An Anchorage man called a police officer a ‘pig’ and ended up arrested. Now he’s suing the city.

An Anchorage man who called a police officer a “pig” and asked if he was drinking on the job in an encounter at a gas station near downtown last summer was arrested minutes later on disorderly conduct and harassment charges.

Those charges were later dismissed.

Now Joshua Briggs, a 40-year-old U.S. Navy veteran with an IT job, is in the midst of a federal lawsuit he’s filed against the municipality for violating his constitutional right to free speech.

Part of the encounter involving Briggs and Anchorage Police Department officer Orean Yi was captured in a cellphone recording. Briggs said he believes that video is what ultimately led to his charges being dismissed. Anchorage police do not yet wear body cameras because of lengthy delays in implementation after the public voted to increase taxes and fund the technology more than two years ago.

Police are required to activate body-worn microphones to capture audio of encounters with the public, but Yi failed to turn on his microphone during the encounter with Briggs, according to the civil suit filed in U.S. District Court in December by attorney Thomas Dosik.

“If the video didn’t exist, it would have been my word versus his,” Briggs said in a February interview at the Loussac Library.

The municipal attorney representing the city and Yi did not return emails or calls for comment.

The department notified Briggs in a letter sent in October that an internal investigation found Yi had acted improperly. Information about internal investigations and disciplinary actions is confidential, police spokeswoman Sunny Guerin said. She said the department can’t disclose what, if any, disciplinary actions Yi faced.

Yi declined to comment on the lawsuit in a request the Daily News made through the police department.

‘I’ve pondered the question of ‘why’ a lot’

In the original charges filed in the case, Yi wrote that Briggs was being disorderly by yelling and harassing him. Briggs denies that he yelled or caused a disturbance.

He and his then-girlfriend had stopped at the Holiday gas station near Merrill Field last July to refuel and buy snacks for a trip to Palmer for a veterinary appointment for their new puppy, Briggs said during the interview.

As Briggs approached the register to pay, he saw Yi standing in front of him, he said.

Briggs, who doesn’t have a criminal record, still isn’t sure why he said what he did. But he has become increasingly distrusting of law enforcement in recent years after seeing news coverage of officers across the country accused of abusing power or failing to protect the public.

“I’ve pondered the question of ‘why’ a lot,” he said. “Why even say something? Why start it off? … I’ve just had that frustration building up within me and I just blurted out like, ‘Oh look, another pig’ or something like that.”

Yi asked Briggs to provide identification and he refused, the civil lawsuit said. Briggs said he thought he smelled alcohol on Yi’s breath and confronted him about that.

When Briggs refused to identify himself, Yi handcuffed him and escorted him from the store. Yi pulled Briggs’ wallet and ID from his pants pocket before placing him in the back of the patrol car.

Briggs’ former girlfriend approached the police vehicle as she saw him being detained. She recorded an encounter with Yi where she questions what Briggs did that was illegal.

“We can’t have him going around cops and calling people names and being disorderly,” Yi is heard saying.

“Because you can’t handle anybody saying something mean about you?” she asks.

“Not just me, probably everybody else he’s run into,” Yi says.

Looming charges

Briggs said he sat in the back of Yi’s patrol car for more than an hour before he was released with a citation for misdemeanor charges of disorderly conduct and harassment. As he sat in the back of the car, Briggs said, Yi made several comments that made him feel threatened.

“While in the patrol car Yi read Briggs’s home address from his driver’s license and proceeded to repeat the address numerous times to Briggs, implying that Yi now knew where Briggs lived,” the lawsuit said. “Yi also stated ‘I am going to have every officer in the State of Alaska show up at your house now.’ ”

Police did not interview witnesses or obtain surveillance video of the encounter from the gas station, the lawsuit said.

Police made efforts to obtain the footage, but were told by the gas station that the video was not available, according to an answer filed to the complaint by Assistant Municipal Attorney Linda Johnson, who is representing Yi and the city.

[Anchorage police officers violated policy in traffic stop where woman used ‘white privilege card,’ deputy chief says]

Briggs filed a complaint with the police department at the end of August alleging Yi had improperly arrested him. At that point, an officer interviewed several witnesses. The witnesses recalled being unable to hear any argument, according to the civil complaint.

Attorney Dosik reached out to Briggs after seeing a video online of Yi’s interaction with Briggs’ former girlfriend. He said he believes the case is an “obvious civil rights violation” and agreed to represent Briggs in the civil lawsuit.

Briggs said the court process surrounding the encounter left him feeling overwhelmed, powerless and disillusioned with the justice system. It was challenging to find an attorney to represent him, he said, and he felt anxious knowing the open charge was looming over him for months.

The harassment charge was dismissed in September and the disorderly conduct charge was dismissed in December.