In March of 2008 Corporal Samuel Bonilla was implicated in an alleged police
shakedown of a homeowner in the King’s Park Area. Bonilla and a team of
police officers conducted a search of the home and claim to have found 127 rounds
of ammunition and a quantity of cocaine. The homeowner claims the policemen
planted the cocaine and demanded that he pay them one thousand dollars to make
the case go away; he also claimed that the police stole 500 dollars. The homeowner,
Alex Chang was never charged.
But the officers who conducted the search, Corporals Clifford Alvarez and Sam
Bonilla and PC Emerson Castillo were all brought up on disciplinary charges
and placed on interdiction with half pay. Since then, Corporal Bonilla has been
working to restore his good name. First, in April of 2008 a police Tribunal
cleared him of wrongdoing but arbitrarily ordered him to pay Alex Chang compensation
of one thousand dollars.
He appealed to the Security Services Commission and in July of this year, they
cleared Bonilla of all charges and ruled that all salary withheld and fines
and compensation paid should be reimbursed. But the Corporal still wasn’t
satisfied and so he got an attorney to file a civil suit against Alex Chang
for defamation.
That case has now been settled. Bonilla’s attorney Kareem Musa told us
that his client received a settlement payment of ten-thousand dollars from Chang.
And while he paid, Musa stressed that Chang gave no admission of liability.
Chang’s attorney Darrell Bradley has confirmed to us that his client agreed
to settle without accepting responsibility for any wrongdoing basically because
he doesn’t want the harassment of litigation. He said his client maintains
that the events transpired just as he told police they did.
Whatever the case, Bonilla has now been fully exonerated. He remains in the
Police Department on full active duty.
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