An executive of one of the largest banks in the world allegedly told the police during an incident in May that he ingested “white lightning,” which police say is a commercial name for bath salts, CBS reports.
Brian Mulligan, the 52-year-old managing director and vice chairman of media and telecommunications for Deutsche Bank, is suing the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) for $50 million, claiming he was held captive in a motel room by police officers who then beat him to a pulp.
The police report, obtained exclusively by CBS, states that Mulligan was sweating profusely and walking with an unsteady gait when officers responded to reports that he was trying to break into cars in a Jack-in-the-Box parking lot.
Officers tackled Mulligan and took control of him, Joseph said. During the take-down,”His nose was fractured in 15 separate spots. They did emergency surgery that night because they worried some of those fractures might float into his brain,” Mulligan’s lawyer J. Michael Flanagan told the Daily News Monday.
According to Mulligan, he was minding his own business the night of May 14 when police mistook him for a suspect going berserk near a fast food restaurant in Eagle Rock. He claims police searched him, found at least $2,500 in his car and then took him to a nearby motel where they told him to stay put with the cash.
“It was against his will. This was some fleabag motel. He lives (about 10 miles away) in La Canada Flintridge,” Flanagan said.
Worried he’d become bait in a sting operation, Mulligan bolted, and that’s when officers attacked him, Flanagan said.
Police tell a different story, saying they got at least two calls that night saying a crazed man fitting Mulligan’s description was trying to break into cars at a Jack in the Box drive-through.
Officers encountered Mulligan nearby, and he allegedly told them he was high on marijuana and “White Lightning,” a bath salt, and hadn’t slept for days, a police report obtained by CBS News states.
A screen for controlled substances at the scene came back negative, an LAPD source said, so police dropped Mulligan off at the motel to sleep.
Around 1 a.m., they saw him again “running in traffic,” the LAPD source said.
“Mulligan would not follow officers’ directions to get out of the street and took a fighting stance and then charged at one of the officers,” the source told The News
He was arrested for felony resistance of a police officer and transported to a hospital, cops said. The Los Angeles District Attorney declined to file the case.
The matter is now under review by the Los Angeles City Attorney as a possible misdemeanor.
Flanagan said he hopes the City Attorney takes action because criminal defendants have greater access to police and investigative records than civil litigants, and he’s confident his client was the subject of battery, false imprisonment and civil rights violations.
“The report they wrote is horrendous. And if they’re not telling the truth about the arrest, maybe they’re not telling the truth about the marijuana and bath salt,” Flanagan told The News.
Police are conducting an internal investigation of the use of force.
