‘Psychologically tortured’: California city pays man nearly $1m after 17-hour police interrogation

Stopthatgirl7@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 583 points – ‘Psychologically tortured’: California city pays man nearly $1m after 17-hour police interrogation
theguardian.com

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.

61

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.

Don’t be rude or annoying, but yeah. Pretty much.

Probably won’t get into trouble if you tell a cop at a traffic stop that you’re going home from work, unless you’re drunk off your socks, but generally it’s best to politely not answer.

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.

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?

I always assumed a court order payment wouldn’t be taxed

Unfortunately that is not true. The only tax-free court imposed restitution is that of physical pain and suffering not mental anguish. There may be other small caveats like hospitalization for mental but yeah, if you get a settlement expect the govt to come looking for its cut after the lawyer takes theirs.

I didn’t have to pay tax on the small claims court case I won. Other cities/states might be different.

I agree it shouldn't. At the end of the day that money has already been taxed once. It should go to the person as if it was already theirs, because it's making up for something that should have been theirs.

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

ACAB

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.

~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~

ACAB because even if they’re not “bad cops”, they protect the bad cops with their silence. Any cops that breaks the blue line gets fucked over until they leave. Or worse.

Yet they want everyone else narcing and snitching

well, yeah. it's hard to do their job without snitches. I mean. all that paperwork? uhg. who has time for proper investigation?

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.

Didn't know what that stood for, I had to look it up.

Constantly as wrong as possible about their own stupid links

Starting to feel willful, honestly

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.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frazier_v._Cupp

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.

my brother has a couple mental issues on that he should have had an appropriate adult in the room

My brother is now a police officer himself which is wild.

Yah, that tracks.

I’m not sure if you’re doubting me or saying all the police have mental health issues.

All police have mental health issues.

The biggest bullies I know (USA) all became cops for the sole reason to keep bullying people.

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

The language in you is horrendous and I’m the yob.

You don’t know me. Are you out protesting for Palestine’s freedom every weekend? Protesting for the freedom of Sudan?

You never had a fight in your life. Particularly a fight again a person who jumped you with all their mates.

Sure I can’t defend the fraud against someone like you, but I would take take take from any corporation that does the same to its employees. I’m just bending the rules when doing scams like that.

Sure on the whole the police do a good job, but it doesn’t change the fact that they lie, racially profile people, and have murders and rapists in their ranks.

Kind of disrespect of you to call them pigs whilst defending their honour.

Look at our comments here and the language we have used and I would say you sound like the yob. Are you from the UK? As I would love to talk about this in person. (That’s not a threat of violence, I am genuinely interested in debating with people with different views).

Have you ever seen the police telling homeless people they can’t be homeless in that particular spot. Have you ever seen them refusing homeless people access to a bathroom because a minority of them have done drugs in a bathroom.

Just like the rest of society the police has good people and bad people.

Sorry I thought that was a copypasta to start with 😂

As you were

My biggest take from this is you thinking that stealing from a company, who then pass on the costs of theft to the consumer, is "bending the rules", despite your crimes directly costing other consumers money

Also your assumptions about my beliefs and commitments are funny :)

I've been homeless myself and the majority of homeless I hung out with were utter dickheads who got themselves into that situation despite being offered help, and regularly antagonised the police with drunken behaviour

Go figure 😂

Eh I couldn’t care less. Imma take what I can get. Can’t beat em join.

Thanks for your anecdotal evidence on homeless people. Been there too, well hostels and I found it to be the opposite.

Imma take what I can get

"Even if I didn't earn it and even if it costs other less well-off people money because of my greed"

Did you beat them? Did you join them? Umm...no. You just created more problems for your peers.

I hate to use the phrase "circles back" but this circles back to my calling you a cunt, and I'm going to add the adjective "selfish" now 😂

Do corporations earn everything they have?

In the UK we looking like renationalising the water companies after they’ve essentially taken out any profits done no work to better services or infrastructure over the same time, so regardless of what you say I don’t give a shit bro.

I’m looking out for me and mine and yall can do the same.

May be a cunt mate but I’ll stand by what I do and own that shit.

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.

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.