K’aun Green To Receive $8M Settlement From San Jose Over Police Shooting

K’aun Green, a San Jose football player who was mistakenly shot by police, is set to receive an $8 million settlement from the city. 

According to KTVU, a memo from the city attorney approved the settlement and recommended that it be paid before Jan. 13 to avoid a potentially higher payment should the case go to trial. Court documents show that a settlement conference was held in November, and earlier this month, U.S. District Court Judge Nathanael Cousins dismissed Green’s excessive force lawsuit against the city of San Jose. Should the settlement go through, it will be the second largest in the city’s history. 

“The number is reflective of the harm K’aun suffered, but also the egregiousness of this particular police officer,” K’aun Green’s civil rights attorney, Adante Pointer, said on Wednesday. “This is a young man that deserves every penny that San Jose is finally coughing up.” 

The settlement stems from an incident in 2022, when K’aun Green was shot four times by former San Jose Police Officer Mark McNamara outside of La Victoria Taqueria. McNamara mistakenly assumed that Green was the suspect in a nearby homicide. Green had no involvement in the homicide and, in fact, had just disarmed a gunman in the restaurant. He was standing outside with the confiscated firearm when McNamara shot him in his stomach, arm, and knee. Thankfully, none of his bones were broken, and no vital organs were hit. 

In the years since the shooting, K’aun Green received a full-ride scholarship to attend the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. He’s currently on track to be the first in his family to graduate from college. 

Fittingly, things haven’t been trending well for McNamara since the shooting. Shortly after the shooting incident, an investigation by the San Jose Police Department revealed that McNamara had sent 10 pages worth of racist text messages, some of which were about K’aun Green. “N—-r wanted to carry a gun in the Wild West. Not on my watch,” McNamara allegedly wrote about the shooting. 

Man, you really don’t need a lick of common sense to be a police officer. If I were under investigation for mistakenly shooting someone, I wouldn’t be sending text messages referring to them as slurs. McNamara eventually resigned from the police department, with the racist texts resulting in the Santa Clara County district attorney dropping several cases McNamara was involved with. 

“Keep in mind, this is an officer who not only was the only person to shoot K’aun, although there were six other police officers standing right near him, but the fact that we uncovered that this officer has a racist streak in him,” Pointer told KTVU of McNamara. 

Despite the racist texts being discovered and publicly admitting the incident at the restaurant had nothing to do with the homicide, the city of San Jose has yet to apologize to K’aun Green and initially refused to settle his federal lawsuit.

“I am surprised that it took this long for the good people in city government, in the police department, and in the city attorney’s office to know that this was the right thing to do,” Pointer told KTVU. “They shouldn’t have made this young man fight for all these years to first clear his good name.”

SEE ALSO:

K’aun Green Receives Full Ride To University Of Arkansas Following 2022 Police Shooting

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