A roadside encounter in Dixon, California, that ended with a Black mother beaten unconscious as her children looked on will now cost Solano County $17 million.
The settlement, finalized earlier this year after four years of litigation, stems from a 2020 traffic stop involving 33-year-old Nakia Porter. Deputies pulled Porter over, detained her father at gunpoint, and, according to court filings and body camera footage, escalated the encounter into violence that left Porter unconscious and her daughters traumatized.
Porter and her family filed a federal civil rights lawsuit soon after the arrest, accusing deputies of excessive force and misconduct. In January 2024, a federal judge approved a portion of the settlement for Porter’s daughters and niece, who had witnessed everything from the back seat of the family car. Additional agreements followed under seal in May 2025.
Her attorney, Yasin Almadani, called the $17 million settlement significant but not restorative. “We can never restore what Ms. Porter really lost, but at least we can try to prevent it from happening somewhere else,” he said. “Putting this to bed is going to help with the healing process itself.”
The county admitted no wrongdoing. Spokesperson Matthew Davis told reporters that officials weighed the expense, length, and uncertainty of a jury trial before choosing to settle. “This decision avoids unpredictability and lets the county move forward with the community,” he said, adding that officials remain committed to “the highest standards of public safety.”
Court filings and testimony lay out a disturbing scene. Deputies pulled over Porter’s car in Dixon, detaining her father, Powell, at gunpoint and forcing him to walk backward more than 30 feet with his hands on his head. His granddaughters, left inside the vehicle, watched as their mother was restrained.
Powell later described the ordeal as “torture.” “As a father and grandfather, every bone in my body wanted to jump out of that vehicle and save my daughter. But I knew if I got out, they might shoot her and me,” he said. “We did everything right and they still violated our dignity.”
Deputies accused Porter of slipping her handcuffs and striking a deputy, but no charges were ever filed. A female deputy later acknowledged that her claim that Porter hit her colleague was based only on what she was told “after the fact.”
Body camera footage ultimately revealed the brutality of the encounter. For Almadani, the recordings underscore both the value and the limits of police accountability tools. “When things move from protection into abuse of power, that’s when things go awry,” he said. “Officers are given tremendous authority under the law … but when there’s not a need and they’re overstepping their bounds, the body camera gives you some very powerful evidence of that.”
He added that meaningful reform requires not just new policies, but a culture where officers hold themselves and one another accountable. “What we hope,” Almadani said, “is that other law enforcement pay attention to this case and train their officers so that this doesn’t happen again, because it was entirely preventable just by following the law.”
