz’s 22nd birthday and turned down their music after hotel staff knocked on their door.
One officer, identified in the city’s response as Officer Eugene Thompson, told the couple the hotel would allow them to stay as long as there were no more complaints, to which the couple agreed. The video — which was first obtained and reported by ABC7, this organization’s media partner — then shows Officer Saul Zepeda ask Tukuafu for his ID, saying they have to identify everyone they come into contact with.
The couple argues over giving up their IDs, but eventually, Tukuafu goes back to his room for his ID and hands it to an officer.
More officers and a sergeant arrived, and the video then shows tensions escalating, with Thompson telling the couple they now have to pack up and leave the hotel because the couple had “slammed the (hotel room) door in our face.”
At that point, according to the complaint, another officer — identified by ABC7 as Sgt. Michael Pina — urged the couple to pack up while instructing an officer to retrieve a riot gun. Such weapons fire foam rounds that can leave painful injuries and have caused long-lasting damage to people during recent nationwide demonstrations against police violence, including in San Jose.
Tukuafu and Pina continued arguing, with Tukuafu telling the sergeant he’s packing up. Pina then is heard saying, “Push up and tase this guy.” Santa Cruz tried to get between the officers and Tukuafu, taking a taser hit just below her navel while an officer beat her on the back of her legs, the complaint alleges.
Eventually, the couple ended up in the hallway where officers hit them with batons — at times with two-handed swings — tased them and shot them with the riot gun, according to the lawsuit. Tukuafu was ultimately hit with the taser twice in the thighs, three times in the abdomen, once in the chest and once on his collarbone, the complaint alleges.
Minutes later, an ambulance crew arrived and took the couple directly to Santa Clara Valley Medical Center. They were then transported to the jail and spent a night there.
In an April response to the lawsuit, the San Jose City Attorney’s Office admitted that officers responded to a noise complaint, that they sought the couple’s IDs and said they would return them after they left the hotel and entered the hotel room. The response also admits that an officers use a “sponge round” weapon to “obtain compliance” — along with batons and tasers — claiming that the plaintiffs resisted arrest.
The couple was not charged with any crimes after the incident, but when they filed a claim with the city in fall 2019 — the first step toward the federal lawsuit — they were accused of taking an officer’s weapon and resisting arrest, among other things, the suit says.
The complaint alleges that the beating constituted excessive force, and that the officers violated the defendants’ right against unreasonable search and entry when they opened the hotel room door.
San Jose police deferred all questions to the city attorney’s office, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday.
“It was brutal. Definitely brutal, unfair,” Tukuafu told ABC7. “I don’t think we did anything to deserve the way how we were treated.”
