CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A Parma mother has filed a lawsuit against that city’s police and corrections officers who pinned her against a concrete wall, strapped her into a restraint chair and shoved a metal device into the back of her hand during a July 2018 arrest.
The arrest happened after police accused Liliya Mitina of using her cellphone to record video of her child visitation drop-off in the Parma police department’s lobby with an ex-husband she previously accused of abusing her.
Mitina accuses the officers of excessive force, wrongful arrest, malicious prosecution and engaging in a civil conspiracy with her ex-husband, who wanted to enact revenge for her role in his 2015 arrest on domestic violence and kidnapping charges. She also says the city of Parma fostered a culture of excessive force and constitutional violations within the ranks of its law enforcement officers.
The lawsuit was filed Monday in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court. Judge Kathleen Sutula will preside over the case.
“No one should be subjected to the brutality and humiliation Ms. Mitina endured at the hands of City of Parma police and corrections officers who are sworn to uphold the law and protect the rights of citizens,” attorney Paul Cristallo, who filed the suit on Mitina’s behalf, said in a statement. “Because she could not find respect and impartiality in the City of Parma, she will now seek justice in court.”
Parma police Lt. Daniel Ciryak said on Thursday that the department could not respond to the lawsuit because it had not yet been served with a copy of the complaint.
The arrest
The incident happened July 27, 2018 at the Parma Justice Center complex, which houses the police department and municipal courts.
Mitina met her ex-husband Romulo Bethancourt, who is named as a defendant in the lawsuit, in the police department’s lobby to exchange custody of their 4-year-old son. The two had an agreement that all visitation drop-offs would take place inside the police department lobby. They had their custody exchanges there after Bethancourt was indicted in 2015 on charges of kidnapping, domestic violence and disrupting public service in charges that listed Mitina as the victim. He ultimately pleaded guilty to attempted disrupting public service and received probation.
The lawsuit claims that Bethancourt was chummy with Parma officers and routinely used his cellphone to record video of the drop-offs, and told Mitina that he didn’t want to be “falsely accused” of breaking the law. An order that all three Parma Municipal Court judges signed in 2014 barred members of the public from recording video in the police department’s lobby.
Video recorded from cameras mounted in the department’s parking lot and attached to the lawsuit shows Mitina carried her son from her car to the police station and returned less than one minute later. Parma police said there was no security video recorded in the lobby, Cristallo said.
The video shows officer John Galinas followed Mitina, who Cristallo said became scared, and started to jog toward her car. Two other officers followed Galinas. Mitina got to her car, where her mother was seated inside, and stopped. The two spoke for a few seconds before Mitina jogged over to the passenger seat, and Galinas followed her, and the two got into a struggle, and Mitina was taken to the ground.
Galinas later wrote in a police report that he saw Mitina use her cellphone to record the custody exchange and wanted to give her a warning that she was not allowed to record video in the lobby, the lawsuit said.
Cristallo said that Mitina told Galinas that Bethancourt records the exchanges all the time, referring to her ex-husband as the officer’s “friend,” and the officer became enraged, called her a disparaging name and then chased her down, took her to the ground and arrested her.
Officers handcuffed Mitina with her hands behind her back and took her inside the department’s booking area.
The booking
Video from surveillance cameras in the booking area shows a female corrections officer pat Mitina down as other police and corrections officers stood by.
The corrections officer touched Mitina’s left breast, and Mitina turned her upper body away, the video showed. The female officer and a male officer grabbed Mitina, slammed her up against the wall, and told her, “do not pull away,” the video showed. The officer and the other male officer grabbed Mitina by the arms, forced her handcuffed elbow up toward her head, and pressed her against the wall while the female officer fetched a restraint chair, the video showed.
One of the officers standing nearby asked Mitina if she spoke English. Another officer answered, “yeah, she does.”
The officers continued to hold Mitina against the wall as an officer returned with the restraint chair, and one of them started to remove the band holding Mitina’s hair into a ponytail out of her hair, the video showed. She jerked her head forward in response. The officers then pressed her harder into the wall.
“This could have gone easy, but you chose the other route,” the female officer said.
Mitina walked over to the chair and sat down without resistance. Several officers continued to search her and told her to lean forward, the video showed. She did not immediately do it, and within three seconds, the officers shoved her forward and removed her handcuff, the footage showed. One of them told Mitina, who was strapped into the chair by her legs and waist, not to pull away.
An officer then pulled Mitina’s left hand through the strap and tightened it around her wrist. He ran his hand through her open hand, and then Mitina closed her hand, the video shows. The officer then grabbed her wrist.
“Open your f-----g hand, or I’ll break your fingers,” he said, the video showed.
The officer pulled a metal pen-like device from his pocket and shoved one end into the back of Mitina’s hand and again told her to open her hand, the video said. She opened her hand, and the officer went over to her right hand and repeated the command while holding the device, the video showed. Another officer told the officer that he already checked that hand. The officer grabbed her hand and moved the device toward it, then let go and backed away, the video shows.
Mitina did not say a word during the entire interaction, the video shows.
The prosecution
Mitina was charged within days of her arrest with contempt of court, resisting arrest and obstructing official business. Her defense attorney Daniel Misiewicz filed motions challenging the initial reason for her arrest -- the court order barring audio or video recording “in any area of the Parma Justice Center/Police Department” without prior approval -- as unconstitutional because it violated the First Amendment and the constitution’s Separation of Powers doctrine.
The judges can bar recordings in the municipal court portion of the building but do not have jurisdiction over the police department’s property, the court filings argued. Misiewicz also filed a motion seeking to transfer Mitina’s case to another court, arguing that none of the Parma judges could rule on whether their order was constitutional.
Parma prosecutor Thomas Conway did not file any motions opposing Misiewicz’s requests, and the court’s Administrative Judge Timothy Gilligan did not rule on them. He set Mitina’s trial for May 7, 2019. One week before trial, Mitina decided to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct in exchange for city prosecutor Thomas Conway dropping the other charges. Cristallo said Mitina feared losing custody of her son if she went to trial and lost, and faced jail time.
Gilligan sentenced Mitina to 10 days in jail but suspended her sentence. He ordered her to pay court costs.
Police never sought to search Mitina’s cellphone to obtain video they accused her of recording, and the Parma police said lobby video of the interaction doesn’t exist, the lawsuit says. The lawsuit also says that the officers involved never filed a use of force report to document the interaction.
“The only lesson she learned that day was that brutality, conspiracy and excessive force are tolerated in the City of Parma,” Cristallo said.
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