‘Psychologically tortured’: California city pays man nearly $1m after 17-hour police interrogation
‘Psychologically tortured’: California city pays man nearly $1m after 17-hour police interrogation
Officers threatened to kill the dog of Thomas Perez Jr as they pressured him to falsely confess to killing his father, who was alive
A California city has agreed to pay $900,000 to a man who was subjected to a 17-hour police interrogation in which officers pressured him to falsely confess to murdering his father, who was alive.
During the 2018 interrogation of Thomas Perez Jr by police in Fontana, a city east of Los Angeles, officers suggested they would have Perez’s dog euthanized as a result of his actions, according to a complaint and footage of the encounter. A judge said the questioning appeared to be “unconstitutional psychological torture”, and the city agreed to settle Perez’s lawsuit for $898,000, his lawyer announced this week.
The extraordinary case of a coerced false confession has sparked widespread outrage, with footage showing Perez in extreme emotional and physical distress, including as officers brought his dog in and said the animal would need to be put down due to “depression” from witnessing a murder that had not actually occurred.
Remember- never talk to cops.
They are not your friends. They are not there to help, protect or otherwise serve you.
They are there solely to build a case against you, and if they can, they will charge you with anything they find.
They will lie about the law- if they even know what it actually says- lie about what they know. They will twist you up and get you to say anything.
Demand a lawyer and shut the fuck up. Do not consent to a search, do not let them inside. Do not fall for the "if you're innocent". demand a lawyer and shut the fuck up. You have no obligation to talk to them. you have no obligation to answer their questions.
There was a Breaking Bad ( or maybe Better Call Saul?) Episode where a character was hauled in for questioning and the only reply he would give was "Lawyer." That's exactly what someone should do in that situation.
No. Be explicit. "I invoke my right to remain silent, and I invoke my right to an attorney." The Supreme Court has held that you must "unambiguously request counsel". If you say "give me a lawyer, dog", the state of Louisiana will decline to give you a "lawyer dog".
You need to actively and clearly say you are invoking your fifth amendment privileges to not answer questions and that you want a lawyer.
Do not use slang, there are dirty judges out there that will rule against you if you say “I want my lawyer dog”
Me know what it means, but the legal system will deliberately trip you, that dog thing is an actual example
I absolutely agree. And I absolutely hate the “protect and serve” shit on militarized police forces where their success metric is number of tickets, arrests, and convictions. The system is working as intended, the police exist to protect and serve capital interests.
“Protect and Serve” is accurate, but it’s not towards us. People need to realize that.
Every day is "Shut the Fuck Up Friday."
The biggest thing to remember is that cops are allowed to lie to you! Yes, they are allowed to lie to you and trick you into confessing.
Lying about witnesses accusing you is bad enough. But they’re well known to blatantly lie about things like what the law actually is, or sentencing or how good a deal you can get for confessing.
The worst part is the final deal is up to the judge, usually following the recommendations of the prosecution- not cops.
Most of their games are curtailed significantly even having an incredibly shitty public defender. (Don’t mean to rag on them. They’re fighting the good fight. But they’re over worked and spread too thin. A public defender is never going to compare to a private attorney- never mind an entire legal team. Just saying even the absolute worst legal aid you can think of is going to stop most of it.)
I like how each subsequent time the dollar amount is mentioned, you learn that the previous number had been rounded up.
Man awarded $1m is glad to receive $900,000. That $898,000 will make him feel better but is $897,600 really adequate compensation? However, it's kind of unfair that the tax payers end up footing this $897,550 bill.
It fits right in with this bad cop story.
Not to mention the taxes hell pay on the award, right back to the govt that detailed him. That'd burn my britches
Wait, that doesn’t count as income and get taxed does it? I always assumed a court order payment wouldn’t be taxed because it’s only being awarded to make you “whole”. You don’t pay taxes on the money you get from your insurance when your car gets totaled, why would court ordered restitution be any different?
Is the man named GOB? in his 897 thousand, five hundred forty five dollar [law]suit! Come on!
I liked the reference
they don't allow you to bring bees in here
In case anyone forgot, ACAB
Does anyone think the officers who did this are going to face legal consequences? Does anyone think they feel a shred of remorse for what they did? Does anyone think that after they come back from their paid leave that any of their fellow officers are going to speak out against their return?
No?
ACAB. Fuck them all.
They fuck up, get paid vacations and tax payers pay for their mistakes. Yup, they will do it again
Didn't know what that stood for, I had to look it up.
I'm going to hope that's wrong, and that it's just a certain percentage in any professional caste that has bad apples.
I am willing to believe that the percentage of bad apples is larger in law enforcement, only because of the type of people who would gravitate to that type of position that would give them control over others, and how much money is spent on monitoring law enforcement personnel by the government for legal and ethics compliance, as well as mental suitability to do the job.
And no need to reply to me with every bad thing that's ever been done by police officers. I read them all, here, as well as elsewhere. I just can't subscribe to the 100% pop that ACAB stands for.
People tend to forget the full saying, so just for posterity:
A few bad apples ruin the bunch
You know what bad cops call the good cops?
Accomplice.
Imagine how many people doing time right now cause they got bullied to confess.
And as always always always happens in cases like this, there's no indication that the officers involved were disciplined in any way.
Number one is go back and rehexamine every confession to come out of this station, and/or these cops. Good payday for defense lawyers looking get some innocent folks out of the klink.
Shame taxpayers foot the bill
Fun fact: The Supreme Court ruled in 1969 that cops do have the right to lie to you.
The police in the UK lied to me when I was 18 after a group fight on a night out.
Next thing I know we are up in Magistrates Court (max sentence 6 months in jail), they say nah fam this is too serious for us let’s send it up to Crown Court (no max sentence). In the end we end up with 300 hours of community service and a fine.
I’ll never trust the police again. Like sure if there is a serial killer about I’m gonna tell em what I know. If I’m under suspicion they get no comment all day long. They ain’t here to help us.
Fun side story. Which I preface by saying I’m a good boy now.
Me and my brother worked a call center and a scam going where we would get orders diverted to stores and go collect them and sell them. Like MacBooks and high end cameras etc.
Get fired without a word being said. Literally taken of the phone and walked out without a word.
6+ months later my Nana calls as she is house sitting at my mums whilst she on holiday, saying the police are here for me.
I speak on the phone and like yeah bro I don’t live there and I’m finna go to work right now, but I’ll hand myself into the station in a couple of days.
I arrange a solicitor and tell my brother to do the same. He’s a bit of a neek and just goes in alone and tells them everything and has a panic attack in the interview room.
But you see my brother has a couple mental issues on that he should have had an appropriate adult in the room so anything he said was inadmissible in court.
I rock up and hand myself in. Get shoved in a cell for 10 hours waiting for my solicitor. He comes asked how I did the scam and was like damn bro that’s sick. Anyway he’s like just say no comment to an everything. So I did and honestly it’s harder than it seems to do that when you like being polite.
So they knew for a fact we did this thing but had to go NFA (No further action) as they couldn’t prove it.
More fun. My brother is now a police officer himself which is wild.
a group fight on a night out.
and a scam going where we would get orders diverted to stores
I’m a good boy now.
They ain’t here to help us.
Au contraire, they're here to protect us from cunts like you, and by and large, they do a good job considering how restricted they are. Yes, they bend the rules because the rules protect the scammers and the yobs too much
I'll get downvoted to fuck by yanks who think the police in other countries are fucked up militia like theirs, but in Europe, if you're not a cunt, the pigs are generally sound.
If you think the UK pigs are cunts, it's you that's the cunt
Not a pig btw
I hope these disgusting cops get fired and prosecuted for what they did to this poor guy (and his dog). But that's not how it seems to works. These scumbag will probably just get put on paid administrative leave until another police department recruits them. And then they will become a nightmare for the residents of a different location.
That is so fucking vile. Holy shit.
ACAB every damn day and yet again sadly the bad cops get no punishment and we literally pay for their ACAB behavior.
You should see what hospitals do.
Read the books Psychiatric Slavery and Cruel Compassion by psychiatrist Thomas Szasz.
Easy cash right here, where do I apply?
I could really use an extra million for 17 hour job of me acting abused and tortured (not that this guy was acting). It’s my dream job
It is not. If it was consensual it might be. If it's real it's not.
Surpressing your empathy in face of dire news is your right. We all have to in order to psychologically survive these times.
I think you shouldn't act out that surpression as a funny joke in public. This adds to the brutalization of the public, wich we can't really afford in these times, if we want them to become more human, more bearable
1 million for 17 hrs? unless they were proping him anally for those 17 hrs non-stop, I think it was too much. A lot of false-prison sentences get less than 1 million a year. They should also fire and fine the cops who caused this loss
They caused him to try to kill himself. $1m is low in my opinion. I just wish it came out of the cops retirement fund.