San Diego, CA

On Juneteenth last week, McKenzie Scott PC filed a federal civil rights complaint in the United States District Court for the Southern District of California on behalf of Hakimkhalfani Webb, a 62-year-old honorably discharged U.S. Marine Corps veteran and San Diego County business owner, against the City of San Diego and two San Diego Police Department officers. The complaint [Case No. 3:26-cv-03641-AGS-VET] alleges that Mr. Webb was subjected to two racially-motivated pretextual traffic stops in June 2025 and January 2026, during which he was removed from his vehicle, handcuffed, searched, and photographed without legal justification—conduct the complaint alleges is consistent with a well-documented and longstanding pattern of racially disparate policing by the SDPD.

About Mr. Webb

Hakimkhalfani Webb was born and raised in Texas and joined the U.S. Marine Corps at age 18. He served honorably for 21 years – including three combat deployments to Beirut, Desert Storm, and Iraq – before retiring in 2002 and continuing to serve in the reserves for an additional nine years. Since retiring, Mr. Webb has operated All Point Security, a security firm he has owned in San Diego County since 2001. He is the father of three daughters and grandfather to two granddaughters. He has no criminal history whatsoever.

The Incidents

June 14, 2025: Mr. Webb was pulled over by SDPD Officers Michael Hagen (#1148) and Adrian Villanueva (#1759) under the stated pretext of a missing front license plate – a plate that was in the cab of his truck following a recent bumper replacement. The officers drew their weapons upon approaching him. Upon discovering his lawfully-registered 9mm Glock – a firearm he has carried for work as a licensed security guard since purchasing it in 2001 – Officer Hagen repeatedly told Mr. Webb he would shoot him. Mr. Webb was removed from his vehicle, handcuffed, placed in a patrol car, and subjected to an “inventory search” that found no contraband. He was not cited for the missing license plate. Instead, he was arrested on the false claim that the Glock was not registered to him, a charge the City itself subsequently confirmed was completely erroneous – in truth, the officers had failed to enter the complete serial number when checking registration.

Despite the City’s acknowledgment that Mr. Webb should not be prosecuted because his firearm was lawfully registered to him, it refused to return Mr. Webb’s property, requiring him to pay the California Department of Justice for a “Law Enforcement Gun Release.” Mr. Webb did not recover his gun – his primary tool of employment – until December 4, 2025, nearly six months after it was wrongfully seized.

January 24, 2026: The day after Mr. Webb submitted a request to seal and destroy records of his wrongful arrest, Officer Villanueva – the same officer from the June 2025 stop – made a U-turn to follow Mr. Webb’s vehicle in South San Diego. After Mr. Webb came to a complete stop at three consecutive stop signs, Officer Villanueva initiated another traffic stop, claiming Mr. Webb had rolled through a sign. Mr. Webb was again removed from his vehicle, handcuffed, and forced to pose for photographs from the front and side – mug-shot style – in the street, surrounded by uniformed, armed SDPD officers. He was released after approximately 30 minutes without any citation.

The Data: A Pattern the City Has Long Known About

The complaint draws on data published by the City of San Diego itself as well as findings from California’s Racial and Identity Profiling Advisory Board (RIPA) and San Diego’s own Commission on Police Practices (CPP).

California’s RIPA Board 2026 Annual Report: Reducing pretext stops will increase public safety and reduce racial profiling

The 2026 RIPA Board Report found, consistent with prior years, that racial and identity profiling in California remains a serious concern. The Board specifically noted that pretextual stops – stops based on hunches without reasonable suspicion or probable cause – are particularly susceptible to racial bias, and that RIPA data show Black drivers are asked for consent to search more frequently than White drivers despite minimal discovery of weapons or contraband. The Board found that officers asked for consent to search most frequently in stops initiated for equipment violations, with the highest rates in stops of Black individuals (6.45%; 7,016 stops). The RIPA Board also found that “a wealth of information, data, and research shows that pretextual stops do not benefit the community.” Accordingly, the RIPA Board noted “that there are significant benefits to enacting policies limiting or eliminating pretextual stops, including an increase in public safety and a reduction in racial and identity profiling.”

San Diego Commission on Police Practices – 2024 RIPA Data:

San Diego’s own Commission on Police Practices, in a June 2026 community briefing, highlighted the following findings:

• Black individuals were stopped 3.05 times more often than expected based on population, while White individuals were stopped 15.05% less often than expected.
• Compared to individuals perceived to be White, individuals perceived to be Black were:
  ○ 4.42 times more likely to be frisked
  ○ 3.36 times more likely to be asked to consent to a property search
  ○ 3.31 times more likely to be handcuffed
  ○ 3.24 times more likely to have force used against them
  ○ 2.31 times more likely to be subject to a parole status inquiry
  ○ 1.22 times more likely to be detained in a patrol car

The Commission on Police Practices will likely formally recommend that the City take action to reduce or eliminate pretextual stops, noting that such stops do not increase public safety.

Claims

The complaint asserts 10 causes of action, including violations of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (unlawful search and seizure, unlawful seizure of property, and equal protection), California’s Bane Act (Cal. Civ. Code § 52.1), negligence, false arrest, conversion, and trespass to chattels. A Monell claim is brought against the City of San Diego for its policy of failure to train officers to avoid race-based stops and seizures.

Mr. Webb seeks compensatory and punitive damages, injunctive relief to end race-based stops and searches by the SDPD, and attorneys’ fees and costs.

Statement of Counsel

“Mr. Webb proudly and honorably served our Country for three decades; he’s spent his civilian life as a law-abiding business owner in San Diego County,” said Michele A. McKenzie of McKenzie Scott PC. “What happened to him–and what keeps happening to him–is sadly not an anomaly. The City’s own stop data demonstrates that year after year Black drivers in San Diego are stopped, searched, handcuffed, and photographed at disproportionate rates that cannot be explained by anything other than race. Mr. Webb is a father and grandfather who has lived a law-abiding life. He rightfully is seeking a future in which he can live and drive in San Diego without fear of being arbitrarily stopped because he is a Black.”

“I feel it is important to stand up for myself and for others who are being stopped based on the color of our skin. These recurring stops by the police are terrifying and dangerous. I feel blessed that so far I have not been physically injured when the police point their weapons at me. But it’s past time for this to stop. I’m speaking out now before my blessings run out.” said Mr. Webb.

About McKenzie Scott PC

McKenzie Scott is a San Diego civil rights law firm dedicated to protecting individual liberties and holding government entities accountable. The firm specializes in civil rights violation cases, including police misconduct, First Amendment rights, in-custody jail deaths, civil liberties, and public interest litigation. McKenzie Scott’s attorneys have successfully represented numerous families in excessive force and wrongful death cases against law enforcement agencies, including securing the then-largest excessive-force verdict in American history ($85 million in K.J.P. v. San Diego) and the largest wrongful death settlement in history paid by San Diego County ($16 million in the Hayden Schuck case).

For more information, please visit www.mckenziescott.com.

MEDIA REQUESTS:

Jason Kitchen

McKenzie Scott PC

1350 Columbia Street, Suite 600, San Diego, CA 92101

C: (517) 974-4724 | O: (619) 794-0451

[email protected]

Yuma, Arizona

When a local government decides how to spend taxpayer money, use public land, or approve massive infrastructure projects, the law requires everything to be open and transparent. However, an institutional breakdown occurs when executive leaders such as Mayor Douglas Nicholls along with board members of influential regional non-profits, fail to disclose private Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) before presenting projects to the city council. By using these secret legal contracts to hide their personal business interests, these figures create a massive conflict of interest. They essentially force council members to vote on major community initiatives while completely blindfolded to who is actually profiting behind the scenes.

​This intentional lack of disclosure transforms the city council from an independent oversight board into an unwitting legal shield for private networks. Non-profits and public-private partnerships are frequently used as the “middlemen” to broker local development deals because they do not face the same strict public transparency laws as City Hall. When a mayor or a non-profit board member signs a private NDA regarding a project, they lock away the real data, the financial alignments, and the identities of future commercial beneficiaries. They then present only the shiny, high-level summaries to the council floor. The council members are induced to vote “yes” on a proposal based on incomplete facts, entirely unaware that their votes are being harvested to validate and protect the executive inner circle’s hidden business ties.

​However, the city council needs to realize that they are not legally or ethically bound to stand by decisions made under this decade-long pattern of deception. Legally, a legislative body cannot be held strictly liable for a contract or resolution if material facts and personal financial interests were deliberately hidden from them at the time of the vote. An approval granted in an information vacuum is fundamentally flawed. Once independent investigations and forensic audits follow the paper trails, the protective “firewall” these insiders built entirely collapses. A vote cast in darkness cannot insulate public officials once federal regulatory agencies and the public expose the underlying conflicts of interest..

​The city council has the ultimate statutory power to break this cycle of co-optation immediately. Council members must stop acting as a rubber stamp for prepackaged deals brought forward by executive networks and their preferred non-profit proxies. The council has the full authority to halt any vote, table any resolution, and launch independent investigations into any project where full financial disclosure has been denied under the guise of private NDAs. The moment the city council refuses to validate deals wrapped in executive secrecy, they strip the inner circle of its legal insulation. They force entrenched leadership to stand alone and finally answer for years of keeping the council, and the entire Yuma community, in the dark.

Hong Kong — June 24, 2026

Financial & AI Layer 1 Pharos Network today welcomed Circle, Avalon Labs, TermMax Finance, Primus and Tulipa Capital as the newest strategic partners of the RealFi Alliance led by Pharos Network. This expansion directly tackles one of the most consequential challenges facing onchain finance today, that is expanding productive capital beyond stablecoin yield loops to include the largest pools of onchain liquidity, the deepest asset class in traditional finance, and the trust infrastructure required for institutional scale.

Bitcoin, the largest pool of onchain capital, sits largely passive. Fixed income, the deepest asset class in global finance, remains underserved onchain. Institutional capital stays on the sidelines without verifiable trust and compliance frameworks. The industry has the assets, but not yet the productive infrastructure around them.

This cohort is designed when Circle anchors the stack with USDC and CCTP, the regulated settlement layer that moves dollar liquidity natively across chains and into RealFi applications. Avalon Labs activates Bitcoin as working capital, enabling BTC-backed lending, borrowing, and structured yield strategies that connect the largest onchain asset to real-world opportunities. TermMax brings fixed-income and maturity-based products backed by real-world assets onchain, introducing the predictable, institutional-grade yield curve that traditional capital expects. Primus establishes the verification and trust layer through zkTLS and verifiable credentials, enabling compliance-friendly onboarding, reputation systems, and trusted interactions, including for AI agent–driven finance. Tulipa brings institutional capital expertise and professional asset allocation frameworks, channeling sophisticated capital into onchain RealFi opportunities. They extend the RealFi yield layer from stablecoin deposits into a complete productive capital stack covering dollars, Bitcoin, fixed-income, trust, and institutional allocation.

These collaborations among alliance members are already in motion, and deepening. More than 10 alliance members have jointly published an industry perspective report on the state and future of RealFi, setting a shared framework for how onchain finance can move from fragmented tokenization to productive capital at scale. On the product side, R25 Protocol, TopNod, and Ember Protocol (from previous cohorts) are advancing real yield product designs, translating institutional-grade strategies into accessible onchain experiences for users. TermMax is working with Ember Protocol to channel fixed-income strategies into accessible onchain yield products, while Tulipa Capital is leveraging Circle’s USDC for its settlement strategies. These efforts reflect a deliberate shift, that is alliance members are no longer operating as parallel partners, but converging into a tightly coordinated network where research, products, and infrastructure compound on one another. More integrations across alliance members are underway, with additional product launches to come.

“Tokenization without utility is just a database entry.” said Wish Wu, Co-Founder & CEO of Pharos. “What the industry needs now is the productive capital infrastructure around those assets like settlement, Bitcoin liquidity, fixed-income, trust, and institutional allocation working as one stack. That is exactly what this cohort of partners is building together.”

The RealFi Alliance continues to expand as a coalition of the infrastructure providers, asset issuers, and financial applications shaping the future of onchain finance. Previous cohorts include Chainlink, Centrifuge, Faroo, Amber Group, LI.FI Protocol, Vishwa, Agra, Dune Analytics, Anchorage Digital, and others, bringing institutional assets, DeFi players, cross-chain infrastructure, intelligence and data access that established the foundational layer of the RealFi ecosystem. Explore the full RealFi Alliance and the growing list of partners at https://www.pharos.xyz/realfi-alliance.

About Pharos Network

Pharos is a financial and AI Layer 1 built for RealFi. It delivers the compliant infrastructure needed for institutional assets and internet-scale capital markets.

Designed to coordinate real-world financial activity onchain, Pharos combines deep-parallel execution (SALI engine), modular SPNs, and protocol-level compliance infrastructure, integrating ZK-KYC / AML mechanisms, AsyncBFT consensus, native AI agent support (X402 protocol), and dualVM (EVM + WASM compatibility), to support RWAs, stablecoins, cross-border settlement, onchain yield markets, and agent-mediated commerce at internet scale.

The network is supported by strategic partners across the global financial stack, including Circle, Chainlink, Anchorage Digital, Morpho, and Centrifuge, connecting regulated capital markets with onchain liquidity venues where real-world assets can be actively deployed into real-yield-generating strategies.

Built by former Ant Group leadership and engineers, backed by leading global investors across TradFi and crypto, including Sumitomo Corporation, Flow Traders, SNZ, Hack VC, and Faction VC, Pharos is developing the infrastructure layer for the next era of programmable finance and the agentic economy.