It was closing time at midtown's Azukar Lounge. That's when the girls all get prettier, as Mickey Gilley tells us in his honky-tonk classic, and the boys just get more rambunctious.
By the wee hours on that Sunday in 2008, the Azukar was a wild scene, with fights inside and out keeping the private security staff hopping.
One fracas pitted an Elk Grove car salesman celebrating his 31st birthday against security personnel and city police officers. It proved to be a bruising encounter for Jaime Lara, and a costly one for Sacramento.
Lara's civil rights damage suit was closed Tuesday with a settlement in which the city paid him $96,000 to resolve a claim that he was brutally and gratuitously attacked by police.
The suit, filed in federal court in 2009, homed in on Officer Tristan Piano. He was accused of "the savage and unprovoked beating" of Lara on the sidewalk in front of the nightclub at 1616 J St.