11:49 PM CST on Friday, November 11, 2005

By REBECCA LOPEZ / WFAA-TV

Dallas Police

A surveillance tape showed Simpson fleeing from officers before he was stopped.

Allen Simpson died in police custody two years ago after being placed in a neck restraint by one officer while another held him down.

Simpson, 23, stopped breathing. No one tried to resuscitate him, even though there were several other officers standing just a few feet away.

This week, Simpson's family was awarded the largest wrongful death settlement in the city's history: $800,000.

There's no doubt in anyone's mind that Allen Simpson was breaking the law and running from police. Police said he was stopped with a bag of marijuana.

"He should have, in fact, stopped—in fact, cooperated," said Lakesha Harris, who was Simpson's girlfriend. "But to me, that does not give them the right to take his life."

The police videotape obtained exclusively by News 8 shows Simpson violently struggling with police in the Dec. 28, 2003 incident on Earlcove Drive in Southeast Dallas. Officer Seth Rosenberg placed him in a choke hold, a maneuver now banned by the Dallas Police Department.

Rosenberg's partner, Lonnie Howard, held Simpson down, but when the suspect stopped breathing, the tape shows officers did not try to revive him.

"When the suspect does not promptly regain consciousness, they are to immediately engage in CPR," said Simpson family attorney Michael Pezzulli. "They did not do that. They let him lay there and die."

In the police surveillance tape obtained by News 8, Officer Rosenberg is seen fidgeting with his flashlight, while other officers searched Simpson's car or simply walked around.

Dallas Police

A police tape showed officers ignoring a dying drug suspect.

It took paramedics 11 minutes to arrive; meanwhile, no Dallas officer tried to help.

"That's heartless; that's cold," Harris said. "That makes my opinion of—I hate to say it—of the Dallas Police Department has been tainted ever since this incident."

The officers said they didn't administer CPR because they did not have protective masks, and Simpson was bleeding and drooling from his mouth. But sources said after looking at the tape and other evidence, the city decided to settle the lawsuit.

The officers involved were cleared by a grand jury and by an internal affairs investigation. Neither could be reached for comment and both are still on the force.

All Dallas police vehicles now have protective masks for officers.

E-mail rlopez@wfaa.com