‘He Is Still Going to Jail, Regardless!’: Las Vegas Cops Tackle the Wrong Black Man, Tear Out His Locs Despite Knowing He Was Innocent, Video Shows

Tim McCoy, his sister Alissa King, and her boyfriend, Kenneth Kennedy, had just parked their silver Hyundai Sonata in the garage at the Fremont Street Experience in Las Vegas on the evening of Nov. 11, 2023, with plans to have dinner at a restaurant and walk around the popular pedestrian mall.

When they exited the elevator at the ground floor, the three Black Las Vegas residents were accosted by several city marshals.

“They approached me, very hostile, finger in my face, [saying] ‘What are you doing here?’ ‘What happened back there?’ ‘Why did you make those hand gestures?’” recalled McCoy to KTNV. “I was very confused. … I’m like, ‘What hand gestures are you referring to?”

The Las Vegas City Marshals were eager to find the driver of a black Dodge Durango who had also just entered the garage after allegedly using his right hand to make a finger gun and simulate shooting Officer Jorge Caloca, who was in his marked patrol car, according to the incident report he later filed. That suspect was Black with long locs.

After being aggressively questioned by the officers and telling them they knew nothing about it, the trio tried to move on. McCoy walked away, as he was watching a football game on his phone and thought the interaction was over, according to the federal lawsuit the three filed earlier this year, obtained by Atlanta Black Star.

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As he did so, several officers tackled McCoy from behind, violently slamming him on the concrete, ripping out several of his locs, with their firearms and Tasers drawn. One pinned him while putting a knee on his hair, and another cuffed him.

“It made me feel like an animal,” McCoy later said. His and King’s aunt was the chief of police in Cleveland, and they have other family in the military, the complaint says, and have always respected law enforcement.

“My brother did nothing wrong! We just got here!” screamed King, who was close to her brother and had begun recording on her cellphone, reveals video obtained by KTNV, along with a marshal’s body camera video that the local news station used to create a composite video account of the incident.

“I’ll tase!” said a marshal.

“Y’all are being racist!” yelled Kennedy.

McCoy was then taken in handcuffs to Las Vegas Boulevard, where the patrol car was parked, and made to stand as onlookers watched. King and Kennedy followed, protesting to the police that they had wrongly battered and detained McCoy, and kept asking them what car the suspect drove.

“It doesn’t matter,” Caloca said. “You wanna go to jail, too?”

“You don’t know who did it!” said Kennedy.

“He is still going to jail, regardless,” said Caloca.

“Oh, because he’s a Black man! And he was just the first one you saw, huh?” said Kennedy, adding, “It could have been me! It could have been anybody!”

“That’s all you guys do! You play the race card! said Marshal Sergio Guzman. “It’s not about that … It’s about committing crimes.”

Guzman is currently facing two other civil lawsuits by Nevada citizens alleging excessive force, unlawful detention and assault during traffic stops.

In the lawsuit filed in April by a Black man named Lance Downes-Covington, the city employee accused Guzman of pulling him over in his neighborhood for allegedly running a stop sign before threatening him with a gun and taser, then slamming him to the ground and arresting him on false charges that were eventually dismissed.

The current lawsuit notes that Caloca, Guzman and other officers involved have also had a number of complaints filed against them for excessive force and other misconduct while on duty.

The complaint says Kennedy continued arguing with the officers, who “for no reason” tackled him, slammed him on the concrete and ripped out his hair, putting a knee in his back and cuffing him.

“He came at me,” Guzman can be heard telling other marshals on the scene in police video. “He charged at me and then we landed, and he landed right on me.”

Body camera footage shows Guzman grabbing Kennedy’s hand, which he was holding a cell phone with, and taking him down along with other marshals, KTNV reported, noting that at no point did Kennedy charge Guzman.

The two men were arrested and taken to Clark County Detention Center and imprisoned based on the false allegations of the officers, the lawsuit says.

Caloca claimed McCoy had independent knowledge about the “gun hand signals” in his case report, but later retracted that statement, writing, “It’s possible another officer mentioned the gun gesture to [McCoy].”

McCoy was charged with obstructing a police officer that night, and Kennedy was charged with battery on a police officer a month later. Kennedy spent a night in jail. The charges against both were dismissed several months later in 2024.

Their attorney, George Robinson, said he showed prosecutors all of the videos and explained the “misrepresentations” police made in their reports in order to get them to dismiss the case.

That included surveillance video from the parking garage showing two dreadlocked Black men, one who was the driver of the Black Dodge Durango, exiting the same elevator just prior to McCoy, Kennedy, and King. Those men, one wearing a brightly colored sweater, were not stopped or questioned by police, the lawsuit says.

“It’s intolerable,” Robinson said of the illegal tactics used by the officers. “It probably happened to my clients because they were Black, but really, if they’re in these aggressive moods and they’re acting like bullies, like they did in this case, the citizenry just needs to beware.”

Noting the multiple lawsuits against the defendants alleging constitutional violations involving violence, he said, “they’re just thuggish bullies.”

McCoy, Kennedy, and King accuse the city of Las Vegas and six city marshals, including Caloca and Guzman, of unlawful arrest, false imprisonment, assault and battery, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

They seek a jury trial to determine compensatory, special and punitive damages in excess of $225,000, and to cover their legal costs.

In their motion to dismiss the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Nevada on Sept. 11, the six officers argued that the complaint “only offers generalities and catchall allegations” against them, alleging that each marshal used excessive force upon the plaintiffs, but “at no point does the pleading identify which Marshal did what to whom.”

“The sweeping allegations fail to put each Marshall on notice of how that Marshall allegedly violated a constitutional right,” the motion says. “Without this information each Marshal must speculate as to how to offer a defense.” It further asserts that the complaint’s failure to identify specific violations by specific marshals while relying on its “’team effort’ allegation” should “go unrewarded.”

Las Vegas Mayor Shelley Berkley told WTNV that she’s aware of the multiple lawsuits against city marshals and said, “I think they are frivolous, and I hope they are dismissed because I think our marshals do a great job, they work hard, and they put their lives on the line every single day.”

Judge Maximiliano D. Couvillier III has not yet ruled on the motion to dismiss. In a previous response to the city’s earlier motion to dismiss the case, the plaintiffs argued that discovery had not yet begun and that asking for such specificity in the allegations was premature.

According to the court docket, discovery is now due to be completed on Dec. 4, and a proposed joint pretrial motion is due on Feb. 6, 2026.

‘He Is Still Going to Jail, Regardless!’: Las Vegas Cops Tackle the Wrong Black Man, Tear Out His Locs Despite Knowing He Was Innocent, Video Shows