At around 4:30 on Thursday, the seven-person federal jury brought back another $210,000 in damages against five Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department supervisors (one now retired)—thus raising the total damages levied against LASD personnel in this case to $950,000.
Last week, in stage one of this lengthy federal trial, the jurors awarded 5 inmate/plaintiffs $740,000 in actual damages after determining that LASD deputies had used excessive force when they allegedly tazed, kicked, slugged and stomped on 21 inmates during a 2008 incident in Men’s Central Jail that sent 19 inmates to the hospital with fractured limbs, eye sockets, noses and skulls.
The $740,000 in actual damages—also called compensatory damages—meant the plaintiffs were being given the money to compensate for actual harm, loss, or injury suffered.
To hand out punitive damages, like those awarded Tuesday, the jury had to find that the defendants acted in a way that was particularly willful, malicious, vindictive, and reckless.
Ron Kaye, the attorney for the plaintiffs, noted that the jury only asked for punitive damages from supervisors, not line deputies. Specifically, they asked for $75,000 from former Men’s Central Jail Captain Dan Cruz, $60,000 from a jails lieutenant, and $30,000 to $15,000 from three other supervisors.
Kaye said that when he talked briefly to the jury members after the damages were announced, they said they found the testimony of the various deputies to be the most “compelling.”
(The deputies, to a person, said what they did was necessary force and within department policy, which the jury reportedly appeared to find in jarring contrast to the videos shown at the trial featuring apparently non-resisting or unconscious inmates being tased or struck repeatedly.)
“I think in holding the supervisors accountable that the jury was sending a message to the department that you cannot allow this trampling on the rights of human beings,” Kaye said.
ACLU legal director Peter Eliasberg agreed. “I think the jury is saying that even if inmates act out, that doesn’t mean all bets are off. That doesn’t mean you get to break skulls. That’s not what the law provides.”
It’s worth noting that Dan Cruz, the man on whom the jury focused the most punitive damages, was allowed to retire on January 1st of this year with his full pension, reportedly ahead of an Internal Affairs investigation. (Cruz had been on paid leave for the year prior pending the investigation, as WitnessLA’s Matt Fleisher reported here).
As WitnessLA reported back in late 2011, when Cruz served as captain of Men’s Central Jail from April 2008 until December 2010, force jumped in his first year on the job from 273 incidents to 330 incidents. Moreover, according to testimony before the Citizen’s Commission on Jail Violence, Cruz allowed piles of force packages to languish in desk drawers, uninvestigated. Those he did investigate, were reportedly generally rubber stamped as “within policy.”
Department spokesman Steve Whitmore told the LA Times that the department stands behind its deputies will “examine all legal remedies…”
For more on the case, see last week’s report here.
BRAIN SCANS BEING USED MORE OFTEN IN CRIMINAL COURT – THE GOOD NEWS & BAD NEWS
As, over the last two decades, more and more kids were tried as adults, juvenile justice experts and advocates have been pointing out the neuroscientific fact that kids brains are measurably less developed than those of adults.
Now, however, according to some experts, neuroscience is being brought into criminal trials more often and less carefully than might be wise reports Jon Hamilton for NPR’s Morning Edition.
Here are some clips:
About 5 percent of murder trials now involve some neuroscience, Farahany says. “There’s a steady increase of defendants seeking to introduce neuroscience to try to reduce the extent to which they’re responsible or the extent to which they’re punished for a crime,” she says.
Farahany was a featured speaker at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego this week. Also featured were several brain scientists who are uncomfortable with the way courts are using brain research.
When lawyers turn to neuroscience, often what’s at issue is a defendant’s competency, Farahany says. So a defense lawyer might argue that “you weren’t competent to have pled guilty because of some sort of brain injury,” she says, or that you weren’t competent to have confessed to a police officer after being arrested.
The approach has been most successful with cases involving teenagers, Farahany says.
“It seems like judges are particularly enamored with the adolescent brain science,” she says. “Large pieces of their opinions are dedicated to citing the neuroscientific studies, talking about brain development, and using that as a justification for treating juveniles differently.”
In truth, we found this last point a bit confusing. After all, shouldn’t we treat juveniles differently? Our laws require that we treat kids differently in many other important arenas, since they can’t sign contracts, drink, buy cigarettes, vote, have sex with a grown-up or, if they are under 17, see an R rated movie without an adult. And kids’ brains are indisputably different than those of adults.
Perhaps, the point that the neuroscientists were trying to make, is that they fear that the scientific information is in danger of being used wrongly and carelessly.
Here, for example, is the worry of another expert familiar with the issue:
A lot of the neuroscience presented in court is simply unnecessary, says Joshua Buckholtz, a psychologist at Harvard. “Anyone who’s every had a teenager would be able to tell you that their decision-making capacities are not comparable to adults,” he says.
And relying on brain science to defend juveniles could have unexpected consequences, Buckholtz says. For example, he says, if a prosecutor used an MRI scan to show that a 16-year-old who committed a capital crime had a very mature brain, “Would we then insist that we execute that juvenile?”
The task of integrating brain science into the judicial system will in large part be the responsibility of judges, Buckholtz says. And how it works will depend on how well judges understand “what a scientific study is and what it says and what it doesn’t say and can’t say,” he says.
In other words, scientific studies can be helpful—but only if they are accompanied by sound analysis and a lot of common sense.
LAPPL ASKS: IS IT EVER OKAY FOR COPS NOT TO USE SAFETY BELTS?
The LAPPL–the employees union for officers of the Los Angeles Police Department officers—has opened up an interesting dialogue on its blog
Here’s a big clip:
A report of the Department’s audit presented last week to the Los Angeles Police Commission is likely to rekindle the on-again/off-again debate on safety belt use by police officers and the extent to which tactical considerations should be a factor in non-use.
The report by Inspector General Alexander Bustamante said a review of the Department’s Traffic Collision Reports for the second quarter of 2012 “suggests the incidence of officer safety belt non-use could be as high as 37 percent.”
That percentage would be in line with national statistics. In the past three decades, at least 42 percent of police officers killed in vehicle crashes were not wearing safety belts or other safety restraints, according to a federal review by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). In fact, the NHTSA found that traffic-related incidents were the leading cause of law enforcement fatalities for 14 of the past 15 years.
“Aside from policy considerations,” Bustamante wrote, “the immediate concern regarding the officer non-use of safety belts is that officers are needlessly placing themselves at risk of injury. Our review identified that officers sustained injuries, sometimes serious, in almost 18 percent of the collisions when safety belts were not used. In contrast, when officers did use safety belts, they suffered injuries less than 7 percent of the time, and none of the injuries were serious.”
In researching officer fatalities over the years, we too had noted that a high percentage of officer deaths on duty occurred as a result of car crashes. So we’re glad that the union and Inspector General are opening the topic for serious discussion.
Jurors dwell in a different reality than do both the deputies and supervisors who used force in that row extraction and the inmate plaintiffs in this case. I would be willing to wager that none of those jurors has been in a fight in adult life. Their view of force and evidence collection is also warped by watching too many CSI and NCIS episodes.
As someone who watched the videos in this case, the inmates were not being passive while force was being used against them. That was a clever manipulation of the evidence by the plaintiffs’ attorneys.
And let’s talk about those plaintiffs for a second. All were hardcore Hispanic gangmembers. The real motive behind their lawsuit was never about money, it was about control of the jails. They will continue to use force while in custody. Their goal is to prevent force from being used against them.
Each day they continue to push the system to see how much the pendulum has now swung in their favor. Only a couple of weeks ago a Custody Assistant was beaten up by a gangmenber to test the system. After pounding the unwitting CA almost into unconsciousness, the inmate immediately threw himself on the ground and surrendered when the deputies arrived on the scene and the first arriving sergeant practically tossed her body in front of the deputies to make sure that absolutely no force was used against the inmate.
School is out inside the jails right now.
The missing video footage was very damning in this case. As was the fact that department managers were hampered by a cumbersome and antiquainted cell extraction policy. Add to that all the ongoing drama with the Sheriff and Cruz, and this was not going to end well for the LASD.
But please don’t expect anyone who has spent any time working in corrections in this state or serving hard time in a jail or prison to not know what was really behind this lawsuit or believe that excessive force was used here. Sactimonious civil rights lawyers can put their usual spin on this ball, but what the outcome of this lawsuit really means is that the jails of Los Angeles are now a far more dangerous place to work for the men and women assigned there.
“A Different Reality” that was an honorable attempt of explaining this incident. The sole reason this spun out of control was due to the Command Staff. Now before you label me as a Liberal or a donut eating dork sitting behind a desk, I have been in these situations as a 23 year old custody deputy to a 20 year veteran of a specialized unit. These deputies were emboldened by the Command Staff, they knew exactly what they could and could not do under that Command. These supervisors were promoted and placed into these command positions by Paul Tanaka. Look at all the recent supervisors that have “retired” while being investigated, all of them were promoted/assigned thru and under Tanaka.
This type of behavior takes place in custody where the deputy knows what he can get away with under the command of a line supervisor or sergeant. The sergeant knows which Lt. in command he can squeeze things by. The captain, which commander, and during that time frame it was all the way up to Tanaka. These individuals from 3 week custody deputies to 25 year veterans at the rank of captain, knew that Tanaka would handle it. Well, that seems to have gone the wrong way in recent times.
One can follow the paper trail of this conduct for the last 25 years under Tanaka. First as a boot field sergeant all the way to Under Sheriff. I don’t even hold Baca accountable because he has been so unattached. I was there, Tanaka ran the Department!
To make a statement that a juror or jury came to this decision because they “have never been in a fight as an adult” throws up a red flag that neither have you. The jury got it right going after the command staff, I am just sorry the young deputies were led into this by those that should never have led in the first place. By the way if you are slapping high fives, you are not in a “fight”. I can only imagine the carnage I would have witnessed if I saw a Captain slapping high fives to a 23 year old 3 month veteran in this situation.
Stuff, sadly, you have it right.
I’m really curious if the county will elect to not pay the punitive damages…
Point well taken, Stuff.
But I have looked into the the eyes of a Federal jury recently. Trust me, my assessment of their adult force experience is close to the mark. And in my 27 plus years on the job I have been round the block a time or two when it comes to using force.
Sheepdogs recognize sheep. Unfortunately, members of the flock are the ones passing the judgement on their protectors and the ones who are benefitting from their decisions are the wolves.
Sadly, the young sheepdogs are being led by some very foolish elder statesmen many with wolfish tendencies which keenly contributes to this mess.
Stuff Says – you are right, all Tanaka.