Cab driver paid $72,500 after traffic stop takedown says she feels shortchanged

Dec. 26--The city's insurance company has paid a former Santa Fe cab driver $72,500 to settle her claim that a police officer used excessive force during a traffic stop when he tackled her to the pavement, but the woman says the incident in 2014 has left a bad taste in her mouth.

"I feel like I was owed that money and more," said Dawn Bourgeois, who has returned to New Orleans, where she had lived before moving to Santa Fe after Hurricane Katrina. She suffered a black eye during the March 30, 2014, incident.

Bourgeois was pulled over just after midnight for having stopped her cab in a stop box -- a railroad crossing buffer zone usually marked with a double XX and a sign telling motorists not to stop there -- at the intersection of St. Francis Drive and Cerrillos Road, according to reports from the time.

The officer asked Bourgeois for the insurance and registration documents for the car, but she couldn't find them. She called a dispatcher at Capital City Cab to find out where they were held in the car. Santa Fe Police Officer Jose Gutierrez then began threatening to tow the car.

Gutierrez, who later resigned from the department over the incident, wrote in his report that when he asked Bourgeois for the keys to the car, she handed them over in an "angry manner." Then he told her to stay in the car, he wrote, but as he walked back toward his patrol car, Bourgeois exited the vehicle "in an angry manner."

So he walked back toward her.

"Ms. Bourgeois was still on the phone when I approached her and reached for her right arm," the officer wrote in his report. "Ms. Bourgeois pulled away in a very aggressive manner and resisted my attempts to restrain her. I was able to get leverage on Ms. Bourgeois' right arm and I conducted an arm bar take down."

Bourgeois said at the time that she was traumatized by the experience.

She said in a recent phone interview from New Orleans that the incident was especially disturbing because the only discipline Gutierrez received was a six-month suspension of his law enforcement certification.

"So he can probably go and get hired again," she said. "The simple fact that he can legally do that is very upsetting. Why would they want someone back on any police force who is obviously a loose canon and can't handle the pressure of the job?"

Bourgeois filed a tort claim notice with the city in May, but the case never went to court. The city's insurer, Traveler's Insurance, paid the settlement in October 2014, according to documents received from the city via a public records request.

The settlement agreement, which bars Bourgeois from filing further claims related to the incident, incorrectly listed the officer's name as Jose Gonzales instead of Jose Gutierrez, but that apparently went unnoticed by any of the parties to the agreement.

Santa Fe Police Department Capt. Patrick Gallagher said last week that he had no comment on the settlement, but he noted the department is now training officers in preparation for a change in the way they must report incidents involving use of force.

Gallagher said the department will be switching from a "reactive control model," which includes several different levels of force to deal with different scenarios -- an "if A, then B" model -- to an "objectively reasonable" model. Gallagher said the new protocol won't change the way officers are taught to respond to incidents as much as it will prepare them for having to demonstrate in their report how the actions they took were "objectively reasonable" for the situation.

New Mexico Department of Public Safety spokesman Herman Lovato said that as of last week, Gutierrez was not working as a law enforcement officer.

Contact Phaedra Haywood at 986-3068 or [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @phaedraann.

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