A $6.8 million jury verdict was rendered in favor of Slade Douglas on December 23, 2025 in a lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles and two Los Angeles police officers.

On August 27, 2019, the events began with what has been described in court records as a government-orchestrated swatting initiated by the Department of Veterans Affairs in retaliation for his advocacy on behalf of veterans, leading to Douglas’s false arrest by Officers Jeremy R. Wheeler and Jeffrey H. Yabana. Following that arrest, Douglas was forcibly hospitalized, drugged, and sexually assaulted under color of law.

The court record establishes that the police response was triggered by a false report to emergency services, commonly known as swatting. Swatting involves the intentional use of a false emergency report to provoke a law-enforcement response.

A swatting incident is fundamentally different from a welfare check.

A welfare check implies that authorities were responding to a legitimate concern about an individual’s wellbeing. The court record instead states that the report initiating the police response was false.

Describing the event as a welfare check therefore replaces the factual description contained in the federal case with a materially different narrative.

And the City of Los Angeles, despite actual knowledge that Officer Wheeler presented a known risk due to his documented alcohol abuse, serious mental health conditions including bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, a prior 5150 mental health hold, prior violent conduct including a domestic threat reported by his ex-wife to the Department, who was dissuaded from seeking a restraining order, and residential treatment at the Betty Ford Clinic, nevertheless chose to retain, arm, and deploy him into the field and sent him to Mr. Douglas’s door.

Douglas initially let the officers into his apartment but then asked them to leave. When they refused to leave, he dialed 911, which Officer Wheeler told him was against the law.

Subsequently, Officers Wheeler and Yabana, joined by Sgt. Andrew Kang and LAFD personnel, transported Douglas in custody to PIH Good Samaritan Hospital, a facility contracted by the City, after body-worn camera footage captured officers stating that the transport was undertaken to protect the City and the officers from liability.

At the hospital, Douglas was double handcuffed to a gurney and subjected to nine forced injections, invasive blood draws, exhaustive toxicology tests, and genital penetration through forced catheterization, which he described as sexual assault by instrumentation under color of law (Cal. Penal Code § 289) and as evidence fabrication intended to retroactively justify an unlawful arrest.