LOS ANGELES, Dec. 30, 2025 — A $6.8 million jury verdict has been rendered in favor of Slade Douglas. A man of honor, achievement, and service, the veteran was swatted by the VA, falsely arrested by LAPD Officers Jeremy R. Wheeler and Jeffrey H. Yabana, and subsequently subjected to forced hospitalization, drugging, and sexual assault.

“This verdict affirms that constitutional rights are not optional,” said Peter L. Carr IV, counsel for Slade Douglas.

The Honorable United States District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong presided over the case.

What the LAPD attempted to frame as a “welfare check,” was in fact a government-initiated swatting, triggered according to evidence by a retaliatory call from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs after Douglas filed a discrimination complaint against the agency.

The National Archives and Records Administration later disclosed that the VCL intentionally deleted phone calls from that day, which contained false suicide allegations against Douglas.

By any measure, Slade Douglas was the kind of man America claims to honor. A U.S. Army veteran. A former law-enforcement officer with an impeccable record. A dual-sport NCAA athlete with sub-4.2 speed. A Golden Gloves boxer. A holder of multiple black belts and college degrees. A national-championship football player. A man whose record should have made him a national example, not a target.

But on August 27, 2019, that record became irrelevant. That day, armed officers from LAPD, Jeremy R. Wheeler and Jeffrey H. Yabana, acting under color of law, stormed Douglas’s home without a warrant, without probable cause, and without legal justification.

Douglas had committed no crime. He had no criminal record. There was no warrant.

And yet, Slade Douglas was disappeared. He was forcibly handcuffed and removed from his home. After the arrest, Officer Wheeler told him that the “worst thing he could do was make a 911 call right in front of the officers” and that it was against the law. And as Officer Jeremy R. Wheeler himself admitted: Douglas was arrested for calling 911. 

What followed was premeditated. Officers Wheeler and Yabana, joined by Sergeant Andrew Kang and EMTs who confessed, carried out a plan to transport Douglas to PIH Good Samaritan Hospital, a facility contracted by the City, “to protect the City and officers from liability.”

At PIH Good Samaritan Hospital, Douglas was subjected to a horrific series of abuses. Officers coerced hospital staff into trying to find something in his system to justify the arrest, resulting in Douglas being forcibly injected with drugs while double handcuffed to a gurney, rendering him unconscious. Over the course of his captivity, he was injected nine times. Shackled in restraints, his limbs stretched out like a crucifixion, he was subjected to invasive blood draws, exhaustive toxicology tests, and brutal acts of sexual assault including forced catheterization. This was torture, carried out under color of law.

Once it was determined that Douglas had no drugs in his system, he was released from custody. This was not an accident, nor an isolated abuse.

What took place inside the hospital was not therapy but evidence fabrication designed to retroactively justify an unlawful arrest. 

Douglas’s story is also the subject of a feature documentary, Slade Douglas v. City of Los Angeles — The Veteran They Tried to Silence, available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1Q99Er0n0Y.

Douglas is represented by civil-rights attorneys Peter Carr, Lauren McRae, and Na’Shaun Neal.

Legal team pictured (l. to r.) Na’Shaun Neal, Lauren McRae, Slade Douglas and Peter Carr