Solano County to pay ‘historic’ $17M settlement to woman deputies dragged from her car in 2020

SACRAMENTO – Solano County has agreed to pay a $17 million settlement to a woman and her father, who sued the county after two Solano sheriff deputies dragged the woman from her car and beat her unconscious while stopped on a road near Dixon in 2020, her attorney announced Monday.

The family sued the county in August 2021, a year after the incident occurred, alleging excessive force by the deputies. Their attorney Yasin Almadani said the settlement is “one of the largest in California history for a case of this type.”

The lawsuit also alleges that deputies Dalton McCampbell and Lisa McDowell lied about her resisting arrest and about how long she was actually unconscious. It also alleges that their then-supervisor and Vacaville City Councilmember Sgt. Roy Stockton helped cover up their conduct.

On Aug. 6, 2020, Nakia Porter, then 33, and her father J.B. Powell, then 61, were driving back from Oakland to their home in Sacramento. They stopped on the side of the road to switch drivers, when deputies approached them with flashing lights. Porter was on the passenger side tending to her father while her two daughters and niece, then aged 4, 6 and 3, sat in the back.

Porter told police they were switching drivers when the deputies decided to detain her. 

Within 15 seconds of exiting his vehicle, McCampbell said to his partner “you know what, detain her,” while pointing his gun at her.

McDowell approached Porter and handcuffed her, body and dash cam footage shows. The deputies started bringing Porter towards their squad car where they forced her to the ground.

McCampbell straddled Porter while McDowell shoved her head into the asphalt, where she lost consciousness. They then detained her father and searched their car while the young children sat in the back.

“As the officers dragged me away and beat me, all I could think of was my children,” said Porter in a press release on Monday. “Then everything went black. When I came to, I was handcuffed inside the sheriff’s car.”

The sheriff’s office then put Porter in jail for six hours and recommended the district attorney charge her with preventing an executive officer from performing a duty by means of threat or violence. Porter was never charged.

The deputies said that Porter was stopped because the front and rear license plates of her car did not match. Porter had recently moved from Maryland and said that she had forgotten to change both plates. After putting Porter's unconscious body in the back of the squad car, deputy McCampbell was able to confirm that it was indeed Porter’s car. 

“This cannot happen again—to anyone,” Porter said. “I want to see real change.”

McCampbell was named as defendant in another lawsuit also alleging excessive force in 2017. That lawsuit settled for $14,700 in 2019. McCampbell also shot and killed a man in Fairfield in 2023.

McDowell was promoted to sergeant in 2022.