Federal lawsuit against Church Point chief and officer settled

A 2023 federal lawsuit against the Church Point police chief, the city of Church Point and an officer that was filed by a woman alleging she was arrested and unlawfully Tasered was settled.

The lawsuit was filed in June 2023 in the United States District Court, Western District of Louisiana in Lafayette. The agreement was filed Wednesday, and on Thursday Judge David Joseph signed a 60-day dismissal ruling.

Acadia Parish resident Sky Thibodeaux alleged in the lawsuit that she was a passenger in a car driven by Jacob Dillon on June 4, 2022, which was stopped by Church Point police officers Mark Regan and Tyran Jones. Dillon was arrested for an outstanding warrant and for operating a vehicle with a suspended license.

Thibodeaux went to the police station to complete paperwork and post bail for Dillon’s release, the lawsuit states. When she and Dillon left the police station, she alleges that Regan, Jones and Dillon continued arguing in the parking lot and officers attempted to re-arrest Dillon for disorderly conduct.

During the argument, Thibodeaux alleges she attempted to defuse the situation when Jones grabbed her wrist to pull her away and “violently applied a takedown maneuver with a barking arm and slammed her face first into the asphalt.”

Jones then allegedly tackled Thibodeaux multiple times, handcuffed her and arrested her for interfering with a police investigation and resisting arrest.

Thibodeaux alleges that she was held in a holding cell and was denied the right to use the telephone to call a family member and was denied the use of a private bathroom because the holding cell bathroom was unsanitary. She said she was forced to defecate in a small trash can near one of the officers’ desks.

Their lawsuit claims that Jones used excessive force that violated his 14th Amendment rights, that Regan failed to intervene on his behalf, that Chief Dale Thibodeaux made policies that led to excessive force, and that he failed to properly train and supervise his employees. All that said, it alleges violations of the Fourth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution.

The defendants responded in the court filing by claiming qualified immunity and alleged that the cause of the woman’s injury was their own fault.

The settlement documents do not reveal details about what was agreed to to dismiss the lawsuit.