Alexander Donta Mitchell – the man who LAPD officer Joshua Sportiello pulled out of his car, searched, handcuffed, punched in the face, and hogtied for being double parked on a quiet side street in Watts in July of 2024 – will be back in court next month for yet another preliminary hearing on two misdemeanor charges of resisting, obstructing, and/or delaying a peace officer.
But wait..., you say.
Didn’t then-Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón decline to file charges against Mitchell back in August of 2024? After bystander video surfaced showing Sportiello haul off and sock Mitchell in the jaw? As Mitchell calmly asked what he had done to deserve such treatment? While standing passively with his hands partially cuffed behind his back?
Why, yes!
And didn't the video cause a national uproar? And result in a personnel complaint investigation against Sportiello? And didn't Mitchell’s family hold a press conference after the charges were dropped in August of 2024, announcing Mitchell's vindication and calling for Sportiello to face consequences for the violence and trauma inflicted on him?
Yes, yes, and yes!
But then, in December of 2024, Mitchell filed a civil suit against the city and Sportiello for unlawful seizure, civil battery, negligence, and the violation of his constitutional rights.
The office of Los Angeles City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto, which is defending both the City and Sportiello in the civil case, denied all wrongdoing on their behalf and argued that if any force had been used against Mitchell, he only had himself to blame.
Then, that same City Attorney filed the two criminal charges against Mitchell.
The charges came in just under the year cut-off for misdemeanor filings, on June 13, 2025.
The impetus behind the decision is still a bit of a mystery.
Was the move purely retaliatory – aiming to punish Mitchell for having had the audacity to sue and/or for embarrassing LAPD?
Or had the City Attorney realized how much trouble Sportiello had created for them after he sat down for volume I of his deposition just three weeks prior?
Or were they worried about discovery and what might be lurking in Sportiello's personnel files? 2024 was certainly quite the year for Sportiello. He is being sued for an April 2024 assault on well-respected South L.A. Cafe owner Joe Ward-Wallace. And in June of 2024 – just a month before his assault on Mitchell – he pulled someone over, refused to tell them why, opened their door and grabbed their wrist as they reached for their insurance, and threatened to physically pull them out of the vehicle. He also conducted an unlawful search and was caught lying to investigators about his motivations for doing so. [See that complaint investigation and resolution here, courtesy of William Gude/FilmthePoliceLA]
Or was the City Attorney's move intended to drag out proceedings and protect the City, which has been bleeding out millions in settlements, thanks to LAPD? Last year's settlements tied to excessive force and civil rights violations alone cost the city $68,178,790. Over the last six years, that figure hit $184 million. It balloons to nearly $385 million when factoring in things like lawsuits over public records, traffic collisions, discrimination or retaliatory behavior occurring within the department, and LAPD accidentally blowing up 27th Street while attempting to dispose of some fireworks.
Feldstein Soto's office did not answer Streetsblog's questions about the decision to charge Mitchell or the timing of it. But Mitchell's lawyers, Alaleh Kamran (criminal case) and Bradley Gage (criminal and civil case) did.
They contend that the move is both retaliatory and intended to give the City an advantage in the criminal case. At the very least, it has been successful in throwing a wrench in proceedings. On February 6, a stay was granted, holding all proceedings - including the pending deposition of Luther Lordeus, Sportiello's partner officer that day - until after the criminal case is resolved.
Mitchell's experience is not unique, Kamran points out. But proving the City Attorney's intentions is more difficult.
"The City Attorney's Office claims that there is a wall between the civil section and the criminal section," she says. And while "it has become even more palpable and obvious in the last few years that this wall is a fictional wall," the lack of proper documentation and the fact that personal cell phones are off limits via regular discovery channels means there's no way to corroborate the LAPD's circumvention of those guardrails.
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Given the City Attorney's activism in this case, it is worth revisiting who and what her office is working so hard to defend.
LAPD’s pretextual stop policy should have prevented Sportiello from being able to leverage the double-parking infraction Mitchell had committed on a quiet Watts side street into a full-scale detention, use of force, arrest, and vehicle impound.
Approved in March of 2022, the policy effectively ended traffic/pedestrian/bike stops for minor equipment violations or other infractions (like double parking), except in cases where the violation in question “significantly interfere[d] with public safety.” It also limited pretextual stops – the use of a minor traffic violation as a pretext to investigate a more serious unrelated crime – to scenarios where “officers [were] acting upon articulable information” regarding a crime with potential for great bodily injury or death.
But instead of leaving Mitchell be or asking him to find a better parking spot, Sportiello opened Mitchell's door and demanded he step out of the vehicle. Then he continued to escalate the encounter.
Sportiello immediately grabbed Mitchell by the arm to spin him around and pat him down for weapons while refusing to provide any justification for the stop - something a 2024 law required - other than "you were ignoring me," which Mitchell denied.
Then, instead of answering Mitchell's questions about why he was being treated this way or heeding Mitchell's repeated request for a supervisor, Sportiello slapped one handcuff on Mitchell, yelled at him to put his hands behind his back, threatened to tase him, and punched him in the jaw.
At the time, Craig Lally, the head of the police union, declared that "sometimes placing someone into handcuffs gets physical" and that "it is the suspect’s actions that most often times dictates the level of physicality.”
But the extended body cams LAPD released make clear that this was Sportiello's default level of physicality.
After getting fed up with Mitchell's efforts to talk to bystanders, Sportiello took Mitchell to the ground.
He then approached concerned bystanders, physically shoved them, and actually sizzled his taser at them (below at the 13-second mark).
When Mitchell repeatedly begged a rookie officer to keep Sportiello away from him, Sportiello yanked on Mitchell's arm and dragged him away.
When, after Sportiello again tried to shove him in the patrol vehicle, Mitchell collapsed and complained that he couldn't breathe, Sportiello dragged him by his legs. Then he insisted on hobbling Mitchell and waved off other officers' attempts to intervene, saying, "We're not playing games with this guy" (below).
Even after EMTs had arrived and it was clear that Mitchell being hogtied impeded their ability to properly get him on the gurney, Sportiello insisted that Mitchell remain hobbled, saying he was "playing hard to get." If Mitchell was uncomfortable, that was his problem, Sportiello told another rookie. "We're not on his program."
Then Sportiello tightened the handcuffs.
It's one thing for the City Attorney to defend an officer who, per the documented complaints, behaved this way on at least three separate occasions in the space of just four months.
But to also actively saddle the victim - a Black man who had simply been minding his business on a warm summer evening - with a record? After he was subjected to this kind of aggression and trauma? All to protect a documented threat to public safety?
It's criminal.
