Long Beach officials have agreed to pay $300,000 to a man who sued, alleging he was threatened, beaten and detained by police officers over an expired car registration in 2022.
In a lawsuit filed in October, Johnny Jackson says he had just gotten out of the hospital after getting surgery to treat prostate cancer and had driven to Staples to make a copy of a doctor’s note for his employer when police pulled him over on the way back to his Long Beach home.
Bodycam footage shared with the Long Beach Post shows an interaction between Jackson and Long Beach police officers on the afternoon of Sept. 3, 2022.
The video shows an unmarked police car outside Jackson’s house and then at least three officers quickly walking into his driveway.
One officer can be heard telling Jackson to stay in the car just before Jackson can be seen exiting a white sedan parked in his driveway.
Jackson explains to the officer that he lives there and has no weapons, but the officer continues to tell him he needs to stay in his car.
Jackson places a few pieces of paper on the roof of his car and raises his hands in the air as the officer instructs him to walk toward him.
The officer instructs Jackson to put his hands behind his head, but when one of the papers on the car roof is blown away, Jackson walks back toward his car to try and stop the rest of the papers from flying away.
The officer tells him to stop, and as Jackson explains to the officer that the paperwork is important because he just had surgery, an officer hops off the home’s porch and grabs Jackson’s arm.
Another officer then grabs Jackson’s other arm as Jackson asks them to be careful because he just had surgery.
“You’re doing a lot of talking and not a lot of listening,” one officer tells Jackson. “Stop, listen to me, put your hands behind your back, if you resist, you will get hurt.”
“If you hurt me, I will sue you,” Jackson responds.
Within seconds, the officers forcibly arrest Jackson. One officer at some point appears to use his knee to strike Jackson at least three times.
“What is going on with you,” one of the officers asks Jackson.
“I told the guy I just had surgery,” Jackson responds.
The officer then puts Jackson in the back of the unmarked police car as Jackson continues to ask why one of the officers threatened him.
“Why can’t you listen to anything we’re saying? Why do you think you’re running the show here?” An officer asks Jackson. “Why did we have to get to this point?”
Jackson admits that he saw police officers trying to pull him over but that he chose to instead continue driving until he reached his driveway because he knew his car tags were expired.
“So why are you forcing us to use force on you?” the officer asks.
Jackson responds that he was trying to listen but that one officer was threatening him while the other officers were also trying to talk to him at the same time.
“I just had a four-hour surgery and I’m messed up,” Jackson says. “But that threat, officer, wasn’t necessary.”
“What threat?” the officer responds, and explains that police by law have to use force on him if he doesn’t cooperate.
“I was going to cooperate with everything officer,” Jackson said.
The officer then tells Jackson that he’s lucky the officers didn’t Tase, pepper spray him, or throw him to the ground.
“Think about that next time,” the officer says. “You might be going to jail now.”
The officers ultimately cited Jackson for having an expired car registration and resisting arrest, according to Jackson’s lawsuit. It also says Jackson checked into an emergency room for injuries suffered during his interaction with police.

Jackson’s lawsuit, which names the city of Long Beach and its police department as defendants, accuses the officers of using excessive force, acting negligently and violating his civil rights.
The Long Beach City Attorney’s Office and the Long Beach Police Department declined to comment on the allegations in the lawsuit.
On Tuesday, the City Council agreed during its closed session meeting to settle the case and pay out $300,000.
Adante Pointer, one of the attorneys who represented Jackson in the lawsuit, said the officers’ actions were a “shocking” display of disrespect toward his client, who was trying to express that he was recovering from serious surgery.
“These officers were hyper-aggressive when all they were dealing with was a supposed traffic violation,” Pointer said.
Pointer said the officers should face criminal charges for what they did.
The Long Beach Police Department declined to say whether officers involved in the situation faced any disciplinary action.