Ex-LA sheriff’s deputy admits violating rights of falsely imprisoned skateboarder

LOS ANGELES (CN) — A former deputy with the LA County Sheriff's Department has agreed to plead guilty for his part in a harebrained series of events in which he and his partner illegally detained a skateboarder, injured the young man when they crashed their SUV, and concocted a story that their victim was on drugs to justify their illegal actions.

Christopher Hernandez, 37, will plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to violate the civil rights of the 23-year-old man, according to a statement Thursday by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles.

The former deputy faces as long as five years in prison, though his actual sentence will likely be considerably less given that he is cooperating with the prosecution.

Prosecutors charged Hernandez and his former colleague Miguel Vega this past March in what reads like a script of a dark comedy. The two deputies at the Sheriff's Compton station were on patrol three years ago when they came across two Black men near a skateboard park. Believing that one of the two men was on probation, they got out of their SUV and ordered them to lift their shirts.

This prompted one of the people inside the skateboard park, only identified by his initials J.A., to yell at the officers to leave the two men alone. Vega, according to Hernandez's plea agreement, in turn yelled back at J.A. to shut up and challenged him to a fight.

As the verbal exchange escalated, Hernandez and Vega got back into their SUV, drove up to the opening in the fence of the enclosed skatepark, got out and Vega pulled J.A. into the back of their SUV. They didn't handcuff him or put a seatbelt on him, and Hernandez at no point believed that J.A. was under the influence of a stimulant, according to his plea deal.

Hernandez told the other people at the skatepark that they were detaining J.A. because he had challenged them to a fight, which wasn't true because it had been Vega that challenged J.A. to fight him.

After they drove off, Vega continued to taunt J.A. and, according to the plea agreement, threatened him by suggesting they were going to drop him in gang territory where he would get beat up. But as they drove through Compton, the officers spotted a group of young men near an intersection, one of whom appeared to grab his waistband before riding away on his bicycle down an alley.

Hernandez got out of the SUV and Vega, still with J.A. in the backseat, drove down the alley to pursue the man on the bicycle. That didn't go well because Vega almost immediately crashed the patrol SUV in the alley. J.A., who still wasn't wearing a seatbelt slammed his head in the crash and sustained a cut above his eye.

Vega then "kicked" J.A. out of the wrecked SUV and radioed for backup because he believed the man on the bicycle had tossed a gun away somewhere in the alley. The two deputies didn't tell their supervising sergeant who came to meet them that they had detained J.A. at the skatepark or that he was in the SUV when Vega crashed it.

J.A., however, was soon detained again by another deputy who believed he was the man Vega had been pursuing down the alley. J.A. was taken to an hospital to be treated for his cut, which needed stitches, and Hernandez instructed the deputy who had taken J.A. there to cite him for being under the influence of methamphetamine even though he knew that wasn't true.

Hernandez and Vega subsequently filed two incident reports littered with false information, according to the plea agreement. The false information included details about their detention of J.A. at the skatepark, claiming they had taken him in because he had exhibited symptoms of being under the influence, and that they didn't handcuff him or put a seatbelt on him because the crowd at the skatepark had been moving toward their SUV.

Vega is set to go on trial in October on charges of conspiracy to violate J.A.'s civil rights, deprivation of J.A.'s rights under color of law, witness tampering and making false statements.

Attorney for the two former deputies declined to comment on Hernandez's plea agreement.

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