Eimers vs. The City of Key West
N/AOUTCOME: The City of Key West and the officers settled at mediation for $900,000, the limits of their insurance coverage.
On Thanksgiving morning, November 28, 2013, retired 61 year-old Michigan resident Charles Eimers voluntarily complied with the verbal instructions of two uniformed Key West Police Officers to “get on t ... he ground” and to “do it now!” Mr. Eimers was standing on Southernmost Beach in Key West and only seconds before had calmly exited his car and walked a few steps toward its rear where he waited for the officers to arrest him following a slow speed police pursuit that started at a traffic stop a few minutes before and ended on Southernmost Beach. The two officers approached Mr. Eimers with their service weapons drawn and pointed at Mr. Eimers while they screamed. A third officer appeared and approached with an AR15 rifle pointed at Eimers’ head. Mr. Eimers was unarmed and at no point before or after officers ordered him to the ground had Mr. Eimers threatened, screamed, cursed, assaulted or battered any officer. Mr. Eimers immediately complied, dropped to his knees and then his stomach as directed, in complete surrender. Mere moments later, seven officers surrounded Mr. Eimers, some of whom applied pressure to his person. Mr. Eimers was ill with a compromised heart. But, the police had Mr. Eimers put his face in the soft sand. Eimers struggled to breathe until he could breathe no more and his heart gave out. He died with the seven officers still surrounding him. He left behind four adult children. The officers denied that they utilized unreasonable force in the arrest of Mr. Eimers. They denied that Mr. Eimers ever had his face pressed into the sand in a way that could cause him either to stop breathing, stop the functioning of his heart, or both. They denied that any of them discharged a Taser onto the body of Mr. Eimers. BRILL & RINALDI, The Law Firm, along with co-counsel Horan & Horan, Lewis Legal and the McKee Law Group, sued the City of Key West and all of the officers who participated in the vicious arrest for violating Mr. Eimers’ civil rights. The attorneys left no stone unturned and spared no expense, and they proved that the officers lied. Chief among the many things they did, the attorneys located a tourist in South America who had video footage depicting despicable acts of police violence. Mr. Eimers was fully handcuffed, fully hobbled, fully engulfed by at least seven officers, hit, Tased, rendered unconscious, blue, bloodied and had his face completely caked with sand. That is how and why he stopped breathing and his bad heart gave out.
