James “Jim” Olson Deposition — Byer v. City of La Palma

Trial testimony — not one of the 7 depositions

James “Jim” Olson

Third-party trial witness · Retired Cypress PD Commander

Trial transcript excerpt reviewed

Testified: date not specified in reviewed excerpt. This is trial testimony, not a deposition — the excerpt shows Olson called as a witness by the plaintiff, sworn in by the court clerk, and examined before the court and jury. The trial concluded with a jury verdict on December 9, 2025.
Called by: Plaintiff (Petronelli)
Pages reviewed: 6–11

Who he is

Olson is a retired police commander from the City of Cypress with 27 years in law enforcement, starting his career with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department before lateraling to Cypress PD. He retired in December 2018 and now trains law-enforcement instructors for National Training Concepts (NTC) across California and Arizona. He is not employed by La Palma and was not designated as an expert witness — defense counsel objected on that basis, but the court overruled it, allowing him to testify to what he personally observed and practiced as a 14-year sergeant.

Connection to the case

Olson testified he met Ross Byer roughly seven years earlier at the Golden West Law Enforcement Training Center (a police academy), establishing a personal, professional acquaintance with the plaintiff predating the events at issue.

Key testimony

Plaintiff’s counsel asked Olson about the practice of sergeants patrolling beats assigned to patrol officers, making traffic stops, and handing those stops off to a patrol officer to complete. Olson said he hadn’t heard the practice described that way but had seen it done — and that it was "frowned upon" at the agencies where he worked, because sergeants are expected to lead by example and handle their own self-initiated stops rather than turn them over.

He testified that offloading a stop onto an already-busy officer — particularly a newer officer already carrying a heavy load of open reports — could add to their workload and stress, in his words causing "a high level of anxiety."

Possible relevance to the verdict

Inference, not a confirmed trial finding: Olson's testimony reads as an effort to establish a standard for supervisory conduct — that sergeants are expected to handle their own stops rather than offload the resulting paperwork onto subordinates. If evidence at trial showed a supervisor departing from that norm with Byer specifically, this testimony could have supported the retaliation and failure-to-prevent-discrimination theory the jury accepted. The six pages reviewed here don't show that connection being drawn explicitly.

This summary is based on a six-page excerpt (pages 6-11) covering Olson's background and the opening of substantive questioning at trial. It doesn't reflect his full testimony, cross-examination, or how — if at all — it was tied to specific trial allegations. This document is trial testimony, not a deposition transcript, despite being on file with a court-reporting vendor whose name includes the word "deposition"; it has been separated from the other seven witnesses on this page for that reason.

View trial testimony excerpt (PDF) — James "Jim" Olson