A Youngstown couple has filed a federal lawsuit against two Youngstown police officers and the city, alleging officers wrongfully searched and arrested one of them without probable cause and used excessive force.
Heriberto Ortiz and his wife Wanda Diaz filed the complaint on Jan. 5 in the U.S. District Court in northern Ohio.
The suit stems from a tenant dispute in 2022 when a former renter, who had briefly lived in a property Ortiz managed for a cousin living in Puerto Rico, called police to help her get items from the apartment on Youngstown's southwest side.
The filing claims that the two officers, Tyl Srbinovich and Ivan Thomas, forced Ortiz to allow access to the rental unit and physically assaulted him, twisting his arms, putting weight on his back and threatening him with a Taser gun. The officers stopped when they realized they were being recorded, according to the complaint.
“People should cooperate as much as they can, but police sometimes step over the line as the police officers did here,” said David Betras, who represents Ortiz. “They ordered my client to open up an apartment, so they went in and searched an apartment without a warrant."
Officers charged Ortiz with misdemeanor counts of obstructing official business, resisting arrest and menacing, court records show. Those charges have been dismissed.
Ortiz's attorney said he questions why police were involved in the tenant dispute.
“This was a civil dispute between my client and his former tenant. Police had no right to go there, order him to open up and tell him that he had to let her back in. Police can’t do that. That’s a civil dispute,” Betras said. “If police do that, they’re overstepping their bounds and if they overstep their bounds, people should enforce their rights."
Conflicting stories in the complaint and the incident report suggest that Ortiz and the officers disagreed about whether or not the former tenant was still a resident of the property.
An attorney for the Youngstown Law Department, which represents the city, declined to comment for this story.
The police incident report, provided by police, describes a starkly different interaction with Ortiz.
Ortiz was "extremely argumentative" with officers when they told him the tenant had to be legally evicted to be prevented from accessing the apartment. Officers searched Ortiz after he told them, "You're going to have to kill me to get me to leave," and dropped a pocketknife on a couch, according to the incident report.
Officers wrote that Ortiz also attempted to strike an officer while they were frisking him for additional weapons, which led to Ortiz being "taken to the ground."
During the frisk, Ortiz said, ‘Do you guys want to fight?’” the incident report says.
Ortiz speaks little English, according to the complaint filed in federal court. That may have led to communication issues, Betras said.
“I don’t think the police said, ‘Oh, these are Puerto Ricans, let’s hassle them,’ but there was trouble communicating and so certainly that has something to do with it,” Betras said. “To the extent that they weren’t speaking the king’s English and that may have affected a police officer’s decision, then it was racially motivated.”
Ortiz, who has congestive heart failure, was hospitalized for a week and has about $10,000 in medical bills, his attorney said.
Ortiz and Diaz are seeking damages, attorney's fees and other relief, according to the complaint.
