Police Shootings / Possible Abuse Threads [merged]

Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials concluded that two deputies acted within department policy when they confronted and one of them shot Isaias Cervantes, a mentally disabled man in his home in 2021. A corrective action plan (at least, the portion that is public) identified nothing in sheriff's policies or procedures that needs to be changed to prevent a similar shooting.

So it seems incongruous that county lawyers are suggesting that the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday sign off on an astounding $25 million to settle a lawsuit brought on behalf of Cervantes, who was paralyzed as a result of the March 31, 2021, shooting.

That’s a huge payout, even for Los Angeles County, which spent $257 million on legal settlements and judgments last year. More than half of that amount was attributable to lawsuits against the Sheriff’s Department. Liabilities that run that high signal serious problems in county policies and employee conduct. They should be accompanied by meaningful improvements.

But the summary corrective action plan notes no department-wide or systemic changes, and no response beyond reminding personnel of department protocols.

Department use-of-force investigators and county officials cited problems at several stages of the response, including the failure of desk personnel to ask about the nature of Cervantes’ mental impairment and the failure to send a Mental Evaluation Team as part of the response.

Once deputies arrived on the scene, though, they were deemed to have done nothing officially wrong. Similar conclusions have been reached in many other cases, in L.A. and around the country, in which families called for assistance with a mentally disabled or disturbed relative, beginning a series of entirely foreseeable events that concluded with law enforcement officers killing or seriously injuring the person they were there ostensibly to help.

The Cervantes case was unusual in that the shooting victim survived. To add insult to serious injury, the Sheriff’s Department asked the district attorney to charge Cervantes with assault and resisting arrest — although there was no arrest. Prosecutors declined. Nor did they charge the deputies.

The Board of Supervisors generally signs off on lawsuit settlements, even huge ones like the Cervantes case, without comment to the public. That may satisfy the Sheriff’s Department and county lawyers, but it leaves taxpayers holding the bag without assurance that the county will try to prevent a recurrence. And it exposes a continuing gulf between citizens who call for service and law enforcement personnel who respond...........


https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crim...S&cvid=da0dda539bd0449fa6117c15f45db2cf&ei=15
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2024-04-08/isaias-cervantes-payout