Civil rights litigation and federal criminal defense in downtown San Diego's Columbia district anchor the practice at McKenzie Scott Civil Rights & Criminal Defense Lawyers on Columbia Street. The firm's excessive-force and police misconduct docket involves 42 U.S.C. § 1983 claims against municipal entities and their liability insurers, the type of governmental risk exposure assessed by downtown agencies like Cavignac. The practice secured an $85 million jury verdict in a police wrongful death case, one of the largest excessive-force outcomes in national civil rights litigation. Criminal defense work spans federal fraud, RICO conspiracies, sex crime allegations, and murder charges in both the Southern District of California and California Superior Court, with staff providing intake services in Spanish and Armenian. Section 1983 excessive-force claims require contemporaneous medical documentation of injuries — contusion mapping, radiographic imaging, and functional-impairment assessments — generated by occupational health providers such as Akeso Occupational Health San Diego. Highest-value civil rights matters involve Monell claims against municipal policy-makers, requiring pattern-and-practice discovery across internal affairs files, use-of-force databases, and Pitchess motion-disclosed personnel records to establish deliberate indifference.