Global Courant
A Los Angeles County deputy was caught on a prison surveillance camera slamming the head of a handcuffed inmate against a concrete wall at the Men’s Central Jail without apparent provocation.
The recently released 15-second video was obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union. Photos taken after the incident show the unidentified man covered in blood with a deep, gaping head wound about three inches long and nearly an inch wide.
“I just don’t have the words to express how shocking this is,” said Corene Kendrick, deputy director of the ACLU’s National Prison Project, which charges prisons and jails in trouble. “Calling that video barbaric is an insult to barbarians. It’s a miracle that man isn’t dead.”
Together, the photos and video provide a rare glimpse of the violence used by deputies documented decades in the prisons of Los Angeles. While that kind of violence behind bars is at the heart of a decade-old class action lawsuit against the county, it usually remains unseen to the public, as most prison videos are protected from public disclosure.
After reviewing the footage of the July 2022 beating and photos of its aftermath, the public defenders union said it was both disturbing and indicative of the brutality faced by people in Los Angeles prisons.
“We remain appalled by the violence perpetrated against our clients and community members by LASD deputies in prisons,” said Meredith Gallen, a member of the union’s board of directors.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, meanwhile, confirmed that the case is currently under investigation by the Internal Criminal Investigations Bureau, which will present its findings to local prosecutors. Once the District Attorney’s office has decided to prosecute, the Sheriff’s Office of the Interior will determine whether one or both of the deputies involved in the incident should be sentenced or fired.
In the meantime, Asst. Sheriff Sergio Aloma — who oversees the county jails — told The Times in a text message on Saturday that the two deputies involved have been released with pay.
“This matter is currently under investigation,” he said.
The beginning of the video – dated July 4, 2022 – depicts two deputies talking casually in a hallway in Men’s Central Jail. There’s no sound, so it’s unclear what they’re saying, but it looks like they’re waiting for a man to come out of his cell. After about seven seconds, a cell door on the right side of the hallway slides open and a man calmly walks out, his hands already tied behind his back.
One of the deputies grabs him and the man seems to back off a bit as he tries to keep walking.
Suddenly, a deputy slams the man’s head against the concrete wall, and both men tackle him. A third deputy comes running just as the video ends, so it’s unclear how long the violence continued.
ACLU attorneys said the detainee survived, but they did not know his name or the name of any of the deputies involved. The attorneys have not revealed the source of the video, which they say is prison surveillance footage not directly sourced from the sheriff’s department.
Late Friday, the civil rights group posted the video online, days after releasing a photo of the injured man as part of a flurry of lawsuits filed this week in a lengthy lawsuit over allegations of continued excessive force against inmates at Los Angeles County jails.
That case, known as Rosas against Luna, started in 2012 when detainees filed a lawsuit alleging that “degrading, brutal, and sadistic attacks on detainees by deputy sheriffs” had become a common occurrence — a process they said top sheriff’s department officials knew about and did nothing about. Many of the beatings handed out by deputies, the lawsuit alleged, were “much more serious than Rodney King’s infamous 1991 beating.”
After three years of legal wrangling, the inmates — represented by the ACLU — and the county came to an agreement in 2015 on specific changes the sheriff’s department would make to reduce the number of beatings behind bars.
But now, eight years later, outside experts and ACLU attorneys say the department still hasn’t met all the requirements of the 2015 agreement.
A report written earlier this year by court-appointed observers charged with ensuring prisons honored their end of the deal contained stark findings, saying that the observers no longer saw progress.
“It is time for prison culture to stop supporting behavior prohibited by policy,” the observers wrote.
Therefore last week the prisoners’ lawyers asked the county to make some changes to its plan for improvement, such as setting mandatory minimum sentences for deputies who violate certain policies on the use of force and banning deputies from hitting inmates on the head unless it’s a situation which may require deadly force.
In its own files, the province objected to both suggestions.
Creating a stricter policy against beating prisoners on the head was an “extreme” and “unfounded” suggestion, lawyers for the province wrote. In addition, the department already tightened its policy last year — and now the number of incidents involving deputies hitting inmates on the head has dropped to one per month in each of the center’s three prisons, compared to two per month in each facility two years ago. .
“Despite each of these concerns, the department fully recognizes that head attacks are potentially dangerous,” county attorneys wrote. “It has been agreed to take the necessary steps to reduce the health effects of head attacks when they occur.”
Creating mandatory minimum penalties, they said, would be “unfair” and cannot be imposed without violating collective bargaining rights.
In addition, the lawyers wrote, since taking office in December, Sheriff Robert Luna has already taken steps to increase accountability and has worked “to ensure that deputies who engage in prison misconduct are held accountable for their deeds.”
The Rosas case is one of three major lawsuits involving Los Angeles prisons, the oldest of which has been pending since the mid-1970s. That case — which is also being handled by the ACLU — is currently centered on the appalling living conditions at the inmate shelter, where lawyers discovered last year that seriously mentally ill inmates were routinely left chained to couches and chairs for days on end.
A judge ordered the prison to limit that practice and make several other changes — though the county admitted this year that jailers had begun tying people to stretchers instead. That case is now scheduled for a contempt hearing later this month.
