FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) \u2014 A $10 million settlement has been reached for the family of Joseph Perez, who died during an interaction with the Fresno Police Department and Fresno County Sheriff\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n
According to law firm Taylor & Ring, it is the largest pre-trial settlement in a Fresno County police misconduct case.<\/p>\n
The case was set to go to trial in a few weeks in a Fresno County courtroom.<\/p>\n
Back on May 10, 2017, Fresno police and the Fresno County Sheriff\u2019s Office were called out to Palm Avenue and Santa Fe Drive for reports of Perez talking to himself.<\/p>\n
He was handcuffed and listened to instructions to sit on the sidewalk.<\/p>\n
Officers claimed that Perez tried to stand up and run into the street, which led to them restraining him.<\/p>\n
In released body-cam footage, Perez could be heard telling officers he couldn\u2019t breathe while on the ground.<\/p>\n
Family members believe officers held him down the entire time, even sitting on Perez for more than a minute as he went silent.<\/p>\n
The Fresno County coroner\u2019s office ruled Perez died as a result of homicide caused by \u201ccompression asphyxia during restraint.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2019, Taylor & Ring filed a lawsuit in 2019 against the City of Fresno, County of Fresno, the ambulance company and several individual officers.<\/p>\n
Approximately $6 million will be given by the city, with another $4 million coming from the county and an undisclosed amount coming from the ambulance company.<\/p>\n
Copyright \u00a9 2026 KFSN-TV. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) \u2014 A $10 million settlement has been reached for the family of Joseph Perez, who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":481901,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[112,114,113],"class_list":["post-481900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=481900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481900\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/481901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=481900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=481900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=481900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}