A San Diego Police officer is being accused of excessive force, false arrest and wrongful detention in a lawsuit filed last week on behalf of a United States Homeland Security agent.
The lawsuit centers around a parking lot confrontation on July 2, 2024, when SDPD officer Jonathan Ferraro was off duty and wearing civilian clothes.
According to the lawsuit, Ferraro had a confrontation with officer Chu Ding in a Carmel Mountain Costco parking lot, calling him a “Chinese piece of shit” before physically assaulting him and knocking him unconscious.
Store video cameras captured the confrontation at 12350 Carmel Mountain Road.
Carmel Mountain RoadWhile the video is grainy and has no sound, it does show in some detail how the incident went down. Iredale provided the video, which appears to corroborate key elements of the incident as described in the lawsuit.
Videos taken by cameras worn by the officers who showed up at the scene are not available to the plaintiffs until the case begins working its way through the system.
The video shows a large SUV-type vehicle driven by Ferraro blocking Ding’s car from backing out of his parking spot and impeding other drivers.When Ding was getting ready to leave he tapped on the tinted windows of the SUV to let Ferraro know. In response, Ferraro moved his car slightly forward, then stopped and backed up again, further blocking Ding and other cars on each side of Ding’s smaller vehicle, according to the lawsuit filed on his behalf by attorneys Julia Yoo and Eugene Iredale.
Ding waited about ten more seconds, then got out of the car again and tapped on Ferraro’s trunk. The lawsuit says he was unsure if the SDPD officer could see him inside the truck with its darkened windows.
As Ding returned to his car, Ferraro jumped out of his own vehicle, screaming insults.
When Ding told him to move the truck, “Ferraro screamed at Mr. Ding that he (Ferraro) was the police,” according to the lawsuit. This led to pushing and shoving between the 53-year-old Ding and Ferraro, who appeared to be at least a couple of decades younger.
Ferraro then reportedly picked Ding up and slammed him to the ground. Ding lost consciousness.
The suit says Ferraro immediately called SDPD for assistance.
Six officers then arrived in three marked patrol cars, which is when Officer Patrick Richards, also named in the lawsuit, cuffed Ding and placed him in the back of a patrol car for several hours.
Ding’s handcuffs had been placed so tightly that “they caused excruciating pain for hours,” the suit states.
Attorney Iredale says that Ding was not asked anything about what happened. What would follow is described by Iredale as a reflection of SDPD’s “long history of the use of excessive and unnecessary force.
“It also has a long history of supervisors acquiescing to the misconduct of their subordinates,” Iredale added.
The lawsuit adds that the San Diego Police Department has an informal “code of silence” where officers protect each other by not reporting corruption or misconduct within their ranks.
“This case involves more than the mere exercise of the rule of silence, it involves active obstruction of justice by fellow officers in covering up outrageous and brutal misconduct,” Iredale says — in this case, he says it was because they realized their fellow officer “had assaulted a federal agent and knocked him unconscious.”
He was finally taken to an emergency room hours later with what turned out to be a fractured rib, a concussion, and a separated shoulder, according to the lawsuit.
Ding would sit in the patrol car for hours, waiting for two detectives to arrive. They would eventually review the Costco footage, which showed Ferraro’s behavior, and then take Ding to their station to interrogate him.
Iredale says that there was no legitimate reason to take Ding to the police station instead of the downtown jail, where he would have been screened by a nurse and taken to a hospital.
He was finally taken to an emergency room hours later with what turned out to be a fractured rib, a concussion, and a separated shoulder, according to the lawsuit.
Ding was also reportedly denied food, water and medical care while he was pressured to sign an apology letter to Ferraro. He eventually would sign the apology, then be arrested on felony charges.
After Ding was discharged from the hospital, SDPD officer Richards once again tried to cuff him, despite knowing of his prisoner’s dislocated shoulder and fractured rib. The ER doctor would not permit him to do this.
Ding was then booked into Central Jail on a felony charge of resisting arrest. The next afternoon he was released on a $20,000 bond after spending nearly 24 hours in custody.
Over the next four months he would have to deal with vertigo, nausea, neck pain, shoulder and chest pain and also was missing work. Iredale says his client is still suffering from ongoing pain from his injuries.
On July 11, nine days after the parking lot confrontation, the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office declined to file charges against Ding. However, his issues continued.
When he was booked in jail, federal agents discovered that Ding was arrested on suspicion of committing a felony. The information was forwarded to the Homeland Security Office of Professional Responsibility, where it would take nine months of investigation of the felony allegation for it to be reviewed and dismissed.
Ding was born in Singapore, becoming a U.S. citizen in 2006. He served in the U.S. Navy for five years, deployed to the Middle East, Japan, and Australia. He is married, with a 16-year-old daughter.
We asked the San Diego Police Department to respond to the allegations in the lawsuit. SDPD Lt. Travis Easter responded that the department does not have a policy of commenting on pending litigation.
The harm in this case was not just physical trauma,” said his attorney, Iredale. “It is also about the harm involved an insult of his race, the loss, however brief, of his liberty, the degradation of being placed in jail, and the anxiety of undergoing months long investigation by his employer.”
Also named in the lawsuit are the City of San Diego, Richards, Detective Emilee Emanjomen, and their supervisor Sgt. James Ealson. When Ding asked the city for compensation for what is alleged in the lawsuit, they rejected the claim.
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