A man who says an off-duty police officer chased him with a gun in Westchester last spring is suing the city of Los Angeles, alleging he was threatened at gunpoint for talking to the officer’s girlfriend.
Gary Martin detailed the alleged May incident in a lawsuit he filed last week in federal court, accusing the Los Angeles Police Department and Officer Richard Podkowski of violating his civil rights. The officer’s lawyer has pushed back, saying her client stepped in after seeing his partner under threat.
According to the lawsuit, Podkowski became upset after he saw Martin, 28, speaking with the officer’s girlfriend in a parking lot in the 8600 block of Belford Avenue, in a residential neighborhood near Los Angeles International Airport.
At some point after spotting the pair, the officer “violently and aggressively approached” Martin as he sat inside a parked car and yelled “Get the f— out of here, you don’t belong on this street!” according to the suit.
The lawsuit says Martin tried to defuse the situation by getting out of the vehicle to reason with Podkowski, who responded by drawing a gun from his waistband and pointing it at Martin’s head. The suit claims Podkowski threw a punch that sent Martin sprawling to the pavement, then began chasing him around the car and demanding that he get on the ground.
Podkowski’s attorney, Nicole Castronovo, said the suit “completely mischaracterizes what happened.”
The allegations, she said, incorrectly paint Podkowski as the instigator. He was coming to his girlfriend’s defense after a dispute over a parking space in which Martin and another man “accosted” the woman and boxed in her vehicle, the lawyer said.
“Asking for her phone number, her Instagram and they were telling her that they wouldn’t let her out of her car,” Castronovo said. “The claim makes this seem like this happened out of the sky, but that didn’t happen.”
Podkowski is on administrative leave with the LAPD pending the outcome of an internal affairs investigation, Castronovo said.
Martin’s suit claims the confrontation ended when he clambered back into the vehicle as Podkowski yelled: “I’m a cop. You think anyone is going to believe you over me?” Martin says he then sped off. He blamed the Police Department.
“The failure to properly train LAPD officers in general, and Officer Podkowki specifically, was itself an ongoing problem,” the suit says. “Both the policy and the failure to train reflect deliberate indifference on the part of the City of Los Angeles and the LAPD.”
An LAPD spokesperson declined to comment, citing the pending litigation.
Police arrived after the parking lot confrontation, and officers arrested Podkowski on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon. He was briefly jailed and released after posting $30,000 bail, according to booking records.
The case was initially presented to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, but has since been referred to the L.A. city attorney’s office, which mostly handles misdemeanors. A spokesman for that office said last week that the case is pending.
Podkowski was put on administrative leave, and his statewide policing certification has been temporarily suspended, pending the outcome of his criminal case, online records show.
Department records show that Podkowski joined the LAPD in June 2018 and worked stints in Hollywood Division and the West Bureau, which covers West Los Angeles and the Pacific, Wilshire and Olympic areas.
Martin’s attorney, Justin Sterling, said that even before the incident his client had an “innate fear of law enforcement.”
“This contact really shook him,” Sterling said. “Imagine being chased around your vehicle with a gun being aimed at your head, and you having to jump into your car to flee. It’s something out of a movie.”
