MoFo Perspectives: Arturo González on the State of Policing and Civil Misconduct

In this MoFo Perspectives podcast, litigation partner Alexis Amezcua speaks with trial titan Arturo González about his extensive experience handling civil rights cases involving police misconduct, the policy reforms that have resulted from those cases, and what he thinks needs to happen to establish true equality in the eyes of the law.

Transcript

Speaker: Welcome to MoFo Perspectives, a podcast by Morrison & Foerster, where we share the perspectives of our clients, colleagues, subject matter experts, and lawyers.

Alexis Amezcua: Welcome to MoFo Perspectives. I’m your host, Alexis Amezcua, and in this episode, we will discuss police brutality and the work that Morrison & Foerster has done to prevent, combat, and where it can, rectify police brutality through civil rights litigation. I’m pleased to be speaking today with Arturo González, one of the nation’s top trial lawyers, Morrison & Foerster’s first Latino partner, and my personal friend and mentor. Arturo and I have known each other for over 15 years now, and I can personally vouch for his commitment to civil rights and pro bono work. Indeed, he and I have worked on one civil rights matter or another for the entirety of my career. There’s a lot we could talk about today, but today we’re going to focus on Arturo’s views regarding the state of policing in the U.S. today and his work fighting police misconduct. So, welcome Arturo. I’d like to start with a little bit of background about yourself and if you could share what or who first attracted you to civil rights law.

Arturo González: Sure. Thank you. So Joaquin Navila was a Harvard Law School graduate from the mid‑seventies, and his focus was voting rights law and voting rights legislation. Joaquin called me, boy, it must have been almost 30 years ago now, and said that he had an interesting case that he needed my help and the case involved—the very short version is four women were arrested at a school board meeting because they were chanting, put us on the agenda, along with other people in the community when they weren’t allowed to speak. So sheriffs were called, they came in, and they arrested these four Latinas. They were all subjected to a visual body cavity strip search, and Joaquin felt that they needed civil rights counsel and in addition criminal counsel because they were charged with a variety of misdemeanors. So that was my introduction to civil rights law. I took that case. I tried the criminal case. Three of the four women were acquitted of all charges. The fourth was acquitted of all but one minor charge, and then I prosecuted that as my very first civil rights case, which we won.

Alexis Amezcua: I’ve heard you tell that story before about your work on that matter. I’d love for you to share with the audience the history and take us through one of your most memorable cases. You’re welcome to share more of the details about this matter, or if you have another you’d like to share.

Arturo González: Sure. So I’ll—this matter actually rolled into the one that I wanted to talk about. This matter went to trial in Fresno federal court, the case of the four women. The jury awarded the four women $1.45 million, which I think still is the most ever awarded for a strip search. About two years after that verdict, I received a phone call from a man who was crying and obviously in distress telling me that they had shot his father. And again, I’ll give you the short version. He said they shot my father, even though he wasn’t sure what had happened. What happened is this was an adult male who had been called by a neighbor of his parents and was told you better get over here. There’s cops all over the place. So he went to his parents’ house. He was not allowed in. This happened in Dinuba, California, outside of Fresno, the same town as the other case.

Arturo González: He didn’t know what had happened. And what we later learned is that what had happened was that about seven o’clock in the morning, a SWAT team had come to the house, raided the house, and shot the father 15 times in the bedroom of his own home in front of his wife. The police claimed in a press conference that day that they did what they did because the father came at them with a knife. The mother said that wasn’t true, swore it wasn’t true. We ended up taking that case. There was a lot more to it. It wasn’t just a shooting case. It was also a fourth amendment unlawful seizure case because they took everybody in the house, meaning the ones that survived. The mother, who I believe was 60 years old, her youngest son, who was 17, a daughter-in-law, and a daughter‑in‑law’s child. There were like four or five people in the house who were taken to the police station, separated, and held there for a substantial period of time for questioning, which by the way is illegal.

Arturo González: You can’t just take people to the police station. If you want to question them, you need to question them where they are. There were a lot of issues in the case, but that was memorable for a lot of reasons. When we tried the first case, we didn’t receive any settlement offer whatsoever from the defendants. The police had a very strong record of winning in Fresno, and this case, again, when it went to trial, the same thing, there was no settlement offer made. We ended up trying the case in Fresno, and the jury awarded the family $12 and a half million, which I think still is the largest award for a police shooting in California.

Alexis Amezcua: That’s an incredible story. Lots of follow up I could ask there. I think my first question is someone who has worked with you through the outset of my career and continue to do so now, one of the things I’m always impressed with is you can tackle any sort of claim, any sort of issue, and really prepare it for a jury and a judge. And I wonder, did you have a background? Had you gone to law school to specifically study civil rights law? Were these two matters your first foray into civil rights law, or is this something you’ve studied for some time?

Arturo González: When I received the phone call from Joaquin Navila, referring the first case to me, I didn’t know what a civil rights case was. I didn’t know what section 1983 was, which is the statute that you use to prosecute civil rights cases. And no, I hadn’t studied it in law school, and it’s not something I had planned to do necessarily. I came to Morrison & Foerster, a large law firm, understanding that I would be representing corporations, but also I chose MoFo specifically because I knew I wanted to give back to the community. I wanted to do pro bono work. I wanted to represent people who needed my help, and these are exactly the kind of cases that I wanted to do. So I really kind of stumbled upon civil rights law. And just once I got into it, it became very clear to me that there was a tremendous need, especially in the Latino community, throughout the central valley for people who are willing to represent families who felt they’d been mistreated by police.

Arturo González: I mean, I received hundreds of calls after these cases. I’ve taken probably dozens of these civil rights cases, but I’ve turned down 10 times more than I’ve taken. I just can’t do them all. But there was a tremendous need, and I just found it somewhat satisfying but also somewhat disappointing because no matter what I do, I can’t bring back the person who’s been lost. I can’t undo the wrong, but I can maybe do some justice and make some changes along the way that hopefully will prevent other families from having to go through the same experience.

Alexis Amezcua: One of the cases that you tried and that has always left an impression on me involved the death of a young boy, also in the central valley, and I wonder if you could share some of that background to that matter.

Arturo González: Right. I had another case involving a SWAT team from Modesto, California. And in that case, a SWAT team raided a house. They were there early in the morning raiding the house because they believed that the father was involved in some kind of narcotics. They didn’t find any drugs, they didn’t find any guns, they didn’t find any money. They didn’t find anything incriminating at all. But unfortunately, what they did do is they shot and killed his 11-year-old son. The boy was laying on his stomach in his own bedroom. The SWAT team had to come in and told him to get down, so he got down. Obviously, he was probably scared to death. Sadly, for reasons that maybe nobody will ever know, as he was laying there, the officer pointing the weapon at his back fired, and they fired right through his heart and killed him instantly.

Arturo González: So in that case, I actually did not try that case. I prosecuted the defendants, agreed to settle the case for three and a half million dollars, which I think still is the most ever paid by the government for the unlawful killing of a child. I candidly wanted to try that case, and I don’t want to get into any privileged communications with the clients, but sometimes you decide not to try your case because clients may not want to go to trial. It’s very difficult, as you can imagine, for parents to testify and relive these very difficult circumstances. In that case, the child’s mother was also face down in the living room being covered by a separate police officer, and when she heard a gunshot, she tried to get up instinctively. She was pushed down to the ground and she looked over to where the gunshot came from her son’s bedroom, and she could see the stream of blood coming across her son’s feet. You can just imagine what that must be like and how difficult that is. And it’s not—it’s easy to understand why some people wouldn’t want to relive that.

Alexis Amezcua: Sure. I know I can’t imagine as a parent myself or even just another human being. That that is absolutely horrifying. And I think about, and I’ve done it alongside you a few times, but the great skill it takes to serve as counsel in these matters that are highly charged and emotional, and also to guide plaintiffs who don’t typically have a voice, who don’t know what to do. They’re not necessarily sophisticated plaintiffs who know how to testify, and it’s extremely challenging, especially for parents to get up there. And I wonder if you had any reflections on that on what’s worked, what’s made you successful in that regard, and how you’ve been able to relate to clients or be able to bring out the best you can in them in these terrible times.

Arturo González: So these are very difficult cases, difficult, not only emotionally, but challenging legally. In our society, most people believe police officers. Most people would like to believe. I realized that in recent years, that started to change a little bit, but historically, and I still think most people, they want to believe police officers are honest. I mean, they want to give them the benefit of the doubt. So there’s a real challenge in getting jurors to understand that the officers in this case may have done something wrong. And then there’s a challenge sometimes in having your clients just understand the system and what’s going to happen. And there, I think that’s why it’s so important, both for big law firms to get involved because these cases are expensive and they’re challenging, and also for lawyers of color to get involved, people who are from the communities where the victims are from. I think that they have a better chance, perhaps, of getting either the clients or witnesses, other people in the community, to open up, to talk to you, to tell you what happened.

Arturo González: For example, when I go to these communities, I rarely wear a tie. I mean, I almost want to say I never do. Unless I’m going to court that day, I always dress casual. I try to make them feel comfortable. I don’t want them to think that they’re talking to somebody too formal. That has helped me to get people to talk, to open up, to tell me what happened. And it is challenging. It is challenging. Many times, my clients don’t even speak English. Mrs. Guajardo didn’t speak English, and yet she testified in federal court about what happened to her husband. It was really dramatic.

Alexis Amezcua: The other reflection I have as you’re speaking is just how familiar these themes are even today. I know some of these matters you tried and handled many years ago, and yet today we’re still facing the same issues of officers raiding people’s homes in the middle of the night. The recent murder of George Floyd and Brianna Taylor as she slept in her bed. This week we heard about Jacob Blake being shot in the back seven times. In other words, these issues are still around today. We have reminders every day of the distrust of police. And specifically, we’ve been hearing a lot about it in the black community these days. I wonder, as someone who’s handled this type of civil rights litigation for decades now, what do you think has gone wrong here? What do you feel is going wrong?

Arturo González: Well, there’s a lot to say in response to that question, but I’ll say a couple of things. Compliance and de-escalation. We need to train our children, especially in communities of color, to always comply with law enforcement. We need to train them how they should behave. If they’re ever pulled over by law enforcement, in a car, for example, they should always keep their hands where they can be seen. In fact, if I were to tell somebody right now what you should do if you’re ever pulled over, first, roll down your window, and second, put your hands where they can be seen and do not move them. And I say roll down your window because otherwise you may move your hand from the steering wheel to roll down the window. And the officer may feel threatened by that move, so roll down your window first, put your hands on the steering wheel, and don’t move.

Arturo González: Wait for the officer to come, answer whatever questions the officer has, always know where you have your registration in your vehicle so that you’re not fumbling around looking for it. If it’s in the glove compartment, tell the officer once he or she asks it’s in the glove compartment, I’m going to open it. Try to avoid having anything in your glove compartment that might look like a weapon. Sometimes even a long, black flashlight could look like a weapon. If you have that in there, tell the officer, it’s in my glove compartment and I’m going to open it. There’s a long black flashlight in there. I just want you to know that so that you don’t get startled by that. You know, communicate, comply. That’s number one, but I would say we need to teach our children. From the officer’s standpoint, it’s training, it’s de-escalation. Look, there are too many examples of officers failing to deescalate a situation.

Arturo González: It is a difficult job. It is an extremely difficult job, but they have got to deescalate. And part of the problem is that many people who they are confronting are people who have mental issues. Maybe they’re on a narcotic, or maybe for some other reason. Maybe they’re bipolar, but they have mental issues that make it challenging for them to communicate. And these officers frequently are not trained on how to deal with those people. And that’s why we need better training, and we need to make sure that our police forces have people who are specifically trained on how to deal with people who might be mentally challenged because pulling out a gun is not the answer in that situation.

Alexis Amezcua: Do you think there’s anything that police can do to build more trust in communities of color?

Arturo González: Yes. One thing that has to happen, that absolutely has to happen, is we need to hire more police officers from the communities they serve, period, hard stop. I mean, no more bologna about people not being qualified. Come on, you can train people to be good cops, and you’ve got to start getting more people from the communities of color so that they go there and they serve their communities. Have you noticed that in almost every case, almost everyone in the last two years or so that’s been high profile where somebody’s been shot running away, shot in the back, shot—in almost every case, the police officer is white. Now, I am not saying, I am absolutely not saying, you can’t have white police officers or white police officers are bad. No, that’s not my point. My point is I think that there’s a cultural barrier that people are struggling with.

Arturo González: I think that, in many cases, if you had officers of color in the exact same situation, maybe the outcome would be different. Maybe instead of pulling the gun, the officer would put his hands up and say, whoa, hold on a second. Hey, listen, let’s just talk to me. Okay. Look, I grew up around the corner. All right. All right. I don’t know if you know me, but I grew up around the corner over there on 6th street. You know what I mean? Things like that can make a dramatic difference. I think we need to do a better job diversifying our police force and then getting the police officers to get out into the community. Proactively go out there, mingle with people, get to know the people in your community. That is something that I think would go a long way. Some communities have started to do that, but we need to do better.

Alexis Amezcua: There’s been a lot of discussion around police reform, and we’ve seen a lot of articles and slogans about quote defunding the police. What do you make of that, and what are, in your view, some of the most common misconceptions about this call to action?

Arturo González: All right. First of all, we got to take this phrase defunding and put it in the shredder, all right? It’s absolutely the wrong phrase to use, and it makes it far too easy for people to claim that anybody who’s looking for reform is a radical who’s trying to eliminate the police. All you need to do is look at the Republican convention that’s going on now, not to be biased or politically, but there’s a lot of talk about they want to get rid of the police. And it’s because of this phrase, defunding, we got to get rid of that phrase. Really, what we’re talking about is should we reallocate resources within the police department? In other words, shouldn’t we be using some of those funds to train officers on different tactics? Shouldn’t we be using some of those funds to bring in people who are not necessarily police officers who carry a gun, but who can still be law enforcement officers? Somebody who’s trained, perhaps, in dealing with people who have mental issues, so that in certain circumstances, you can call them to come and they can try to address the situation.

Arturo González: And they may not even carry a gun. That’s what defunding really means. It’s really a reallocation of resources, but nobody wants to get rid of the police department. It’s simply are there better things that we can be doing to train the officers? Is there more that we can be doing proactively to try to prevent crime from happening in the first place? That really is what it means. And I do think that there’s a lot of benefit to having discussions about that in the community. I had a case once where there was a woman who was locked inside of an apartment that wasn’t hers and she wouldn’t come out, and she was screaming and screaming and she wasn’t well. She was not well mentally. She had issues. She needed medication. But instead of calling someone to talk to her, to calm her down, two police officers showed up, and within minutes, they kicked the door down, went in with guns drawn, and shot her five times and killed her.

Arturo González: That case really bothered me, and it still does because I think if they had had somebody come and speak to her and just talk to her, it’s a perfect example of where you need to deescalate a situation where there’s no urgency whatsoever to go inside. And that’s what I think we need to be talking about is can we be training officers differently, allocating resources differently, so that not every person who’s in charge of enforcing the law is wearing a gun and not every person is called to every situation. If you have a child in middle school who’s had some issue and the police are called, is it really necessary to have two people show up with guns? Maybe not. Those are the discussions that need to take place.

Alexis Amezcua: Yeah. And I’m reminded of another matter you and I handled in Fresno where a brother was, I think he was in his early twenties, was having some sort of mental health breakdown and was seeing things, and the walls were coming after him. And he ended up—the sister called the police. She didn’t know what else to do. And he ended up being shot in the back three times. And if there had been a professional and resources had been allocated to what to do to deescalate when someone has a mental health issue or an addiction issue, he could very well be alive. My other thought on defunding the police, because it’s a conversation I’ve had a lot, especially with my family members, is that it’s not only about reallocating resources within the police department, it’s reallocating resources within one’s community. Those of us fortunate to live in a specific socioeconomic status community know that so much of our taxpayer dollars go to schools and after-school programs, they go to community centers.

Alexis Amezcua: And so those places are funded just as much funding as the police department. And if you have, as you say, in an example of a middle schooler with an issue, you’re just as likely to be approached by a school counselor or a coach or all sorts of other resources before the police ever get involved. That’s very unique to certain communities, and unfortunately, communities of color so often the criminal system is the first place for people. I understand where you’re coming from when you’re talking about defunding. Do you have any thoughts on what you think needs to happen to reduce the violent incidents between the police and members of the black and brown community?

Arturo González: Well, I mentioned de-escalation and compliance and educating people. But one other thing that has been a problem in my mind since I first started working on these cases is the shoot-to-kill approach that’s used by law enforcement. Law enforcement officers are trained that if you’re going to fire your weapon, shoot to kill. Now, they may not use that phrase, shoot to kill. Instead, they might say something like shoot until the threat is gone. But really, people are trained to shoot center mass, hit the person right in the chest. I question whether that’s always necessary. Yeah. I mean, I’ll just give you—there’s tons of examples—but I’ll just give you one. And you recently hear in my community, in the east bay, there was a person at Target who was talking in a way that made it clear—

Arturo González: —he had a mental issue, and law enforcement came, and the person ended up grabbing a baseball bat, which I would be the first to admit is threatening and can harm you if somebody whacks you with a baseball bat. So I understand that can be a dangerous weapon, but the officer in that kind of a situation, in my view, if you don’t have time to grab your Taser and tase the person, and if you have to shoot, why not shoot him in the leg? Why not shoot him in the leg? Now, a police officer might say, well, if you shoot him in the leg, he can still swing the bat at you. Well, if you’re not within five feet of the guy, even if he swings, he’s not going to hit you. There are circumstances, in my view, where if you have to shoot, you don’t have to shoot center mass.

Arturo González: It depends on the circumstances, shoot them in the leg. And a police officer might say, or somebody might say, yeah, but if the person’s high on drugs, that’s not going to stop him. Well, that may be true, and you’ve got plenty of time to shoot them in the chest if you have to. But in many cases that I have seen, I believe that if an officer had shot someone in the leg, they could have eliminated the threat, the imminent threat, and not caused a person to lose life. So it is just, again, I question whether you always have to shoot to kill. Obviously, we want to try to avoid shooting, want to try to avoid that kind of situation. But if you have time to get your Taser out, if somebody has a beanbag gun, there are other means of force that you should try to use first. But if you have to use your gun, I just question whether you always have to shoot the kill.

Alexis Amezcua: I think that’s an important point and leads to a related question, which is what are other policy changes that the police could be doing here to improve upon its relationship with communities of color and reduce the overall violence between the two. I wondered if you could speak to any important policy changes that any of your cases have been able to have implemented, or if you think there are other policies that the police should implement in the future.

Arturo González: Right. There are so many things. What I would say, in general, is there needs to be more communication between police officers and the community they serve. A couple of examples of policy changes that came out of the litigation that I’ve been involved in, and I’ve got a long list, but I’ll just list a couple. I already mentioned that in Dinuba they got rid of the SWAT team altogether. In my view, small towns do not need SWAT teams. If your county has a SWAT team, if there are big cities nearby that SWAT teams, small towns don’t need them. If you’re going to have a SWAT team, you’ve got to train them, and most small towns don’t have the budget to do that. Another example is SWAT teams used to point their weapons directly at a person’s back when the person’s face down on the ground.

Arturo González: In my view, that isn’t necessary. And in the settlement that we reached with Modesto, Modesto and other police agencies who had the same insurer agreed to no longer do that. They’ll instead point the weapons at the ground right next to the person. You have plenty of time to shoot them in the back if the person becomes a threat, instead of pointing right at the back, and that way you avoid situations like what may have happened in our case where maybe the officer panicked or somebody bumped into them or something and you end up shooting somebody in the back for no reason. Another example that should be obvious is in cases of mistaken identity, we’ve gotten a police agency to agree to check fingerprints, compare fingerprints. It may seem obvious, but it doesn’t always happen. Officers say that many times, when they arrest somebody, the person say it’s not me.

Arturo González: It’s not me. And sometimes they get tired of hearing that, but sometimes it really isn’t that person. I had a case where an elderly Latina woman was arrested, and she had a heart condition and taken to jail without her medication. And it was the wrong person. She had a similar name. Now, she was inches shorter. It should have been obvious that it was the wrong person, but officer took her in and she kept telling everybody, the arresting officer, the booking officer, she kept telling everybody, it’s not me. Why am I here? I haven’t done anything. And nobody ever bothered to compare her fingerprints to the person who had been arrested and for whom a warrant had been issued, and had they done that, they would’ve known it wasn’t her. There are a lot of examples of things that police can do, but I think training is key.

Arturo González: Here’s another one. A good example is what just happened recently where someone was shot, I guess it was outside of Milwaukee, seven times in the back. Most of the time, if you really have to shoot, and in that circumstance, I question whether they even had to shoot, but let’s not even go there. Most of the time, when you do have to shoot, two bullets is all you have to fire: bang, bang. And there’s a phrase for this that the police agencies use. Many police agencies train their people to only shoot twice—bang, bang—and then you assess, pause and assess. And trust me, you’ve got plenty of time to shoot the person more. The person keeps coming, but bang, bang, and then assess. That, I think, might save some lives because there are just too many examples that I’ve seen.

Arturo González: And like the one that just happened seven times in the back, was that really necessary to shoot the guy seven times? I don’t think so. I don’t think so. I had another case where you had somebody in a truck who was obviously not well, and he’d become unconscious as he was driving. And his truck just slowly went up on somebody’s lawn and then hit a fence and stopped, but the engine was still running. And when the police officer arrived, he was standing on the sidewalk with his gun pointed at the guy. Not sure why he even had his gun pointed at the guy, but he did. He emptied his clip, 12 rounds. He emptied his clip, reloaded, and fire some more.

Alexis Amezcua: Wow.

Arturo González: And the guy in the truck didn’t even have a gun. He was unconscious. So, again, that’s just an example of people firing too many times. Maybe if you just fired twice and then pause, maybe you would’ve realized that it wasn’t necessarily to fire any further, and maybe he wouldn’t have died.

Alexis Amezcua: Yeah. Especially as you phrase it, they make so much sense. Hopefully, others would agree. And I wondered if you think the recent political climate has any impact on civil rights cases?

Arturo González: I hope it does. I hope it will lead to more settlements that involve some kind of policy change or better training for the officers. As I mentioned, my first two civil rights cases, the government offered zero. They didn’t offer anything. They were so confident in the victory, they weren’t going to pay a dime. That is slowly starting to change. I think these insurers, the agencies, the police departments themselves, are starting to realize that jurors are now a little bit more open-minded about considering the possibility that the officer may have done something wrong, and that, I think, hopefully will lead to, again, more settlements so that some justice is brought to the families, and more importantly, policy changes to try to prevent the thing from happening again.

Alexis Amezcua: You’ve played a leading role here at the firm in taking on police misconduct cases, and you’ve mentored a number of associates over the years, including myself. You noted at the beginning of the podcast why you think it’s important to have attorneys from diverse backgrounds get involved. I wondered if you could expand on that a bit more and share why it’s been one of your goals to have junior attorneys from diverse backgrounds handle these types of cases.

Arturo González: Well, look, in many of my cases, the clients or certain witnesses didn’t speak English. So, first of all, if you have a lawyer who speaks the language, that goes a long way towards gaining the trust and confidence of the client. Second, if you have somebody who’s from a similar community, regardless of language, that can go a long way towards gaining the trust of witnesses and clients. And it’s unfortunate, but what I have seen over the years is that in a vast majority of these cases, a vast majority, the victims are brown or black. And I don’t want to get into a large commentary about why sociologically that’s happening, but many, many black and brown victims of police misconduct. Again, if you get people from those communities to represent these folks, I think you’re going to have a better chance of getting them and witnesses who are oftentimes reluctant to come forward and testify, quote unquote, against the police, you get people to open up. I think it’s wonderful that, over the years, and I’ve been doing this 30 years now, I’ve been at the firm about 35 years, I can’t tell you how many associates have come to the firm very eager to work on these types of cases, and that gives me great joy.

Alexis Amezcua: You’ve also talked a lot about, at least with me, how juries are diverse, and depending on the jurisdiction, it also helps to have the panel of lawyers for the plaintiff reflect what the jurors look like, and that’s something I know you and I have talked about over the years.

Arturo González: Right. Yeah. Two things there. There has been a huge change in the composition of the jury from the time that I started to the present. When I tried that first case that I told you about, my recollection is that I had an all-white jury, and my clients, the four women, were all Latinas. That’s probably one reason why the defendants didn’t offer a penny because they assumed correctly that they would get an all-white jury. And in those days, all-white juries, almost always, I’m tempted to say always, voted in favor of a police. I don’t know of any other significant case where law enforcement had lost in Fresno before ours, and so the fact that the jury pools have now changed is also another factor that makes juries a little bit more open mind-minded and willing to consider plaintiff’s case.

Alexis Amezcua: In closing, I wondered if you give your thoughts on what we, as lawyers, can do to ensure the fair treatment for communities of color.

Arturo González: First of all, I think lawyers are in a prime position to help. You got to remember, we are the only people who can stand up in a courtroom and speak on someone else’s behalf, and what makes these cases so important, and this is what I try to drill home to people, is that these cases involve the Bill of Rights. I always tell the jury that. I educate the jury that when this country was founded, we had two constitutional conventions. The first one was about what kind of government are we going to have, and we came up with the three branches, but then they had to have a totally separate convention to talk about what rights would the people have. And they came up with a list, and one of those is the fourth amendment, unreasonable searches and seizures. And when somebody is shot, that’s considered a fourth amendment case.

Arturo González: And so what we’re here to talk about is the Bill of Rights. Because if somebody believes that the government has violated the Bill of Rights, what do they do? You don’t go to the governor. You don’t go to the president. You don’t go to the mayor. You go to court, and who decides whether or not the government has violated the Bill of Rights. It’s not the judge. It’s you. You look right at them. It’s you. It’s going to be a truck driver. It’s going to be a teacher. It’s going to be an accountant. It’s going to be a homemaker. You’re going to decide whether this conduct is acceptable, and that empowers them. And so the young lawyers need to understand that’s how important this is. This is the Bill of Rights we’re talking about. If we don’t defend the Bill of Rights, who will? So go to a law firm where they’re going to let you do this kind of work.

Arturo González: I remember at Harvard Law School, the only thing that kind of intimidated me at all was that I didn’t know anything about law firms, and all of my classmates did. And I went to the placement office and I asked a nice lady there if she gave me some help. And she told me about pro bono work and she recommended two firms, and one of them was MoFo. And thank God she did that. And thank God I came because 35 years later, I’m still here. And the reason I’m still here mainly is because they’ve allowed me to do this kind of work, and so I’m very grateful, not only for the opportunities that this firm has given me, but for all of the associates and partners who have worked and continue to work with me on these cases. I couldn’t do them on my own. I need the help, and I’ve just received some tremendous help from you and others, and I’m very grateful about that.

Alexis Amezcua: Well, it’s been a pleasure speaking with you, Arturo. This is the end of our MoFo Perspectives episode on police brutality and civil rights litigation, combating police misconduct. Once again, I’m your host, Alexis Amezcua, speaking with Arturo González. Thank you for joining us.

Speaker: Please make sure to subscribe to the MoFo Perspectives podcast so you don’t miss an episode. If you have any questions about what you heard today or would like more information on this topic, please visit mofo.com/podcasts. Again, that’s MoFo M-O-F-O.com/podcasts.