Two years after a Los Angeles County deputy was caught on camera slamming a handcuffed inmate’s head into a concrete wall, prosecutors have decided not to charge two jailers involved.
The DA’s office explained the move in a memo last month, saying prosecutors could not tell whether the violence was intentional because one deputy claimed it was actually the prisoner’s “own momentum” that “caused his head to come into contact with the wall.” touch” “.
The decision comes a year after the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California released video of the incident at Men’s Central Jail for the first time. and posted a 15-second clip online. this Graphic monitoring video Shows two representatives chatting A prisoner emerges from his cell with his hands cuffed behind his back. One of the officers appeared to grab the prisoner from behind and slam him into a wall, seemingly without provocation. Injury photos showed the man had a 3-inch deep wound on his head.
This week, Peter Eliasberg, the lead attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union in two long-running class-action lawsuits against the prison, decried the district attorney’s decision not to prosecute deputies.
“In isolation, this is simply pathetic,” he told The Times. “But when you couple that with the history of the District Attorney’s Office condoning criminal conduct in the Sheriff’s Department, it’s just outrageous.”
He said the American Civil Liberties Union planned to ask the U.S. Department of Justice to take up the case, noting that federal prosecutors had previously convicted other prison deputies but district attorneys declined to prosecute.
The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office told The Times in an email that it “takes allegations of misconduct by jail deputies extremely seriously” and reviews each case based on the evidence.
“This office thoroughly reviewed the allegations in this case,” the email said, adding that prosecutors ultimately “concluded that the allegations could not be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.”
The Sheriff’s Department said in a statement Friday that both deputies remain employed with the department. Now that the district attorney’s office has handled the case, sheriff’s officials will determine whether deputies violated any policies or procedures.
“The department expects supervisors to carry out their duties with professionalism, integrity and compassion,” the statement read. “Any individual who fails to adhere to our standards of care and violates department policies will be held accountable.”
Representatives did not respond to an emailed request for comment, and it was unclear whether they had attorneys.
The 2022 incident occurred in a high-security cell at the Men’s Central Jail, where all inmates were handcuffed before being allowed to leave their cells. Whenever they come out, policy states that they must be escorted by two deputies, “who must have a firm grip on the prisoner.”
Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union said other problems have arisen at the unit since then. On Wednesday, The Times reported that inspectors captured eight deputies at the high-security unit Watch “porn videos” Instead of caring for suicidal prisoners.
An inspector called the unit “mouldy” and damp and said the people living there had no books or pens. “They had nothing, it was dark,” Oversight Commissioner Haley Broad said in an interview. “Being down there for 30 minutes, I don’t know how anyone could survive.”
The inmate in the surveillance video, whose name has been redacted, is being held in the high-security cell because he has previously threatened to stab officers and has an “extensive history of assaults,” according to the district attorney’s memo. .
On July 4, 2022, officers Jose Peralta and Johnathan Gutierrez walked to the unidentified inmate’s cell and escorted him to the shower, the memo said. After they handcuffed him and left the cell, deputies said he told them: “Don’t touch me.”
Since the monitor video has no sound, it’s impossible to tell what, if anything, the three men said to each other. But Peralta claimed the inmate threatened to headbutt Gutierrez, according to the district attorney’s memo.
According to Gutierrez, after the inmate left his cell, he quickly turned toward the shower, catching the deputy off guard with the “sudden movement,” the memo said. Gutierrez responded by grabbing the prisoner’s forearm and reaching for his shoulder. The prisoner then “threw his upper body forward,” he claimed.
Gutierrez said it all happened so fast and he was only focused on controlling the inmates. The officer said his right hand “eventually reached behind” the inmate’s head as he moved forward, according to the memo.
“It was his own momentum that caused his head to make contact with the wall,” Gutierrez wrote in a use-of-force report, citing the prosecutor’s memo.
Eliasberg considers this description “clearly false.”
The inmate, who was interviewed by investigators hours after the incident, also appeared to dispute the officers’ account and did not mention threatening to headbutt them but said they had threatened him before.
“I was walking out and the officer pulled me out and I walked forward and he hit me in the forehead,” he told them, the memo shows. “That’s all I remember. Because the officer told me yesterday that once They get me out of the cell and they get me.
He went on to tell investigators that he was receiving psychotropic medication and believed he had telepathic abilities, the memo said. When he couldn’t continue the conversation, investigators cut the interview short.
The two deputies did not provide voluntary statements to investigators, although both wrote use-of-force reports that prosecutors analyzed when evaluating the case, the memo said.
To prove the officers committed a crime, prosecutors wrote, they must show the force acted intentionally, unlawfully and “not in self-defense.” But they said the video appeared to confirm the prisoner made some “sudden movements” and “began to move his body in the direction of the wall, and then Gutierrez grabbed” the back of his neck.
The prosecutor continued: “It is impossible to determine from the video footage whether Gutierrez intentionally slammed the prisoner into the wall or whether it was an ‘accident.’ They concluded they did not have enough evidence to move forward with the case.
Corene Kendrick, another ACLU attorney involved in the prison lawsuit, called that reasoning “incredible” and said whether the punch was intentional should be decided by a jury.
“Whether the officers intentionally banged the man’s head against the wall or whether he simply hit his head against the wall as they allege, that’s something the jury should determine,” she said. “They don’t think that happened here. It’s such a shocking crime that if an incarcerated person banged a police officer’s head into a wall and caused these injuries, I don’t think the DA’s office would refuse to prosecute.
Nearly a decade ago, the ACLU made similar accusations in a scathing letter to then-District Attorney Jackie Lacey in July 2015. The letter focuses on local prosecutors’ failure to bring charges against a group of deputies who claimed they beat a tourist and pepper-sprayed them in 2011.
County prosecutors initially charged the visitor, Gabriel Carrillo, with battery on a peace officer and other crimes but said there was “no evidence of wrongdoing” by the deputies.
After the U.S. Attorney’s Office took over the case, Federal prosecutors criminalize five deputies, two of whom admitted in court that Carrillo was actually handcuffed at the time of the attack. Eventually, Carrillo sued and the case settled for $1.2 million.
Carrillo’s case is part of a larger pattern, according to the ACLU letter. The civil rights group said the district attorney’s office is quick to charge inmates — often without even reviewing video evidence — but “almost never” charges officers.
Eliasberg said this week that little has changed.
“This is just more evidence of the DA’s reluctance to hold law enforcement accountable for criminal conduct,” he said. “The ACLU will quickly ask the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate this incident and prosecute as it did in 2011 and 2012.”
The Sheriff’s Department is currently subject to consent decrees from several federal lawsuits. One of the cases, Rosas v. Luna, began in 2012, when inmates claimed that “degrading, cruel and sadistic attacks by deputies on inmates” had become commonplace. Many of the beatings committed by officers were “much more serious than the infamous Rodney King beating in 1991,” the lawsuit said.
After three years of legal wrangling, in 2015 inmates and the county, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), reached an agreement on specific changes the Sheriff’s Department would make to reduce the number of beatings in jails.
Nearly a decade later, there are some signs of improvement, with county data showing that jailers are punching inmates in the face far less often than before. But the department has not complied with all terms of the agreement. The case is still ongoing.
