By Libor Jany
Los Angeles Times
LOS ANGELES — A jury has ruled against the parents of a Los Angeles police officer who sued the city, alleging their son’s death during a department training in 2022 was retaliation for an investigation of a fellow officer accused of sexual assault.
After deliberating for nearly three days, the jury found Wednesday that the city was not liable for the death of Houston Tipping, and that his family had failed to prove he was killed in an effort to silence him. The verdict put a coda on a long-running legal saga that raised questions about safety standards at training sessions for police officers.
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An LAPD spokesperson declined to comment about the verdict. The city attorney’s office didn’t immediately respond to an inquiry from The Times.
Attorney Brad Gage, who represented the officer’s mother, said they were disappointed after the two-week trial and planned to appeal.
“This was a tragedy when Houston was paralyzed, a tragedy when he was killed and a tragedy with the verdict today,” Gage said. “Lawyers get to move on to another case, but for families, this is all there is so it’s just doubly heartbreaking to them.”
Tipping died three days after he suffered a spinal cord injury while training at the police academy in Elysian Park on May 26, 2022. Then-Police Chief Michel Moore deemed it a “freak occurrence.”
Later that year, his mother and father filed separate wrongful death lawsuits against the city, alleging that Tipping was beaten by other officers in an exercise meant to “simulate a mob.” The cases were eventually merged into one.
In his closing remarks, Deputy City Atty. Steve McGuire argued that Tipping’s death was a tragic accident. He accused attorneys for Tipping’s parents of connecting dots that weren’t there by suggesting that LAPD Officer David Cuellar, a defendant in the lawsuit, and some of his colleagues had been engaged in a nefarious plot to get back at Tipping for making a report about an alleged sexual assault.
Attorneys for Tipping’s parents said they later tracked down the woman, who signed a sworn declaration alleging she had been raped by a police officer.
McGuire told jurors there was no evidence that Cuellar ever knew Tipping had made the report. Cuellar did testify, though, that he at least knew about the woman’s allegations.
McGuire said LAPD investigators followed up on the alleged assault but couldn’t get in contact with the woman.
Part of the fault for the spinal injury lay with Tipping, who chose not to wear safety headgear before taking part in the training, McGuire argued.
According to the lawsuit, Cuellar and Tipping signed up for training that instructs bicycle officers on dealing with unruly people. The class had developed such a reputation for roughhousing that some officers took to calling it “Fight Club,” Gage said.
Gage argued the department flouted certain established safety protocols that called for the presence of certified trainers.
An internal LAPD report on Tipping’s death found Tipping and the other officers involved in the training session followed standards set by a state agency.
The LAPD report pushed for certain reforms to “enhance future trainings,” but said it did not uncover any evidence to support an allegation made by Tipping’s mother that other officers were simulating a mob and beat Tipping during the training. He was taken by ambulance to an area hospital, where he died.
The report’s findings squared with an autopsy, which ruled the death accidental due to a spinal cord injury.
During his opening remarks, Gage described Tipping as a “by-the-book officer” who joined the force to make a difference. The lawyer said Tipping was an avid outdoorsman and a doting son to both his parents. He worked at his father’s construction business and acted as a de facto handyman for his mom, often stopping by her mobile home to fix her curtains or floor while she was going to school to become a physician assistant.
In 2021, according to the lawsuit, he responded to a hospital and interviewed a woman who said she had been sexually assaulted. A detective was eventually assigned to the case. But Gage argued that the woman later confided in Tipping that one of her attackers had been a police officer — a fact she said she withheld during their initial interview because she feared retaliation.
Tipping reported the allegation to the department, which in effect made him a whistleblower and entitled him to certain protections, Gage argued.
Tipping’s mother, Shirley Huffman, testified that her son told her around that time in a private conversation that not all officers were good. She also described his growing disillusionment with the department, saying that before his death he had considered going to work for the state’s Department of Justice investigating “bad cops.”
Cuellar previously denied hearing about the allegations before Tipping’s death, but on the witness stand acknowledged that at the time he had already been made aware of them.
“In May, this man over here, for four days, stood patiently waiting for his chance,” Gage told jurors during his closing remarks, pointing toward Cuellar. “When Officer Houston Tipping signs up to become the suspect, he immediately signs up to confront him.”
Attorney Mark Geragos, who represented Tipping’s father, accused the department of a cover-up by failing to turn over key evidence, such as a training baton used during the scenario. He quipped that LAPD stood for “Lost and Presumed Destroyed.”
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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