By Henry K. Lee
The San Francisco Chronicle
SAN FRANCISCO — A San Francisco police officer who has been the target of several complaints from people who say he used excessive force was among five law enforcement officers sued Thursday by a medical student, who says he was told to “stop acting like such a girl” and zapped with a stun gun during a North Beach sweep.
Mehrdad Alemozaffar, 27, who is to begin a medical residency at Harvard University this fall, said Officer Jesse Serna was among the police officers and sheriff’s deputies who tackled him to the ground near Broadway and Montgomery Street at about 2 a.m. Dec. 17.
The incident happened after officers trying to get Alemozaffar and two friends to leave the area pushed them in the back, the federal civil-rights suit said. When Alemozaffar complained, Serna replied, “Stop acting like such a girl,” the suit said.
When Alemozaffar asked Serna why he had said that, Serna chuckled and replied, “I am calling you a girl because you are acting like one,” the suit said.
Alemozaffar was handcuffed and placed facedown on the street. Then sheriff’s Deputy J. Reymundo shocked him at least 10 times with a Taser, the suit said.
The suit names Serna and two other police officers, along with Reymundo and another deputy.
Sheriff Mike Hennessey has said that data downloaded from the stun gun indicates it had been fired three times that night. One of those firings was probably a test, he said.
Deputy City Attorney Sean Connolly said Thursday that Alemozaffar, at the time a UCLA medical student, had disobeyed a police order to leave the area and had resisted arrest.
“It defies common sense that the police or sheriff would go out of the way to Taser someone who’s not doing anything illegal or not disobeying a lawful order or not resisting arrest,” Connolly said in an interview.
In court papers, Connolly wrote that Alemozaffar “voluntarily placed himself in a position of peril.”
A Chronicle analysis last year of police records from 1996 to 2004 identified Serna, 42, as the officer who had reported the most instances of use of force in the department. Serna has been involved in five incidents in the past nine months in which citizens accused him of using excessive force without provocation.
In June, San Francisco Police Chief Heather Fong ordered Serna removed from street duty based on a review of his record that she ordered after The Chronicle detailed several incidents.
Serna, a 12-year veteran who had been stationed in North Beach, remains in an undisclosed “nonpublic-contact” position, Sgt. Neville Gittens, a department spokesman, said Thursday.
Copyright 2007 San Francisco Chronicle