The office of Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón has declined to criminally charge two LA County sheriff’s deputies who threw an incarcerated man wearing handcuffs into a cement wall, leaving him covered in blood with multiple deep head wounds.
Now the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California is requesting the U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California to initiate a criminal investigation into the incident. The organization is also seeking an investigation into actions taken by LASD regarding the matter.
The episode was captured on video, and a 15 second clip was released by the ACLU SoCal.
Click the image below to view the video on Youtube. Content warning: this video shows a man violently being slammed into a wall by LASD deputies.
In a May memo laying out the decision to not prosecute, the District Attorney’s office stated it could not determine from the footage if deputy Jonathan Gutierrez deliberately slammed the man into the wall, or whether the contact was accidental as a result of the man “swinging and lunging his own body toward the wall.”
“I can’t see how any reasonable human being could look at that video and come to that conclusion,” Peter Eliasberg, chief counsel of the ACLU SoCal, told Los Angeles Public Press.
Head strikes against a fixed object, such as a concrete floor, wall or jail bars, are prohibited by the sheriff’s department’s own Custody Operations Force Manual.
Eliasberg said that while the DA is a component of the accountability process, “the main accountability has to come from an internal disciplinary framework within the sheriff’s department.”
The sheriff’s department conducted an internal administrative investigation into the incident, according to a statement given to Los Angeles Public Press.
“The findings of that investigation will be presented to the Executive Force Review Committee where personnel will be held accountable if it is determined they violated Department policy…The department expects that custody personnel will perform their responsibilities in a professional manner with integrity and compassion. The department strives to provide the highest level of constitutional care to those who are incarcerated in our jail facilities and has an obligation to keep them safe. Any individuals who fail to uphold our standards of care and violate Department policy will be held accountable.”
According to the declination memo, deputies Gutierrez and Jose Peralta responded to the “disciplinary housing” area on July 4, 2022 to escort the incarcerated man to the shower.
In the video, posted by the ACLU SoCal on Youtube, the deputies are standing in a hallway containing cells inside of Men’s Central Jail. The two appear to be waiting for the door for a cell to open and its inhabitant to emerge. Around 8 seconds in, the man walks out calmly with his hands cuffed behind his back. A deputy grabs him, and the man leans away and attempts to keep walking. The deputy then grabs the man’s neck and slams his head into the concrete wall. The two deputies then tackle him as a third comes running into frame. The video concludes at this point.
Several neuroscientists have submitted findings that detail the adverse effects of head trauma in people who experience mental illness, saying that such injuries can exacerbate their symptoms. The man in the video told investigators in an interview that he was on “psych” medication. It’s likely that this event had a negative impact on his brain health.
The reports were made as part of a civil lawsuit known as Rosas vs. Luna. The case dates back to 2012, when incarcerated people at Men’s Central Jail represented by the ACLU SoCal accused deputies of “degrading, cruel and sadistic” attacks. In 2015, a settlement agreement was reached to implement policy changes to reduce the number of beatings in the jails.
“Use of force in the jails continues to trend downward and even the Rosas monitors have recognized the decrease in their reports,” the sheriff’s department said in its statement.
“There’s been quite a significant amount of improvement,” Eliasberg agreed. “Not enough. And there’s still very serious problems.”
In 2020, Gascón said in an interview that he would “look into prosecuting anyone, including law enforcement officers, that commit crimes against the public, if we have the evidence to do so.” However, he has declined to prosecute a deputy who beat and tased a man who later died, as well as two deputies who killed and kidnapped teenagers.
Federal prosecutors eventually indicted two former Compton deputies, Miguel Vega and Christopher Hernandez, for violating the civil rights of a skateboarder. Vega and Hernandez forced the young man into the back of their patrol vehicle, crashed it, then fabricated a drug arrest to cover up their actions. Both were convicted of federal civil rights violations.
“This office takes allegations of misconduct by jail deputies extremely seriously and reviews each situation individually, based on the evidence and the law,” the District Attorney’s office said in a statement to Los Angeles Public Press. “This office thoroughly reviewed the allegations in this case, and for the reasons stated in the declination, concluded that the allegations could not be proved beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Eliasberg, with the ACLU, sees it differently.
“This is just one more piece of evidence of the DA’s utter unwillingness and failure to provide accountability for criminal behavior for sheriff’s deputies in the jails,” Eliasberg said. “It’s not a one off incident, but part of a kind of sad historical pattern of the DA not playing its role.”
There is precedent for federal investigators to step in regarding violence perpetrated by deputies inside of the LA county jail system.
In February of 2011, during the tenure of DA Steve Cooley, Gabriel Carrillo was beaten by several deputies affiliated with the 3000 Boys deputy gang during a visit with an incarcerated family member. The group later crafted a cover story where they claimed Carrillo tried to fight them during the fingerprinting process. Carrillo was charged with resisting a police officer and prosecuted through October 2011, when the DA eventually dropped charges.
The deputies were later federally indicted, and eventually convicted for their roles in the attack. Carrillo filed a civil rights claim against LA County and settled for $1.2 million.
“The federal government has repeatedly said that they think it’s part of the Civil Rights Division and the U.S. Attorney’s office to bring cases against law enforcement officials or law enforcement officers who’ve engaged in what they believe to be criminal behavior,” Eliasberg said. “I think a close examination of this would lead them to conclude that this is a case they should bring.”
Read the ACLU’s letter: