The family of former NFL player Doug Martin filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the City of Oakland, several Oakland police officers, and a paramedic company after his death last year while in police custody.
Civil rights attorney John Burris filed the lawsuit on Tuesday, and said that although the lawsuit seeks monetary damages, the family's main priority is to clarify the events that led to their son's death. Martin was an Oakland native who earned Pro Bowl honors as a running back with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers after being selected in the first round of the 2012 NFL Draft. He finished his career with the then-Oakland Raiders in 2018.
Oakland police said Martin was involved in a break-in on October 18, 2025, at a home on Ettrick Street in the East Oakland Hills, and after officers struggled to detain him, he became unresponsive after being taken into custody. Paramedics took Martin to a local hospital, where he later died.
Police had received two about calls about two incidents early that morning, one involving a man who needed help and another involving a man breaking into a house several doors from the location of the first call. Martin was the subject of both calls.
The suit alleged that Martin was experiencing a mental health crisis when his mother, Leslie Martin, called paramedics for help. Martin then fled and hid in a neighbor's house two doors away. Officers who responded found Martin in the basement of the home of the neighbor's house, and the suit alleges that after a brief struggle, officers restrained him "face down while one or more officers pressed on his back."
Police then turned Martin on his side and found him unresponsive. The suit claims that the involved officers believed he was sleeping or pretending to be asleep at first, and that after Martin continued to be unresponsive, an officer requested medical assistance.
The suit said paramedics from Falck Northern California arrived more than 15 minutes after the call for service and did not promptly provide medical care at their arrival. Martin's family believes that the long paramedic response time, as well as restraint asphyxia caused by Oakland police officers, caused Martin's death.
Leslie Martin said her son had been experiencing mental and emotional difficulties at the time of his death, but was physically healthy, making the circumstances of his death difficult for her to comprehend, according to the complaint.
Burris has since hired an independent pathologist to conduct a second autopsy and is awaiting Alameda County's original autopsy report, which he requested but has not yet received. Martin's brain has also been sent to a Boston clinic to determine whether he had chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a form of brain trauma associated with football and other high-contact sports. The family has not yet received the results of those tests, but Burris said his pathologist advised that, even if CTE is found, it would not have caused Martin's death.
The prevalence of CTE among living NFL players is unknown, as CTE can only be definitively diagnosed after death. A 2023 report by the Boston University CTE Center found CTE in 345 of 376 deceased former NFL players who had their brains analyzed. In comparison, CTE among the larger population is rare. A 2018 study of 164 brains donated by male and female participants, one of the 164 had CTE, with the lone case was a former college football player.CBS News Bay Area was attempting to reach out to the Oakland Police Department and Falck Northern California for comment on the lawsuit.
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