CLEVELAND, Ohio — Two Cleveland police officers under investigation for the November 2014 death of Tanisha Anderson responded Wednesday to a lawsuit brought 20 months ago by the woman’s family.

Officers Scott Aldridge and Bryan Myers deny any wrongdoing in responding to a mental-health emergency at the home of Anderson’s family on the 1300 block of Ansel Road.

Anderson, 37, suffered from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and was suffering from a breakdown when her family called police. She died after Aldridge and Myers cuffed her hands behind her back and placed her in the back of a police car following a struggle. Anderson’s family said one of the officers used a take-down move on her, placed his knee on her back and placed her in handcuffs before she stopped moving.

The answer also lists a series of “affirmative defenses,” a common portion of any lawsuit response, that says Aldridge and Myers are legally immune from the claims made in the lawsuit.

The Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled Anderson’s death a homicide and said she asphyxiated while being restrained in a prone position. Obesity and other health factors also contributed to her death, the office said.

Anderson’s family filed suit in January 2015, less than two months after the woman died. The city of Cleveland, also named as a defendant, responded to the suit in March of that year.

Aldridge and Myers’s portion of the case has been on hold because as both are the subject of a criminal probe. The case was investigated by the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Department and was passed to the Ohio Attorney General’s Office, which will prosecute the case if criminal charges were filed.

The family has expressed frustration about the length of the investigation, which is in its 22nd month.

While U.S. District Judge Donald Nugent gave Aldridge and Myers several extensions to file their answer, he wrote in a May order that the officers must respond by Wednesday.

“At some point, the private interests of the plaintiffs in processing expeditiously outweighs the other interests at issue,” Nugent wrote in May.

A status conference in the federal lawsuit is scheduled for Sept. 21.

A special master was appointed in May to review the Anderson criminal investigative file and purge it of statements made by Aldridge and Myers during Cleveland police’s internal probe.

The officer’s interviews are protected under Garrity v. New Jersey, a 1967 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that found law enforcement agencies cannot force officers to participate in internal investigations.

An expert hired by the Anderson family said in a report released in July that Aldridge and Myers acted “contrary to generally accepted police practices” and that their actions were “unreasonable and excessive for the circumstances.”

The expert, former Deputy Los Angeles Police Chief Lou Reiter, said both men also failed to provide adequate medical care to Anderson.

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