Two lawmakers from California have asked the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate a violent incident at Men’s Central Jail in 2022, when a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy appeared to bash a handcuffed inmate’s head into a concrete wall, leaving a gaping, 3-inch wound.
The incident first became public last summer when the American Civil Liberties Union obtained a 15-second clip of surveillance video and posted it online. The graphic footage showed two deputies chatting as a man emerged from his cell with his hands cuffed behind him. One deputy appeared to grab the inmate from behind and slam him headfirst into the wall, without a clear provocation.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department opened an internal criminal investigation, but this year the district attorney’s office formally declined to prosecute either of the deputies involved.
In a five-page May 17 memo explaining their reasoning, prosecutors said it was unclear whether the deputies intentionally harmed the inmate or whether his injuries were from him “swinging and lunging his own body toward the wall.”
At the time, ACLU attorneys criticized that decision and said they planned to ask the U.S. DOJ to take up the case. Now, Democratic U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla and Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Los Angeles) have written letters to Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland echoing that request.
“The LADA’s failure to prosecute in this situation appears to be part of a concerning pattern of failing to hold deputies in the Los Angeles County jails accountable for their abuses,” Kamlager-Dove wrote in a Dec. 17 letter. “Fortunately, in the past, the United States Department of Justice and the U.S. Attorney of the Central District of California have stepped in and played an important role in remedying the LADA’s failures.
“The federal government has successfully pursued cases against notable members of the LASD,” she wrote, “from then-Sheriff [Lee] Baca and then-Undersheriff [Paul] Tanaka to lieutenants, sergeants, and deputies who worked in the jails — for various types of crimes.”
Sent a week earlier, Padilla’s letter made similar points, saying the district attorney’s memo “mischaracterizes” the footage and requesting that the DOJ investigate. On Friday, spokespeople for Padilla and Kamlager-Dove said the lawmakers had not yet received responses.
The district attorney’s office did not immediately offer comment. In an emailed statement this week, the Sheriff’s Department said it has worked to decrease violence inside its jails as part of an effort to comply with the terms of a long-standing class-action lawsuit.
“Over the past two years we have seen tremendous progress toward this goal,” the department said, highlighting the creation of new policies banning jailers from punching inmates in the head or face unless the person is “physically assaultive” or “an imminent danger.”
This week, Peter Eliasberg, the ACLU chief counsel involved in two long-standing class-action lawsuits against the jails, lauded the lawmakers’ letters.
“We are grateful for the effort of the senator and congressperson to push the Department of Justice to take steps to provide accountability in the jails given the abject failing of the district attorney’s office to take action in the case,” he told The Times.
Eliasberg went on to acknowledge some improvements in the jails, but he said that progress has been a “mixed bag” because jail officials continue to deem many uses of force permissible even when court-appointed monitors who later review them determine they are not.
The incident at issue took place on July 4, 2022. According to the D.A.’s five-page memo, deputies Jose Peralta and Johnathan Gutierrez walked up to the inmate’s cell to escort him to the shower. (Neither deputy responded Friday to an emailed request for comment, and it is not clear whether they have attorneys.)
The inmate has not been identified in public reports. After the deputies cuffed him and he exited the cell, the two jailers said he told them: “Don’t touch me.”
The surveillance video does not have sound, but according to the D.A.’s memo, Peralta claimed the inmate threatened to head-butt Gutierrez.
By Gutierrez’s account, once the inmate exited his cell he quickly turned toward the shower with a “sudden movement” that caught the deputy off guard. Gutierrez reacted by grabbing the inmate’s forearm and reaching for his shoulder. Then, he alleged, the inmate “lunged his upper body forward.”
According to the memo, the deputy said his right hand “ended up behind” the inmate’s head as the man was moving forward.
“It was his own momentum that caused his head to make contact with the wall,” Gutierrez wrote in a use-of-force report that prosecutors quoted in their memo.
Eliasberg has characterized that description as “patently false.”
To prove the deputies committed a crime, prosecutors wrote, they’d have to show that the force was willful, unlawful and not self-defense. But they said the video appears to confirm that the inmate made some “sudden movements” and started moving “in the direction of the wall” before Gutierrez grabbed him by the back of the neck.
The Sheriff’s Department currently is subject to several consent decrees stemming from federal lawsuits over treatment and conditions inside its jails. One case, known as Rosas vs. Luna, began in 2012 when inmates alleged “degrading, cruel and sadistic” attacks by deputies had become common.
Three years later, the inmates — represented by the ACLU — and the county came to an agreement about specific changes the Sheriff’s Department would make to reduce the violence behind bars.
Nearly a decade later, there have been some signs of improvement, as county data show jailers punch inmates in the face far less frequently than they used to. Over the past two years, the department said this week, the number of times jailers have used force has decreased by 23%, and the number of head strikes — punches to the face or head — has fallen by 35%.
“Custody staff are more frequently utilizing de-escalation techniques and are using more physically significant force options (such as punches) less frequently,” the statement continued. “These physically significant uses of force decreased by 27% from 2022-2023 and we are on track to decrease an additional 10% this year.”
