LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department says a bystander’s cellphone footage exhibiting a deputy violently tackling a girl whereas she filmed her husband being handcuffed after which pepper-spraying her within the face is “ disturbing,” and group teams on Wednesday known as for the division’s new sheriff to carry his company accountable.
The June 24 incident within the metropolis of Lancaster follows a number of instances which have drawn scrutiny to the division amid allegations of extreme use of power by its deputies. It’s additionally testing the reform efforts of the brand new sheriff, Robert Luna, a former Long Beach police chief who has vowed to overtake the nation’s largest sheriff’s division since taking it over in December after defeating incumbent Alex Villanueva.
Both officers had been pulled off area responsibility, the sheriff’s division mentioned in an announcement late Monday after the bystander footage unfold on social media. The Associated Press’ efforts to succeed in the bystander on Wednesday weren’t instantly profitable.
The company additionally introduced it has opened an investigation into the deputies’ actions.
“While the Department does not make statements related to ongoing investigations, Sheriff Luna has made it clear that he expects Department personnel to treat all members of the public with dignity and respect, and that personnel who do not uphold our training standards will be held accountable,” the division mentioned in its assertion.
The company additionally launched footage from the deputies’ body-worn cameras on Monday.
The couple, whose names weren’t launched, reportedly matched the descriptions of robbers focusing on a grocery retailer in Lancaster, 72 kilometers (45 miles) northeast of Los Angeles, the division mentioned. The video reveals the person sitting on a big rock outdoors the shop and holding a cake earlier than deputies handcuff him as his spouse stands a couple of toes away filming the encounter.
One deputy is seen tackling the girl to the bottom. “Get on the ground!” he may be heard shouting as he pins her down along with his knee on her neck and shoulder. “Stop or you’ll get punched in the face!”
The lady is heard yelling “I can’t breathe!” because the deputy is seen pepper-spraying her within the face. She screams, “I didn’t do nothin’!” and her husband repeatedly tells the opposite deputy that she has most cancers.
The couple was cited and launched from custody.
The sheriff’s division didn’t launch the deputies’ names or different particulars, equivalent to what the citations had been for. The division first referred a reporter to submit inquiries to a web based media portal after which declined to offer further data.
A protest was deliberate in Lancaster Wednesday night by group teams to demand that the deputies be held accountable and be dismissed.
Villanueva’s tenure was tainted by accusations that so-called deputy gangs proliferated beneath his watch. The teams are accused of quite a lot of misconduct courting again a long time, from controlling sheriff’s stations and the jails, to harassing different deputies and the communities they police, to harming or fatally taking pictures civilians as a part of gang rituals.
Villanueva resisted efforts from the county’s inspector common and a civilian oversight fee to deal with the cliques. The former sheriff downplayed their position within the division and refused to reply the fee’s subpoenas to testify in regards to the gangs beneath oath.
The division was years behind different police companies in outfitting its deputies with body-worn cameras, bringing them on board in 2020. The neighboring Los Angeles Police Department, in distinction, first gave the know-how to its officers in 2016.
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Associated Press information researcher Randy Herschaft in New York contributed to this report.
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