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One of the officers implicated in last year’s viral arrest of a Menlo-Atherton High School student, which led to a federal lawsuit last month, was involved in a 2022 lawsuit against the Atherton Police Department for “unreasonable seizure and use of excessive force,” records show. The department settled with the plaintiff on the case in 2023 for $45,000.
Jason David Burkleo filed a lawsuit on Oct. 2, 2022, against three police officers, including Officer Joshua Gatto, one of the Atherton police officers involved in the M-A lawsuit, for mistakenly identifying his vehicle plates for those of a stolen car, leading officers to wrongfully seize Burkleo, according to court documents.
At about 5:30 a.m. on April 16, 2021, an automatic license plate reader (ALPR) had misread Burkleo’s obscured plates and matched them to the ones of a reported stolen vehicle. The dirt on Burkleo’s plates caused the ALPR to read the “H’s” of the license plate as “M’s.” Atherton police followed the vehicle for several minutes but failed to visually verify what the ALPR had falsely captured, according to the suit.
Atherton, like neighboring towns, installed license plate readers in recent years to deter crime and track down burglary suspects.
“Since at least 2010, it has been well-known that ALPRs misread license-plate numbers or letters and generate false-positive hits,” the 2022 suit states. “For this reason, before conducting any law enforcement action based on an ALPR hit, generally accepted law-enforcement standards and training require officers to visually verify the license plate of the car they are following and contemplating pulling over to ensure that the numbers and characters of the license plate match those of the license plate in the ALPR hit.”
With the belief that they were pursuing a “high-risk felony stop,” police pulled Burkleo over and ordered him at gunpoint to throw his keys out of the window, get out of the car, and lie on his stomach to be handcuffed.
Burkelo, who at the time was a security consultant for clients in the vicinity of Atherton, had filed this lawsuit for the “wrongful seizure, use of excessive force, and arrest without probable cause,” according to the suit.
Records show that the case was settled on March 16, 2023, for $45,000. In the settlement, Burkleo agreed to release any claims presented in the lawsuit and to “never institute or reinstitute in the future any complaints, suit, action or cause of action, in law or in equity, against the [Atherton Police Department].”
The Atherton Police Department declined to comment on past or pending lawsuits, including the suit from 2022.
In a legal response to Burkleo’s complaints, the Atherton police officers denied all allegations, as well as the injuries that Burkleo mentioned in the complaint. Officers allege that any damages were caused by the “carelessness and negligence ” of Burkleo.
Officers also stated that they are entitled to qualified immunity as they didn’t violate any clearly established constitutional right, and any actions taken were “undertaken in good faith with the reasonable belief that said actions were valid, necessary, and constitutionally proper,” according to a response filed on June 13, 2022.
In a following response filed on Oct. 27, 2022, the Atherton Police Department also wrote that they believe that Burkleo “waited an unreasonable period before making any claims,” as the incident had occurred in April 2021.
This news organization has reached out to the police department to clarify what an “unreasonable period” of time constitutes.
Guest Opinion: Has the Sequoia Union High School District Board of Trustees lost its way?February 1, 2026 1:50 pm
Town has to pay $45,000 because the cop making over $100K/year can’t verify a license plate before pulling his gun out. Seems like a basic procedural thing to do, and the installation of the license plate cameras was controversial to being with.
I would say this establishes the cop is an idiot, not that he’s overtly aggressive.
Those who have never had their “life on the line” in a traffic stop are both naive and quick to judge. The driver was considered to be dangerous & the police must protect themselves as well as the residents.
This previous case is “settled” and has no bearing on the facts of the MA Case.
1. Had the officer followed published procedure (checking the license plate to make sure the computer identification was confirmed, as it is subject to error), he would have known no lives were on the line.
2. It has a lot of bearing if you’re a tax payer living in Atherton.
Instead of using the prior lawsuit as a justifiable rationale to clip an officer with poor judgment from the force, Atherton quietly settles the case, and the officer remains employed in good stead.
Lawsuit #2 follows a year later.
Yes, there’s something wrong with this picture.
This is very bad management on the part of the town manager and town council.