Police to pay $3.15M after tasing San Anselmo man suffering medical seizure

SAN ANSELMO, Calif. - The Central Marin Police Authority has agreed to pay a 64-year-old financial planner $3.15 million after officers stunned him with a Taser and arrested him as he was suffering a grand mal seizure in his bedroom.

Bruce Frankel's settlement

What we know:

In an interview Monday, Bruce Frankel said his settlement was reached on March 26 in Marin County Superior Court. 

He added he wasn't pleased with the amount, and he would have much rather told his story in court, but he felt pressure not to take his case to trial. 

"I regret the settlement," Frankel said. "It did not give me the opportunity that I was looking for to have our day in court and to properly hold these people responsible in public." 

Frankel believes that the department needs to have an independent investigation conducted by the state or federal government, because the investigator hired by the agency to look into what happened to him "just rubber-stamped everything and found nothing wrong." 

Frankel's suit, which was filed two years ago stemming from what happened on Aug. 29, 2022, also alleges that police concocted a cover-up story, where officers falsely arrested him on bogus charges to justify what he describes as their use of excessive force.

What Central Marin Police Authority has said

The other side:

In a statement, Dan Schwarz, executive manager of the Central Marin Police Authority, said the settlement is not an admission of "liability or wrongdoing. Rather, it is a decision to avoid exposing taxpayers to the uncertainty and expense associated with continued litigation."

The agency's officers, according to the statement, "remain committed to serving our communities to the highest standards of professionalism and transparency, and will "continue to invest in training and community engagement so that our practices reflect the expectations of our residents." 

The statement did not address what happened to the officers, but KTVU has learned that at least two of the four have been promoted to sergeant. 

At the time of the suit, Police Chief Michael Norton sent KTVU an email stating that he regretted Frankel sued, noting that his department would "vigorously defend itself against this meritless and factually inaccurate litigation." 

Meanwhile, attorney Alison Berry Wilkinson, who represented four of the officers involved, said that an internal review found their use of force was justified.

"The allegations in the lawsuit against these officers bear no semblance to reality and are outrageous," she wrote to KTVU in 2024. "The officers who arrived on-scene to help in response to the medical call did an extraordinary job under very difficult circumstances."

The backstory:

On the morning in question, Frankel's then-fiancé, Alice Frankel, called 911 at 2:51 a.m., telling dispatchers that her husband wasn't breathing. 

Frankel is seen on the bodycamera video slowly emerging from his seizure, mumbling and standing near his bed in his underwear. He is seen stumbling about and tripping into the drapes. The video then shows him falling onto the bed.

Police assume he was drunk, less than four seconds after entering the room, bodycamera video shows. 

One of the officers pulls out his Taser and shocks Frankel in the back, trying to get him into handcuffs. 

Frankel drops to the ground, hitting his head on the furniture, hurting his nose.

One of the officers wrote in his police report, which KTVU reviewed, that Frankel had been actively resisting him for more than two minutes, and he used the Taser to get Frankel to comply with his orders. 

He wrote that he warned Frankel twice that he was going to Tase him and that he feared for his safety. 

Police took Frankel to the hospital, and then he was booked into the Marin County Jail, where he was eventually let go. 

But a few days after that, Frankel received a letter from the District Attorney saying that he would be charged with domestic violence, after police alleged he was pushing his wife, along with resisting police. 

Frankel spent $10,275 on a criminal defense attorney to fight those charges. Ultimately, the Marin County DA did not file any charges against Frankel. 

More police training

What's next:

Frankel filed the suit in part to question the quality of police training to assess medical emergencies and why handcuffs and a stun gun were used on him when he was experiencing a health crisis and had not been accused of any crime.

He said that he's aware of several other cases across the country similar to his, and he believes that police should be trained every two years on how to handle medical situations, especially for people having seizures.

Frankel said he takes medication now and every so often has mini-seizures.

"The worst thing you can do to a seizure patient," he said, "is to try to restrain them. And tasing someone having a brain event is extraordinarily dangerous." 

San Anselmo