Stephen Yagman - "I Sue Police Officers"

A few years ago there was an attorney in Los Angeles named Stephen Yagman that made quite a name for himself by suing police officers in general and LAPD officers in particular. He was particularly fond of suing the detectives of the Special Investigations Section (SIS) of the now defunct (I think) Robbery Homicide Division.

SIS detectives would go after the most violent and dangerous of LA's criminals. These guys seldom were interested in giving up and going quietly to jail and so they frequently wound up getting shot by the SIS... often they died as a result of their wounds.

Enter Stephen Yagman who would, while enriching himself, get some taxpayer money to help the grieving relatives gain "closure" from the sudden and unfortunate demise of these criminals. Keep in mind that they almost always went out having committed as their final crime, Attempted Murder of a Police Officer.

Yagman would sue any police officer though and was universally thought poorly of by most LAPD officers.

So one Sunny and beautiful Sunday in LA's West Bureau, I was working my favorite job as 34M30 (Supervisor of a squad of motorcycle officers), when one of my brighter young police officers, Patrick Bradshaw, called for a supervisor in Venice Area.

Responding, I found that Bradshaw had pulled over Stephen Yagman who had been driving a Cadilac with New York license plates on it. I generally speak to the police officer first to get a feel for what's going on.

Bradshaw, having observed a minor traffic violation, pulled the car over and found Yagman driving. Yagman had a New York drivers license and the car was registered in Yagman's name in the State of New York. The officer had formed the opinion that Yagman was legally a California resident thus making him improperly licensed and the car improperly registered. He believed that Yagman's car was impoundable because of these registration and drivers licensing irregularities, but before taking any steps that made his actions seem vengeful, unjust or wrong, he decided to obtain the advice of a supervisor (Me).

We have some nice technical tools, one of which is the ANI or Automated Name Index that we can access by radio through our Communications Center. Through ANI we can check a person by name and find out if he has a California drivers license and what the status of that license is. Our outstanding officer had done that and found that Yagman had at one time had a California drivers license but that it was now "Suspended." Bingo!

I approached Mr. Yagman and he introduced himself saying, "I'm Stephen Yagman the attorney." then he added, "I sue police officers."

I responded with something like, "So I've heard". I then gave him a brief rundown of what we had discovered and that we intended to impound his car and possibly arrest him adding that I wanted to give him an opportunity to provide his input or explanation that might change what we were thinking.

He responded by repeating several times that he was Stephen Yagman and that he sued police officers for a living. I wanted to thank him for the warning but I was able to control myself.

I finally told him that I would give him one more opportunity to try to focus on the events of the day and deal with them. He said the car was usually kept in New York and that he had an address in New York and that he drove it back and forth from New York to California. I asked him for a business card reflecting the address of his New York office. When he couldn't provide one, I asked him to give us his New York office phone number. I said I'd like to verify by listening to his office recording that he in fact had an office in New York. Wouldn't (or couldn't) do it.

We impounded the car and let Yagman go with a ticket.

Officer Bradshaw wrote up a marvelous report that included Yagman's ad in the local yellow pages reflecting an address in the Venice area of LA and a parking pass for Yagman's condominium complex in Redondo beach, California. He gathered an awful lot of evidence to substantiate that Yagman was a California resident.
Never heard anything later from Yagman. The Vehicle Coordinator at LAPD's Pacific Area Police Station said Yagman finally came in and got his car registered in California, settled up his license suspension and got his California drivers license.

I have always felt good about us helping that poor lawyer get straightened out. And, I don't know if it's related or not, but there weren't any more lawsuits against LAPD officers that I heard about after that. Probably just a coincidence.