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Reviewed by David Gammill, California trial attorney · Last reviewed: October 11, 2026
If a San Bernardino police officer or a San Bernardino County Sheriff’s deputy shot you or someone in your family, used force that was not necessary, or arrested or detained you without legal cause, California and federal law give you a civil claim for money damages against the officer and, in most cases, against the city or the county that employs them. The deadline is short: a claim against the City of San Bernardino or the County must be presented in writing within six months. Gammill Law Accident & Injury Lawyers is a trial firm, led by a former Los Angeles County prosecutor, that handles police shooting, excessive force, and police misconduct cases in San Bernardino County. The firm has recovered more than $100 million for California clients across verdicts and settlements. Its results include a $21.1 million wrongful death verdict, a $16 million school sexual abuse verdict, and a $12 million whistleblower retaliation verdict; every case is different, and prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.
If this happened to you or to someone you love, call 310-750-4149 now. The first conversation is free and confidential, and the six-month clock may already be running.
Police have authority to stop, detain, search, arrest, and use force, and every one of those powers has a legal limit; crossing it is a civil rights violation you can sue over. The cases we handle in San Bernardino County fall into four groups, in the order they most often take a life or change one. Police shootings and deaths in custody: the use of deadly force, which California now permits only when an officer reasonably believes it is necessary to defend against an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury, or to stop a fleeing person who has committed a felony that threatened or caused death or serious injury. Excessive force short of deadly force: strikes, Tasers, chokeholds, police dogs, restraint positions, and takedowns that go beyond what a reasonable officer would have used; our guide to what excessive force is under California and federal law explains the test. Unlawful detention and false arrest: being held without reasonable suspicion, or arrested without probable cause; our guide to your rights when police detain you without probable cause walks through when a stop becomes illegal. And retaliation: being arrested, cited, or roughed up because you recorded an officer, asked for a badge number, or said something an officer did not like.
Two laws carry these claims. The federal statute, 42 U.S.C. § 1983, lets you sue an officer who violated a constitutional right while acting under color of law, and lets you sue the city or the county itself when a policy, custom, or failure to train caused the violation. California’s Tom Bane Civil Rights Act, Civil Code § 52.1, adds a state claim when an officer interferes with your rights through threats, intimidation, or coercion, and under state law the public employer is generally liable for what its officers do on duty. Our FAQ answers the direct question, can I sue the police for excessive force in California, in plain terms. Most cases plead both.
Six months, for the state-law part of the case. Under Government Code § 911.2, a claim for money against a public entity, which includes the City of San Bernardino, every other city and town in the county, and the County of San Bernardino itself, must be presented in writing to that entity within six months of the incident. No lawsuit on the state claims can be filed until the claim has been presented and rejected or deemed rejected. Filing it late, or filing it with the wrong entity, can end the state claims before they start. Our guide to the California government claim deadline explains the form, the timing, and the late-claim rules. When the incident took a life, the family’s wrongful death claim runs on the same six-month government clock; our guide to the wrongful death filing deadline in California covers how the two rules fit together.
The federal § 1983 claim does not go through the government claim process, and it borrows California’s two-year personal injury limitations period under Code of Civil Procedure § 335.1. Two years sounds like time to spare. It is not. Body camera footage, dispatch audio, jail video, and nearby surveillance video are kept on short retention schedules, witnesses move, and officers’ memories harden around the report they wrote. The practical deadline is the first few weeks.
The agency decides who receives your government claim and whose records you need, so it is the first fact we pin down. The City of San Bernardino runs its own police department, so an incident with a San Bernardino police officer means a claim to the City. The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department polices every unincorporated area of the county and fourteen cities and towns that contract with it for police service, including Highland, Loma Linda, Grand Terrace, Yucaipa, Rancho Cucamonga, Chino Hills, Victorville, Hesperia, Apple Valley, and Adelanto; a deputy working out of one of those contract stations is a County employee, and the claim goes to the County of San Bernardino, not to the city, even though the station captain serves as that city’s chief of police. The Sheriff’s Department also runs the county jails and the coroner’s office, so a death in custody or a death investigation is a County matter from the start. Colton, Fontana, Rialto, Redlands, Ontario, Chino, Montclair, and Upland run their own departments, and the claim goes to that city. California Highway Patrol officers on the freeways are state employees, and the claim goes to the State. Get the agency wrong and the six-month clock does not stop while you fix it.
Every California peace officer completes the POST Basic Course, and its use-of-force training is written down, which means the officer’s own training is evidence in your case. The Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training publishes the student workbook for Learning Domain 20, Use of Force and De-escalation, revised in July 2025. It teaches that force must be objectively reasonable under the totality of the circumstances, that officers should consider the least intrusive option and try to gain voluntary compliance first, that a subject’s level of resistance, from compliant through passive, active, assaultive, and life-threatening, should govern the force used, that officers must constantly reassess and de-escalate as the situation changes, that deadly force is a separate category with its own rules, that an officer who sees another officer using unreasonable force has a duty to intercede, and that the use-of-force report must document the facts the officer actually knew at the moment force was used. When an officer’s conduct departs from that training, the departure does not by itself prove the force was unlawful, but it is admissible on whether the force was reasonable, and it is the first thing we compare the video against. Our excessive force and police shooting pages walk through the specific chapters that apply to each kind of case.
The recording is usually the single most important piece of evidence in the case, and it does not keep itself. California law makes video of police shootings and serious uses of force public on a set clock, gives the person on the video and their family a right to see it, and sets minimum retention periods, but none of that helps if the file is overwritten before anyone asks. Our first step in nearly every case is a written preservation demand to the agency covering body camera, dash camera, dispatch audio, and jail video, followed by a public records request. Our guide to police body camera footage in California explains how to request it, how long agencies must keep it, and what happens when the camera was off. Officer discipline and use-of-force records, once sealed, are now partly public under state law, and the rest come through the lawsuit.
A civil rights case recovers the same categories of loss as any injury case: medical care, lost wages and earning capacity, and non-economic damages for the pain, fear, and humiliation of the incident. Two things set these cases apart. First, punitive damages, which exist to punish and deter, can be awarded against an individual officer whose conduct was malicious or oppressive, although California does not allow them against the city or the county itself. Second, both the Bane Act and the federal statute let the court order the defendants to pay your attorney’s fees when you win, which is one reason these cases can be brought by families who could never afford to pay a lawyer by the hour. If the incident took a life, the family’s claim becomes a wrongful death and survival action with its own rules, which our police shooting page explains.
The honest answer is that it depends on what your case needs, and there are three things worth checking before you hire anyone. First, trial experience against public entities: cities and counties rarely pay fair value until they believe a jury will hear the case, and a lawyer who has actually tried cases to verdict is priced differently by the other side. Second, familiarity with how police cases are built: the government claim, the preservation demand, the records statutes, the POST training materials, and the qualified immunity defense that officers raise in federal court are their own body of law, and a general injury practice may not handle them often. Third, the fee arrangement in writing: a contingency fee means you pay nothing unless the case recovers. Ask any lawyer you are considering about all three.
We know the other side of the table. David Gammill, a former Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney, has tried over 100 cases to verdict, and our attorneys bring more than 40 years of combined legal experience to every case we take. A former prosecutor has worked alongside police officers, read thousands of their reports, and knows how a use-of-force report is written and where it tends to diverge from the video. The firm’s results include a $1 million recovery in an excessive force case. Every case is different, and past results do not guarantee a similar outcome. We prepare every civil rights case for trial from the first call, because that is what moves a city or a county to settle. The consultation is free, there is no fee unless we win, and the firm answers calls in English and Spanish. Families across the Inland Empire have trusted this firm with cases against the agencies that police their own neighborhoods.
It depends on the claims. A case built on the Bane Act and other state claims is filed in the San Bernardino County Superior Court; for an incident in or around the city, that is the Civil Division of the San Bernardino District at the San Bernardino Justice Center, 247 West Third Street. A § 1983 claim can be filed in state court or in the United States District Court for the Central District of California, and for San Bernardino County that means the Eastern Division in Riverside, at the George E. Brown, Jr. Federal Building on Twelfth Street, not the downtown Los Angeles courthouse. Cases that plead both are often moved to federal court by the defendants. Which forum is better for you is a judgment call that depends on the facts, the agency, and the judge, and it is one of the first strategic decisions we make with you.
Yes. A decision not to file criminal charges answers a different question under a different standard: whether a prosecutor can prove a crime beyond a reasonable doubt. A civil case asks whether the force was unreasonable or unnecessary by a preponderance of the evidence, and it is decided by a jury on evidence the prosecutor’s review may never have weighed. The same is true of a coroner’s finding and of a Department of Justice report. None of them bars the civil case.
Often, yes. If the charges were dismissed or you were acquitted, the civil case proceeds on its own. If you were convicted, or pleaded to something, some civil claims are barred where winning them would contradict the conviction, while others, especially excessive force claims, can survive. The order matters: talk to a civil rights lawyer before accepting a plea deal if you believe your rights were violated, because a plea taken to make the criminal case go away can quietly end the civil one.
No. An internal complaint to the department is not a government claim and does not satisfy the six-month deadline under Government Code § 911.2. You can file one, and it sometimes produces useful records, but it is not a substitute for the written claim to the city or the county, and anything you say in it can be used in the civil case.
Nothing upfront and nothing unless we win. We work on a contingency fee, which means the fee is a percentage of the recovery and is paid only out of the recovery. Our page on what a personal injury lawyer costs explains the arrangement in detail.
We represent people in police misconduct cases from across San Bernardino County, including San Bernardino, Highland, Colton, Rialto, Fontana, Redlands, Loma Linda, Grand Terrace, Yucaipa, Rancho Cucamonga, Ontario, Victorville, and Hesperia, in the San Bernardino Superior Court and in the federal court in Riverside. Our Torrance office handles civil rights cases in Los Angeles County through our Torrance civil rights attorney page.
Gammill Law represents people whose rights were violated by police in San Bernardino County. A free, confidential conversation will tell you whether you have a claim, which entity must receive it, and how much time you have. We work on a contingency fee under a written contingency fee agreement that complies with California law, so there is no fee unless we win.
Get your free case evaluation or call 310-750-4149. You will speak with people who handle these cases, and you will pay no fee unless we win.
This page is attorney advertising and general information, not legal advice for any specific situation. Deadlines and outcomes are fact-specific; consult a licensed California attorney about your own circumstances. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.
