How Do You Prove Police Intended to Violate Your Rights Under California’s Bane Act?

Two Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies told my client, on body camera, that he brought his own arrest on himself. “You ruined it.” “That’s what happens when you want to argue with everyone.” “You did it to yourself.” Those words became some of my best evidence, not that the arrest was unlawful, but that the deputies knew it and did it anyway.

I have spent years suing police officers who cross constitutional lines, and one thing I tell every new client is that a wrongful-arrest claim only gets you so far. California gives us a sharper tool for the cases where an officer did not just get it wrong, but knew better. It is called the Bane Act, and it is built entirely around one question: what did the officer know, and did he act anyway?

The short answer

California’s Bane Act, Civil Code section 52.1, lets someone sue when a person (including a police officer) interferes with a constitutional or statutory right through threats, intimidation, or coercion, and does so with the specific intent to violate that right. I’ve laid out the full statute, its history, and its elements in [our guide to the Bane Act](#). This post answers a narrower, harder question that guide only touches on: how do you actually prove that intent when the officer never confesses to it?

The answer, using my client Sky Miller’s case, is that you usually prove it with the officer’s own words from the scene, from the police report, and from the deposition chair.

GREG KIRAKOSIAN’S LEGAL EYE VIEW

Every officer who violates someone’s rights will call it an honest mistake. My job in a Bane Act case is to take that excuse off the table, one admission at a time. I don’t need a deputy to say “I know this is illegal and I’m doing it anyway.” I need the record to show he knew the rule, admits he didn’t have the facts the rule required, and arrested my client anyway. Once that’s the record, “honest mistake” stops being a real defense.

What happened: an argument, a room key, and a question that never got answered

My client, Sky Miller, was a guest at the Catalina Canyon Inn in Avalon, on Catalina Island, on March 27, 2024. He and his girlfriend, who held the hotel reservation, had an argument. She left, and because she held the room, the front desk needed her permission to cut Sky a new key. She gave it, and the front desk started making the key.

Hotel staff described Sky as “belligerent” and called the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, which polices Avalon under contract. It was a non-emergency call, and staff told the responding deputies the fact that should have ended everything right there: Sky was still a welcome guest.

Sergeant V. Durante and Deputy A. Evans arrived. Sky was polite. He ended a phone call when the deputies asked him to. He asked for their names and badge numbers and whether their body cameras were recording — a lawful question, not a refusal to cooperate. Instead of answering, the deputies warned him about jail and raised Penal Code section 647(f), California’s public-intoxication law.

Then the situation resolved itself. Deputy Evans already had Sky’s new room key in hand. Sergeant Durante later admitted, in his deposition, that if the key had simply been handed over, Sky would have been free to go.

Instead, Durante demanded Sky’s name. Sky asked back: “Do you have a reasonable, articulable suspicion of a crime?” Durante’s answer was a threat: “You’re about this close to getting handcuffed.” Before Sky could finish repeating the question, the handcuffs went on.

As the deputies explained the arrest, their own words gave away why it happened:

“You ruined it. You could have went to your room.”

“That’s what happens when you want to argue with everyone.”

“You did it to yourself. You were being rude.”

Sky was never a danger to himself. By both officers’ own testimony and their body-camera footage, he stood upright, never stumbled, and was coherent the entire time. He spent approximately two hours in custody. The district attorney never filed charges.

The rule in plain English

The Bane Act is not a penalty for every officer who gets a close call wrong. It is aimed at officers who know where the line is and cross it anyway. Two ideas carry the weight.

First, coercion. When an officer intentionally arrests someone without a lawful basis, the arrest itself is coercive enough on its own. Being ordered into handcuffs and taken into custody satisfies this element without a separate act of violence.

Second (and this is where most cases are actually won or lost) specific intent. The officer does not have to announce “I am going to violate the Constitution.” Reckless disregard is enough: did the officer understand the right was at risk and act anyway, without caring whether he crossed the line? An officer who genuinely misjudges a close call can argue honest mistake. An officer who admits he knew the rule, admits he didn’t have the facts the rule required, and arrested someone anyway loses that argument.

The law behind it

California Civil Code section 52.1 (the Bane Act) creates a civil claim against someone who interferes, or tries to interfere, with a person’s constitutional or statutory rights through threats, intimidation, or coercion, done with the specific intent to violate that right.

The controlling case on both pieces of Sky’s claim is Cornell v. City and County of San Francisco, 17 Cal. App. 5th 766 (2017). Cornell held that in an intentional unlawful-arrest case, a plaintiff does not need to prove a separate act of coercion beyond the wrongful arrest itself, the seizure can supply it. Cornell also held that specific intent can be proved through reckless disregard for a person’s rights, without a confession that the officer meant to break the law. The Ninth Circuit applied the same reckless-disregard standard in Reese v. County of Sacramento, 888 F.3d 1030 (9th Cir. 2018).

Why the deputies’ own testimony proved intent

Line Sky’s arrest up against Cornell and the fit is exact. The wrongful arrest supplied the coercion, he was handcuffed and held roughly two hours over a charge that never became a criminal case. That leaves specific intent, and the deputies’ own depositions did the work for me.

Under questioning, the deputies acknowledged:

• Being intoxicated in public is not, by itself, enough for an arrest under section 647(f).
• Arguing with someone has nothing to do with that statute’s elements.
• A 647(f) arrest requires facts showing an actual danger to the person’s own safety.
• Arresting someone without those facts would violate the Fourth Amendment.

Then I asked what facts they actually had that night. Sergeant Durante’s answer was “no specific facts per se” only a general possibility that Sky could be hurt, a possibility he admitted always exists for anyone. He also admitted that nothing new happened between the moment he considered Sky free to leave and the moment he decided to arrest him. Deputy Evans’s written report cited the odor of alcohol and the fact that Sky repeated himself not that Sky couldn’t stand, walk, or find his way to his own hotel room.

That is reckless disregard built in three layers: they knew the rule, they admitted they lacked the facts the rule required, and they arrested Sky anyway. The recorded statements (“you ruined it,” “that’s what happens when you argue,” “you did it to yourself”) supplied the last piece: evidence that the arrest was punishment for Sky’s attitude and his questions, not a genuine safety judgment.

How we proved it

This case, like most Bane Act cases, was won in the deposition room, not at trial. I did not ask the deputies whether they intended to violate Sky’s rights — nobody answers yes to that question. I asked them to state the rule in their own words first, locking in what they knew. Only then did I ask what specific facts supported an arrest that night. Once they had already agreed on the rule, there was nowhere to go when the facts weren’t there. Their own testimony did the work a confession would have done.

Qualified immunity does not block this claim

Qualified immunity can shield an officer from federal damages even when a constitutional violation occurred, if the right wasn’t clearly established. The Bane Act is a California statute, and federal qualified immunity does not defeat it. That doesn’t erase the statute’s own requirements (a plaintiff still has to prove the underlying right, the coercion, the specific intent, and the harm) but it means the intent evidence in a case like Sky’s has a path to accountability even where a federal claim might get harder.

What to do if you think this happened to you

• Stay calm and do not physically resist, even if you’re sure the arrest is unlawful. You win this in the record, not on the street.
• Remember and write down the exact words officers use, especially anything connecting the arrest to your attitude, your questions, or “disrespect.”
• Remember any explicit threats (“you’re going to jail,” “you’re about to get handcuffed”) these support the coercion element.
• Preserve officer names, badge numbers, the agency, incident and booking numbers, and any witnesses.
• If it’s safe and lawful, record the encounter.
• Watch the deadlines. A government claim against a California public entity can be required within six months, and other state and federal filing periods apply on their own clocks. Don’t wait to have them evaluated.