Los Angeles Sheriff Scandal: 2 More Deputies Indicted In Jailhouse Beating
The Los Angeles Sheriff scandal surrounding the repeated beatings of inmates by Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputies in charge of running the county jail, has led to the indictment of two more deputies Friday, charged with brutally beating a handcuffed inmate then filing a false report claiming that their victim started the altercation.
About two months ago, 18 Los Angeles deputies were indicted after an FBI probe into the brutality allegations. Friday’s indictments of deputies Mariano Ramirez, 38, and Joey Aguiar, 26, mean that now 20 Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies face criminal charges in the scandal.
Brett Philips was doing a seven-month sentence for a parole violation in the Los Angels Men’s Central Jail when despite being handcuffed and bound by a chain around his waist, he was kicked, punched and pepper-sprayed by Ramirez and Aguiar on February 11, 2009.
Prison Chaplain Paulino Juarez, who witnessed the incident, described how the two Los Angeles deputies continued to kick the fallen Philips even as “his body lay limp and merely absorbed their blows.”
The deputies also struck Philips with a flashlight, though he did not fight back.
“He wasn’t fighting. I saw the body lying down on the floor with blood around his head. I think he was unconscious,” the chaplain said.
But when the deputies filed their report of the incident, they portrayed Philips as a violent aggressor, saying that the inmate had viciously kicked and attempted to head-butt them — neither of which ever took place, according to the indictment.
“I had stitches in my head. My lower back was hurting, I had, I was just sore all over,” Philips recalled, quoted by NBC Los Angeles. “I still got the scars on my wrists from like the handcuffs were so tight.”
Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, pictured above, faced demands that he resign when the first 18 indictments came down in December. Instead, he announced that he would retire rather than seek reelection.
Baca stepped down January 30. Interim Los Angeles County Sheriff John Scott said that reforming the jail system is his top priority and that from now on, “abuse of authority will not be tolerated.”
While the original 18 Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputies are implicated in beatings as well, seven are also accused of trying to stymie the FBI investigation into the scandal, in one case altering documents on an inmate who was acting as an FBI informant to make it look like he had been released from jail, while still holding him in the Los Angeles jail under a phony name.
