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# City Hall plunks down $75K for punk rocker’s lawsuit
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/city-hall-plunks-down-75k-for-punk-rockers-lawsuit/
- Published: 2005-02-25T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T06:10:02.000Z
- Author: John Wood
- Tags: Crime, Sunset Park, #archive-import

*Punk guitarist denies he vandalized Santa Monica man’s home*

CITY HALL — Guitarist John Feldman from the punk band “Goldfinger” will be paid $75,000 to drop his federal lawsuit against a Santa Monica police detective who might have illegally searched his home, elected leaders decided this week.

United States District Court Judge Stephen V. Wilson last fall ruled SMPD Det. Richard Nickel might have acted recklessly and made significant omissions in convincing a Superior Court judge to grant a search warrant against Feldman.

Nickel tied Feldman, a vocal animal-rights activist, to an Oct. 3, 2003 vandalization of the Sunset Park home of Jerry Greenwalt, then the general manager of the Los Angeles Animal Services Department. Greenwalt’s home and automobile were splattered with red paint, and the words “Dog Killer” were spray-painted on his garage.

Feldman and his wife were detained by police and questioned for three hours shortly after the incident. No arrests were made.

Also written on Greenwalt’s front gate were the letters “ALF,” the acronym for the animal-rights group Animal Liberation Front. Another animal-rights group known as the Animal Defense League had directions to Greenwalt’s home posted on its Web site and pictures of the vandalization. Feldman was affiliated with both groups, according to court documents.

Feldman later admitted on the Internet to protesting against Greenwalt more than a month before the vandalization, but denied any role in the vandalism. He and his wife filed a federal suit against the cities of Santa Monica and Los Angeles, as well as Greenwalt, several unnamed police officers and Nickel for allegedly distorting or omitting facts in an effort to obtain a search warrant.

Judge Wilson last fall tossed out all of Feldman’s claims except those against Nickel, and ruled the other parties were not responsible for the alleged mistakes.

Among the allegations Nickel still faced were that he might have violated Feldman’s civil rights and intentionally inflicted emotional distress on him by apparently including “intentional or reckless false statements or omissions that were material to the magistrate’s finding of probable cause,” Judge Wilson wrote on Oct. 13, 2004.

Specifically, Judge Wilson said a trial was merited to review the evidence and determine if Nickel acted improperly in the way he dealt with the statements of eyewitness Marcela Saunders, Greenwalt’s neighbor who said she saw Feldman’s wife, Amy, handing out leaflets against Greenwalt weeks before the vandalization.

Though Saunders said Amy Feldman “looked like” a woman pictured on the ADL Web site, Nickel first wrote in his warrant petition that Saunders “picked out” Amy Feldman from the picture on the Web site, and later explained exactly what Saunders had said.

Judge Wilson wrote, “it could be inferred that Nickel buried the statement (by Saunders)... and that this was an intentional false statement, since Nickel may have been hoping the magistrate would not notice the difference and simply rely on Nickel’s written affidavit...”

What’s more, Judge Wilson ruled Nickel might have intentionally or recklessly failed to include Amy Feldman’s driver’s license photograph in the petition for a warrant, even though he included John Feldman’s driver’s license photo, because the photo clearly showed that Amy Feldman “looked completely different than the woman on the ADL Web site.”

Finally, Judge Wilson noted that Nickel in his petition for a warrant failed to mention four earlier Santa Monica and Los Angeles police reports concerning a possible threat to Greenwalt. Those reports indicated other suspects and could have caused the judge to reconsider the search warrant, Judge Wilson ruled.

“Nickel’s declaration states that he was unaware of these documents, and that he provided the magistrate with all the information of which he was aware,” Judge Wilson wrote. “However, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the plaintiffs, it could be said that Nickel was at least reckless in failing to discover and include these reports, each of which was connected to suspicious behavior reported by the same person, Greenwalt.”

The Santa Monica City Council this week voted 5 to 1, with one member absent, to settle the case for $75,000\. Deputy City Attorney Jeanette Schachtner said it was prudent to settle the case rather than let it go to trial, even though a Superior Court judge had agreed to issue the warrant against the Feldmans.

“The Federal Court held that the Superior Court judge’s issuance of the search warrant did not preclude plaintiffs from pursuing their lawsuit,” Schachtner said. “We respectfully disagree with the federal ruling. The evidence establishes that the officer acted in good faith and that there were sufficient facts to support the warrant.

“The Federal Court’s ruling, however, poses a risk of a jury finding adverse to the city,” she added. “Unfortunately, under federal law, if plaintiffs prevail and are awarded even a small sum of money, the city would be required to pay the plaintiffs’ attorneys’ fees in an amount far greater than the settlement. The settlement eliminates this risk.”

Santa Monica Police Department Lt. Frank Fabrega, a spokesman, declined to comment. It is SMPD policy not to comment on lawsuits.

Attorney Ellen Ellison, who represented the Feldmans, didn’t return calls seeking comment. The Feldmans also couldn’t be reached.

In a guest column for the Web site punkvoter.com, John Feldman wrote about the events preceding the October 2003 search. He described it as “gnarly.” “I was pulled over by a cop right in front of my house,” wrote Feldman, who lives in Los Angeles. “I was then frisked (they thought my cell phone was a weapon) and asked to sit on the curb.

“By this point there were 13 government cars, 20 cops (guns drawn), six FBI agents and two helicopters,” he continued. “Being that we just moved to the neighborhood, they chose the perfect time to make our new neighbors think we are major drug dealers or some major porn people.”

> “Being that we just moved to the neighborhood, they chose the perfect time to make our new neighbors think we are major drug dealers or some major porn people.” — - JOHN FELDMAN Punk guitarist

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/55/9f/559f9abc-8372-4a2e-8c2d-27386da4e363/content/images/2026/10/022505-02_01-7.jpg)

(Photo: File photo Jerry)

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on February 25, 2005.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/022505.pdf?ref=smdp.com)