The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department’s reputation for overly aggressive action on the part of its deputies, the notorious unreliability and self-serving nature of the investigative reports generated by the department in conjunction with those uses of force and the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office’s traditionally uncritical appraisals of both those actions and the follow-up investigations into them led to a federal jury awarding $27.35 million to a Victorville man left partially paralyzed as the result of his shooting by a San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputy, according to two of those jurors.
The majority of jurors who heard the case brought in U.S. District Court in Riverside by Attorney Dale Galipo on behalf of Steffon Barber indicated during deliberations that they believed Barber, now 39, acted foolishly and unreasonably when the sheriff’s department was called to a disturbance call in the 12000 block of White Avenue in Adelanto at around 11 in the evening on April 27, 2021, the two jurors said. Nevertheless, both indicated a majority of the jurors believed the officer who first responded to the incident overreacted in the face of the Barber’s bizarre behavior and then lied in an effort to minimize the seriousness of what he had done when other members of the sheriff’s department initiated an inquiry into what had happened.
According to a document generated by the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office chronicling Deputy Christopher Alfred’s shooting of Barber and the conclusion reached by prosecutors that Alfred’s wounding of Barber was a justifiable use of force, a toxicology analysis of blood drawn from Barber shortly after the incident showed he had 187 nonograms of methamphetamine per milliliter of blood, 37 nanograms of amphetamine per milliliter of blood, and 29 nanograms of midazolam per milliliter of blood in his system.
Either as a consequence of that intoxication or for some other reason, Barber was acting in a manner that was extremely alarming that night. Around 11 p.m. that evening, a husband and wife who lived on property located within the 12000 block of White Avenue owned by the wife’s father and who managed their father’s and father-in-law’s rental units on adjoining properties arrived home from work at the same time in separate vehicles. They had timed their simultaneous arrival because of previous harassing behavior toward the wife by Barber, who was a tenant on one of the rental properties. As the couple was attempting to park their vehicles at their residence, first the husband and then the wife were approached by Barber, who was yelling incoherently and slapped their windshields and banged on their vehicle fenders and bumpers. Barber at first requested of the husband if he had zip ties and sought, without success, to get into the couple’s separate vehicles, claiming he wanted a ride to another location. A call was made to the sheriff’s department’s dispatch center reporting their interaction with Barber and requesting assistance.
Deputy Alfred was in his patrol vehicle when the dispatch call relating to the incident on White Avenue went out, and he was the first officer to arrive at the White Avenue location, where he made contact with the husband and wife, who told him of their encounter with Barber and his efforts to get into their vehicles and onto their residential property. The husband indicated to Deputy Alfred he thought Barber might be armed. Alfred had been called to the White Avenue location earlier that evening in reference a loud argument, but at that time had not been able to find those reportedly arguing and had left. Alfred could see Barber standing on his driveway near his Chevy Trailblazer.
Upon approaching Barber, Deputy Alfred asked Barber to come to him so he could speak with him, and to show his hands. There ensued a profanity filled exchange between Barber and Alfred in which both made repeated demands that the other show his hands. When Barber went toward the Chevy Trailblazer, the driver side door of which was open, Alfred commanded Barber to step away from the vehicle. Barber disregarded the order, got into the Trailblazer, revved the engine and put the vehicle into reverse. Alfred in his report and in his statements to his colleague in the department assigned to investigate the shooting, Detective Edward Hernandez, maintained that Barber “accelerated rapidly” toward him. According to Detective Hernandez’s report, Alfred “feared for his life” because “he did believe he had any avenue of escape.”
Utilizing Hernandez’s report as its basis, the district attorney’s office reached a conclusion that “Deputy Alfred’s use of lethal force was a proper exercise of Deputy Alfred’s right of self-defense and therefore his actions were legally justified.”
Barber had multiple prior criminal convictions, including felony grand theft in 2005, misdemeanor resisting arrest in 2006, misdemeanor driving under the influence in 2006, misdemeanor threatening with the intent to terrorize in 2006, misdemeanor battery of an individual in 2009, felony theft in 2010, misdemeanor possession of a controlled substance in 2012, misdemeanor public disturbance in 2017, felony cruelty to a child with the possibility of injury or death in 2017 and two separate instances of felony obstruction of a police officer in 2018.
In what was a calculated move to ensure that Barber would be unable to pursue a civil suit over the injuries he had sustained in the shooting, he was criminally charged and convicted of felony assault with a deadly weapon for having attempted to run Alfred down. With sentencing enhancements for his prior convictions, he was sentenced to 13 years in prison.
At his federal civil trial, which concluded with the verdict on Monday, according to two members of the jury, it was demonstrated that there were factual errors contained in Detective Hernandez’s report. Among those was the unquestioned assertion that the Trailblazer was accelerating backward at a high rate of speed. Evidence lawyers for the county, the sheriff’s department and Alfred were unable to refute was that the Trailblazer was moving slowly as Barber was exiting the driveway and that Alfred discharged his firearm when he had adequate space and maneuverability to position himself out of the path of Barber’s vehicle. It was demonstrated that had the circumstance been as Alfred claimed, shooting Barber as he did would not have prevented him from being run down. There were other elements and assertions in Hernandez’s report that were through the application of mathematics and known physical law demonstrably impossible and which were caught by members of the jury. Jurors were also disturbed by the report having been entrusted to Hernandez, who had only recently been promoted from the rank of deputy sheriff to that of corporal/detective, and whose experience with regard to complex investigations involving the measurements of physical and logistical phenomena was limited or nonexistent. At least some members of the jury were left with the impression that Hernandez had merely gone through the motions in an effort to exonerate one of his colleagues and curry favor with department higher-ups. Those same jurors expressed dismay at the district attorney’s office’s uncritical acceptance of what some characterized as the shoddy professionalism of Hernandez’s report.
Virtually all members of the jury considered Barber’s underlying volatility and violence-prone behavior and actions on the night of April 27, 2021 to be a major causative factor in what befell him. Nevertheless, the majority of the jurors believed that Alfred and the sheriff’s department needed to be held to a higher standard than was applied by the district attorney’s office and could not be deemed blameless for what had occurred and needed to be held accountable for the falsehoods they layered into the report after the fact. They awarded Barber $7.25 million for past pain and suffering, $18.25 million for future pain and suffering, and $1.85 million for future economic damages. That $27.35 million total is the largest civil suit settlement for a nonfatal shooting by law enforcement adjudicated out of the Riverside Federal Courthouse.