San Francisco loses last appeal in suit over police trainee’s arrest and treatment
San Francisco lost a state Supreme Court appeal Wednesday and will have to pay $575,000 in damages, and $2 million in attorney’s fees, to a former police trainee who was arrested at gunpoint while jogging in Golden Gate Park and was fired two days later.
The court unanimously denied review of an appellate ruling that had upheld a jury verdict that Bret Cornell’s fellow officers had falsely arrested him, and further violated his rights by branding him as a wrongdoer, ending any prospects of future police work.
Cornell, then a recent police academy graduate, was jogging on a park path one morning in July 2010 while off-duty, wearing civilian clothes.