Sheriff’s Office settles lawsuit alleging police brutality during Hurricane Ivan

The Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office has settled a civil lawsuit with a retired Air Force colonel who claimed he was wrongfully arrested after lawmen attacked his neighbor in the days following Hurricane Ivan in 2004.

Edgar Knowling initially sued the Sheriff’s Office agency in late 2008. He alleged that his civil rights were violated when deputies responded to his home after Ivan, used excessive force against a neighbor and wrongfully charged him with attempted murder of a law enforcement officer, according to his complaint.

The charge against Knowling was later dropped.

A settlement between Knowling and the Sheriff’s Office was reached Thursday, according to court documents. The Sheriff’s Office will award Knowling $55,000 in exchange for him dropping the lawsuit. The agency also agreed to expunge his record.

Ivan hit the Emerald Coast early on Sept. 16, 2004. The lawsuit stemmed from an incident on Sept. 20, when Knowling saw two strangers near his neighbor’s home and thought they might be looters. He fired a warning shot from his shotgun into the ground. A neighbor, Daniel Thompson, also came outside with a handgun.

The strangers were two sheriff’s deputies, one from Santa Rosa and one from Pinellas County who was in town to assist in Ivan’s aftermath.

According to lawmen, the deputies identified themselves by yelling several times that they were law enforcement.

But the lawsuit alleges that the deputies did not initially identify themselves. One allegedly yelled, “Get on the ground or we are going to blow your (expletive) head off.”

Knowling lay down and dropped his weapon, but Thompson only did so after one of the deputies said “Sheriff’s Department,” according to the lawsuit. Pinellas Deputy Richard Farnham allegedly stepped on Thompson’s hand and kicked him in the face.

After Thompson’s wife yelled at Farnham to stop, the deputy backed up and fired his Taser at the man, who had a heart condition, according to the lawsuit. The shock left him unconscious.

Farnham thought Thompson was rising from the ground to resist, according to lawmen.

Other Santa Rosa deputies arrived at the scene and one “football tackled” Thompson’s wife, the lawsuit said. One of the deputies allegedly threatened to “put a bullet in her head.”

Deputies later asked Knowling to change his story and say he fired into the air, although he and other neighbors all said he fired into the ground, the lawsuit said.

Thompson was charged with aggravated battery on an officer while Knowling was charged with attempted murder on an officer for firing his shotgun.

Both charges were dropped less than two months later.

In 2007, Farnham was convicted on a misdemeanor charge of depriving civil rights by use of unreasonable force without bodily injury. He was sentenced to one year in prison.

Santa Rosa County Sheriff Wendell Hall’s attorney filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit Tuesday. The settlement was reached after several hours of confidential negotiation Thursday, according to Knowling’s attorney, Keith Weidner.

Knowling said Saturday that he decided to settle because of the stress his wife was feeling from the proceedings.

“Had it not been for my wife, I would have fought on. I would not have settled,” he said.

Hall could not be reached for comment.