Former Pittsburg cop, department sued over 2022 shooting of man

A former Pittsburg police officer and the department are now facing a lawsuit in connection with the shooting of a man back in 2022.

The family of Ashton Porter said he was suffering a mental health crisis, but instead of care, he got shot.

Porter flew from Georgia to the Bay Area in February 2022 and checked into a Pittsburg hotel. He said he then started to experience a mental health crisis.

Police were called to help. They ultimately shot him twice and arrested him.

"My family called for help, I called out for help," Porter said. "I explained to them that I really didn’t understand what was going on."

Police said their initial call came from the hotel after Porter refused to leave his room.

But in the federal lawsuit filed against four Pittsburg police officers – Ernesto Mejia-Orozco, Brian Addington, William Hatcher and Cory Smith – the police department and the city, Porter claims he was exhibiting clear signs of a crisis.

He said he told authorities he was scared and concerned people were out to get him.

An edited video provided by Porter's lawyers showed Pittsburg police promising not to hurt him if he would come out of his room.

"Me and my family called the police because my dad was very stressed," Porter's daughter, Natalia Metts, said. "We just wanted help to know where he was, and they did the total opposite."

After more than 20 hours of negotiation, including multiple tear gas deployments, the father of six was shot twice by former police officer Mejia-Orozco.

In 2022, police claimed de-escalation tactics failed to work and Porter was shot after he was hit by rubber bullets, turned and approached officers with a knife.

Porter’s attorneys argue he was shielding himself in reaction to the first non-lethal shots and video proves he had his hands up in surrender. They accuse police of escalating the situation after sending mental health professionals away.

The lawsuit claims police then dragged Porter through the hotel before ultimately providing medical attention.

Pittsburg police and the city did not respond to NBC Bay Area's request for comment on Tuesday.

"The police pivoted from this being a wellness call where mental health professionals who are duly trained to take care of this incident into it being a police operation with SWAT," Adante Pointer, Porter’s lawyer, said.

The city had previously settled a wrongful death lawsuit involving Mejia-Orozco and other officers. That suit claimed officers killed a man after placing him in a chokehold and pinning him to the ground.

Mejia-Orozco is also one of several Pittsburg and Antioch police officers currently facing federal charges in a wire fraud scam, accused of paying someone to complete their college degrees.

"This police department is embroiled in multiple lawsuits and litigation," Pointer said. "It's close to the most stark example of a police department that is acting unhinged."

After being arrested, Porter was charged with several felonies, including assaulting an officer. All those charges were later dropped.

Porter said he now wants justice.

"Some sort of accountability and maybe even some changes to where you can’t lie like that," he said. "It should be a crime for police to be able to lie like that and disrupt families' lives."