Roosevelt settles suit for $3.75 million

A former Portales man, shot while fleeing law enforcement in a stolen farm vehicle in 2018, will receive $3.75 million in a lawsuit settlement with Roosevelt County and Sheriff Malin Parker, officials said.

James McFarlin, who now lives in Lake Havasu City, Ariz., was accused of stealing a front-end loader from a dairy, using it to damage his estranged wife’s car, then driving away.

When McFarlin refused to stop the vehicle, law officers attempted to shoot its tires, but were not successful in disabling it. Parker then shot out the rear window of the front loader, inflicting head and neck wounds on McFarlin, records show.

Terms of the settlement were not made public in court filings, but County Attorney Scott Hatcher confirmed the amount.

In his federal suit filed in November 2019 in U.S. District Court, McFarlin, 52, stated he was denied civil rights under the Fourth Amendment “to be free from excessive use of force by law enforcement officers.”

“Sheriff Parker’s decision to shoot McFarlin was objectively unreasonable,” McFarlin’s complaint stated, “as McFarlin was not an immediate threat to officers or the public.”

McFarlin was shot on Jan. 15, 2018. Records show that after using the farm vehicle to damage his wife’s car, he drove first on the 500 block of South Roosevelt Road P and then into an open field. Police pursued at speeds estimated at 25 mph on the street and 5 mph in the field, records show.

McFarlin stated in his complaint that he drove the front-loader, which is used to pick up and move heavy materials, in slow circles in the field, disregarding police orders to stop.

Despite the settlement, Parker and the county deny liability, according to their attorney.

In an email, Hatcher stated, “Roosevelt County and Sheriff Parker deny all liability and maintain that the sheriff acted reasonably and lawfully under the circumstances with the intent of preventing serious bodily injury and/or death to innocent motorists and bystanders in the area whose safety was threatened by McFarlin’s actions.”

The settlement, Hatcher added, “reflected the risks, expense and uncertainty of proceeding to trial on the part of all parties.”

In November of 2020, McFarlin was sentenced to a year of house arrest and two years of supervised probation on felony charges related to the incident.

In sentencing, Ninth Judicial District Judge Donna Mowrer called McFarlin’s actions dangerous, but she took note of his medical condition.

According to McFarlin’s complaint in the federal suit, McFarlin is “permanently disabled” due to his head injuries from the shooting. He suffers from headaches, impaired vision, loss of balance, neck pain and numbness in his legs, as well as difficulty with memory, thinking and conversation, the complaint states.

Grant McGee of The News contributed to this report.