Innocent McKinleyville Man Wins $850,000 Settlement After Sonoma County K-9 Attack

A McKinleyville man, Adam Gabriel, a former Marine and member of the military police, has secured an $850,000 settlement from Sonoma County after a police K-9 tore into his arm during a 2021 traffic stop for a crime he did not commit. Another man was arrested for the crime that same night.

“Adam was a very successful amateur bodybuilder looking to become a professional bodybuilder, and this injury took him out of the running…,” his attorney Izaak Schwaiger told us during a phone interview with Gabriel. “[I]t was a serious injury.”

Gabriel told us, “I spent six nights in the hospital…with a blood clot, then they wanted to amputate my arm. I wouldn’t let them.”

Schwaiger said the settlement will help Gabriel return to his former life. “Hopefully, with the settlement proceeds, he’s going to be able to get some care and maybe get back in the competition,” he explained.

The Incident

On June 2, 2021, Gabriel was visiting a friend in Sonoma County when he was surrounded by sheriff’s deputies who initially believed his car matched a suspect vehicle involved in a nearby carjacking. However, according to Judge James Donato in his order regarding the request by the defense for summary judgement (read the entire document here), “Undisputed evidence establishes that Deputy [Shawn] Forghani did not believe during the incident that Gabriel fit the description of the carjacking suspect, and knew that Gabriel’s car was a different color than the suspect’s Subaru. He also saw no indication that Gabriel had a weapon.” Nor did Gabriel look like the suspect description of a bald Hispanic male.

Gabriel was sitting at a stop sign with his small French bulldog in the passenger seat when officers arrived. “Next thing I know, a lot of bright lights were on me, and I was surrounded by several Sonoma County Sheriff’s officers with their guns drawn, yelling to get out of the vehicle.”

According to Judge Donato, “Gabriel complied by turning off the car, throwing his keys to the pavement, and putting both hands in the air out of the driver’s-side window.”

Video posted by the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department showing body cam footage of the incident. Note that several statements made in the video which was posted about a month subsequent to the event were known at the time of publication to be untrue including that Gabriel’s vehicle matched the make, model and color of the suspect’s vehicle.

However, Gabriel did not immediately exit the vehicle. According to the Judge, “Gabriel hesitated for about two minutes” though he kept his hands out of the drivers window.  He questioned the officers on why he was stopped and whether he was being arrested. Gabriel feared an ex-girlfriend might have set him up. He told us that “she had been sending messages and threats…she was dating a cop, and was gonna have them do harm to me. So…originally, I thought it was a hit job….Because there was no reason in my mind that I could think of why I was in this situation.”

In addition, he didn’t think the officers were acting professionally. “I was a military police officer in the Marine Corps, right? I had experience. I had some police training, and it just didn’t seem like any of their procedures were….protocol at all… .”

Eventually, however, as seen in the video above, Gabriel exited the vehicle and followed the commands to raise his hands in the air, walk towards Deputy Forghani and to kneel. Eventually, he was told to crawl. Gabriel said he had trouble understanding the commands. “So I heard a lot of yelling, and their dog was barking, and it was hard to make out what was being the orders or the commands,” he explained.

When he didn’t quickly begin to crawl on the pavement, Deputy Forghani released a police K-9, which bit Gabriel’s right bicep. The video shows that Gabriel was on his knees with his hands in the air when the K-9 was sent in to bite him.

“I saw the dog jumping at me from about five feet away,” Gabriel told us. “[It] sunk its teeth into my bicep and start ripping at it violently… They pulled the dog off and scraped me off the ground, put handcuffs on me while my arm was dripping blood.”

The former Marine said, “They sat me on the bumper of a fire engine where there was a paramedic who basically just looked at my arm and said, ‘Take this guy to the hospital.'”

But the deputies didn’t take him to the hospital, they took him to the jail where, he says they tried to goad him. “While my arm was still bleeding, my arms were… hands… handcuffed, behind my back in excruciating pain, [they] walked me into the county jail and were continued to poke at me and try to provoke me into doing something that would, you know, like a chargeable offense, because at this point, I believe they knew I wasn’t the guy they were looking for, and were looking [to] charge me with something to cover for themselves. So they’re being very provocative.”

Gabriel suffered severe injuries, including nerve damage and lasting disfigurement.

According to Gabriel’s statement to the court,

Gabriel told us, “I was in constant pain, constant pain for the next at least four to five months. I didn’t sleep. My arm swelled up like a balloon all the way from the shoulder all the way down to my hand. It was very painful for a long time. ”

And, adding insult to injury in Gabriel’s mind, the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department put out misleading information about the incident. According to a press release put out by the Sonoma County Sheriff the day following the bite, “[Gabriel] was treated and released from a local hospital.”

Gabriel’s attorney Izaak Schwaiger explained,

Legal Proceedings

Gabriel filed a lawsuit against Sonoma County, alleging excessive force in violation of his Fourth Amendment rights. U.S. District Judge James Donato denied the county’s motion for summary judgment in March 2024, criticizing the sheriff’s office for its use of force despite Gabriel’s clear compliance.

Gabriel’s attorney, Izaak Schwaiger emphasized that Gabriel posed no threat to officers. “He was on his knees, hands in the air, surrounded by armed deputies. There was absolutely no justification for releasing the dog,” Schwaiger said.

In addition Schwaiger told us, “[Y]ou got to remember that…whenever cops beat somebody up, they will always, 100% of the time, arrest them for resisting arrest. And there’s a reason for that. There’s a Supreme Court case called Heck v. Humphrey and…the court says that if you’re convicted of resisting arrest, then you can’t sue the cops for excessive force. I mean, that’s a overly simplistic distillation…, but that’s what it means, and that’s how cops understand it. So when cops go hands on and beat someone up, they always arrest them for resisting as an insurance policy of them not getting sued.”

It is worth noting that the Sonoma County District Attorney did not pursue any charges against Gabriel.

The Settlement

The county settled for $850,000. Schwaiger noted that the settlement likely reflects the strength of Gabriel’s claims and the county’s unwillingness to risk further exposure. He argued that though the County’s insurance company pays the settlement in the short term, that in the long term through increased premiums, the taxpayers suffer. (See Press Democrat article here)

“[I]f you have a department that’s…incapable of seeing that they’ve done something wrong, and thus incapable of adjusting and changing that, that client’s going to continue to cost you a shitload of money, and so the county is costing their insurance carriers a shitload of money. Ultimately, the taxpayer does have to pay for that.” Schwaiger stated. “Until the department is willing to acknowledge its mistakes and implement changes, incidents like this will continue.”

Gabriel expressed mixed feelings about the resolution. “I’m glad it’s over, but no amount of money can undo the damage. I hope this makes them think twice before doing this to someone else.”

Lasting Impact

Gabriel hopes his case will inspire greater accountability. “You know, I didn’t serve my country honorably…to be treated like a criminal and to be slandered like this by…cowards, to be honest, because that’s what they are, and that’s the way they behaved….[All] they had to do was ask for an ID or walk over while I was on my knees and put handcuffs on me. They didn’t need to use force like that.”

The Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office has not announced any policy changes in response to the lawsuit. The K-9 involved has since retired, but no disciplinary actions were taken against Deputy Forghani or other officers involved.