BY LARRY DEKLINSKI
The Borough of Mount Carmel and its insurance carrier have settled a fourth excessive force lawsuit–bringing the total paid to plaintiffs to nearly $1 million.
Steve Gonzalez will receive $180,000 to resolve claims against Officer Tyler Herbster and now-retired Chief of Police Christopher Buhay. The amount includes attorney fees.
Manager Ed Cuff said the borough is on the hook for its deductible of $10,000 while Greenwich Insurance Co. will pay the remainder of the settlement. Gonzalez’s suit, filed in the U.S. Middle District Court of Pennsylvania, claimed Herbster assaulted him during a loud music complaint at his home in December 2023, then filed false charges that were dismissed by the court.
The complaint also alleged that Buhay had a custom of allowing officers to use unreasonable force.
Former officers Jonathan McHugh, David Donkochik and Kyle Schauer — who were not named in Gonzalez’s suit — are serving federal prison sentences for conspiracy to assault detainees. Three separate lawsuits brought by Jonathan Steckley, Lucas Klingerman Crash
and Jason Dillow were previously settled with the borough for $800,000.
Steckley also settled all claims against Mount Carmel Township Officer Brian Carnuccio for $200,000. The township paid a $10,000 deductible. McHugh, Donkochik and Schauer were indicted by a grand jury for conspiring to use excessive force against arrestees between 2018 and 2022, which subsequently caused bodily injury, including lacerations, bruises, a fractured rib, a collapsed lung, loss of consciousness, a broken nose and a broken clavicle.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, those officers took steps to ensure that video of the arrests was not captured by police cameras or, if footage that incriminated them was captured, took steps to ensure that footage was not preserved.
They also falsely reported that arrestees acted in a manner requiring violence and then charged arrestees with aggravated assault, resisting arrest and related offenses to conceal their own use of violence.
Attorney Barry Dyller, representing Gonzalez, said the borough had a pattern of allowing excessive force.
“Our law firm (Dyller and Solomon) did extensive discovery and depositions of the now-convicted police officers, and we learned that so much of it came from the top down,” Dyller said. “If you look at the U.S. indictment — that these officers ultimately went to jail for — this was a pattern. This was standard operating procedure in Mount Carmel.”
Dyller believes that there are more victims than lawsuits filed, but that the statute of limitations has passed. Noting that the three former officers are serving federal prison sentences and Buhay has since retired, Dyller said he hopes it’s a “new dawn” for Mount Carmel.
“I hope it fully sent a message to everyone else,” Dyller said of the borough. “From speaking with clients and from many others, it seems like it was a reign of terror over there.”