A bodycam video released Thursday shows the moments a man, whose family said was mentally ill, lunged at officers.
After a scuffle with police, he died.
Justin Perkins family said he wasn't a drug addict but he did take medications. The Los Angeles District Attorney has concluded the Anaheim man died because he had both meth and antidepressants in his system.
According to the district attorney's report, the officers were not criminally culpable for his death.
The body cam video, released for the first time to the public after the October death, shows the 38-year-old being questioned by Anaheim police.
Police say they were called to the Madison Park apartments after a maintenance worker claimed he'd been hit by Perkins.
Perkins, who was diagnosed as bipolar and acted like a 12-year-old according to his family, is seen standing behind the door as Anaheim police question him.
They say he was talking to someone who wasn't there. But when they asked him to open the door, Perkins lunged at them.
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One of the officers told investigators he was fighting for his life, that Perkins had bit off his finger, and he wasn't sure how long he'd last.
Both officers deployed their stun guns.
The report says the officers did not want to use their guns, concerned they might hit each other.
After he was in handcuffs, Perkins' uncle can be heard at times asking his nephew to calm down. Then the man stopped breathing.
Officers did not feel a pulse so they started CPR, and then Perkins began to breathe again, the report says.
Four months after that his family announced they were filing a lawsuit.
"I say this now -- they have to be retrained. They have to know the difference between the mentally-challenged and a drug addict. I can tell the difference," Mike Perkins said at a February 2019 news conference.
His family nicknamed Perkins "Hercules" because of his size, but say he had acted like a preteen. He died in the hospital four days after his arrest.
Perkins did have one prior arrest for assault.
The family attorney says his civil case will go forward.
