One of the officers involved in the mishap was suspended for 10 days last summer.
SAN ANTONIO — Early last year, Alex Adam Delgado was at home when three San Antonio police officers, responding to an apparent break-in by a woman’s ex-boyfriend, arrived to take him into custody.
But those officers were at the wrong home, and Delgado wasn’t the suspect they were looking for. Now, a year after that incident on Feb. 24, 2024, he’s suing the officers and San Antonio Police Department for excessive force in a lawsuit that descries their conduct that day as “extreme” and “outrageous.”
It also accuses the department of inadequate law enforcement policies that resulted in the wrongful detainment. Delgado is seeking monetary damages through a jury trial.
What happened on Feb. 24, 2024?
A woman had called police that night to report that her ex-boyfriend, whom she has a protective order against, had entered her garage earlier that evening. She didn’t know if he was still there or not, so three officers – Bless Achor, Rodriguez Cyrenns and Rogelio Guillen – were dispatched to check.
Before arriving to the scene, Achor looked into the ex’s criminal record and discovered that he had an active felony arrest warrant. When he and two other officers arrived on the scene, police records say, body camera footage showed Achor erroneously approaching the wrong residence and yelling “He’s the guy, get him!”
According to the suit filed Feb. 7, Delgado was “compliant” and told the officers there wasn’t an emergency on his property. Instead, police records say, Achor proceeded to push the man he thought was the suspect into his residence and “kicked or tripped him, causing (the man) to land hard on the floor in order to detain him with handcuffs.”
Delgado sustained some bruises and scrapes as a result, as well as a disruption of “sense of security in his own home,” the suit says.
It wasn’t until later the officers learned they were at the wrong residence, at which point they released Delgado.
Achor was later suspended for 10 days, following an internal investigation.
‘Severe emotional distress’
Excessive force is far from the only accusation outlined in the lawsuit, which was filed by San Antonio-based JW Zepeda Law in the 131st District Court.
It also accuses the three officers of false imprisonment, violation of due process, trespassing, assault and battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligence, invasion of privacy, and defamation. SAPD, meanwhile, is accused of negligent training.
The suit says the officers “forced their way inside without a warrant, probable cause or exigent circumstances,” calling their actions a byproduct of SAPD’s “failure to properly train and supervise its officers.”
“The city had a policy or custom of tolerating excessive force, failing to adequately train officers on proper use-of-force protocols, and failing to investigate or discipline officers for prior incidents of misconduct,” the suit reads. “These failures created an environment in which constitutional violations were foreseeable and likely to occur.”
It all amounted to a situation last February, the suit says, in which the officers’ actions caused “severe emotional distress.”