county counsel

Five years after her son was beaten so badly by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies that he needed more than 30 stitches and staples to his face and head, Vanessa Perez is still looking for answers. So are county officials tasked with holding the department accountable for misconduct.

Despite a subpoena and an ongoing legal battle, obtaining a complete account of what happened to Vanessa’s son Joseph Perez has proved impossible — at least so far.

The sheriff’s department has released a heavily redacted report outlining its version of what transpired in the San Gabriel Valley community of East Valinda on July 27, 2020.

According to the report, deputies from the Industry Station stopped Joseph, 27, on suspicion of breaking into a car. He punched and kicked them multiple times, the document states. Three deputies injured their hands and a fourth broke his leg falling off a curb. Six deputies punched Joseph and deployed various holds and takedowns before he was arrested and charged with five counts of resisting an executive officer, court records show.

But entire pages of the department’s “use of force” report are blacked out, leaving Vanessa and members of the Civilian Oversight Commission wondering what details are being kept secret.

County oversight officials issued three subpoenas in February for cases under scrutiny, including one seeking an unredacted copy of the Perez file. The County Counsel’s Office has resisted, arguing the files should remain confidential, and the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department has declined to hand them over.

Amid the subpoena standoff, Vanessa, 43, shows up to speak at nearly every monthly meeting of the oversight commission in a black T-shirt with a picture of her son’s bloodied face.

“Surviving an arrest shouldn’t look like Joseph. And it shouldn’t look like 121 punches either. That’s what they admitted to,“ she told The Times, referring to an unofficial tally she made based on the deputies’ statements in the redacted document.

Vanessa Perez holds a photograph of her son, Joseph Perez, taken after he was beaten by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies in July 2020.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

The beating was so severe, she said, it left her son struggling to carry on a conversation.

“He’s not able to do that anymore,” she said. “It’s just hard for him to socialize, period, with the constant fear.”

A month after the oversight commission‘s subpoena, L.A. County Sheriff Robert Luna responded by filing a lawsuit, asking a court to determine whether his department must comply. Luna said at the time that the County Counsel’s Office had advised the department that releasing the documents “violates the law.”

In a statement to The Times, the sheriff’s department said it is “taking deliberate steps to resolve the dispute and ensure its actions align with both the law and the principles of transparency.”

Last month, the County Counsel’s Office said in a statement that it “has fully supported” the commission “in its efforts to seek the information it needs to play a powerful oversight role on behalf of LA County citizens. This includes assisting with a declaratory relief action that will hopefully bring judicial clarity to the commission’s ability to obtain the information it seeks.”

Joseph maintains he was not the aggressor in the July 2020 incident. His mother said he was in the middle of a “mental health episode.”

Court records show Joseph has been jailed multiple times since on a range of charges, including methamphetamine possession and damaging a vehicle. In August 2022, he pleaded no contest to one of the five charges from the beating incident and was sentenced to 32 months in state prison.

He is currently incarcerated at Pitchess Detention Center in Castaic after violating his probation from a separate case in which he was convicted of resisting two West Covina police officers.

He has struggled with addiction and been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, depression and psychosis, according to his mother.

Anne Golden, Joseph’s public defender, said in a recent court hearing that he suffers from impaired executive functioning due to a traumatic brain injury inflicted by the deputies.

In a brief phone call last month from jail, Joseph told The Times he believes the full report about what happened to him should be released to “show that I was in the right.”

Vanessa Perez holds a photo of her and her son, Joseph Perez.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

“They’re lying about a lot of stuff with my case,” he said. “They lied about how it went down; they’re saying I’m the aggressor when I wasn’t. The reality is they beat me up — they left me for dead.”

The sheriff’s department said the deputies involved in the incident declined to comment.

The department said in a statement that every use of force “incident is thoroughly reviewed to evaluate if policies and procedures were followed,” adding that in “this incident, the use of force … was determined to be within policy.”

Oversight officials seeking records related to Joseph’s case and others have been stymied at every turn, according to Loyola Law School professor Sean Kennedy. Kennedy resigned from the commission in February following a dispute with county lawyers over another matter.

“To have effective and meaningful civilian oversight, it’s necessary for the commission to be able to review confidential documents about police misconduct and use of force,” Kennedy said. “Without that, this is all just oversight theater.”

Last month, Robert Bonner, the oversight commission’s chair, revealed that L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger intended to replace him despite his desire to stay on and finish ongoing work.

Barger said in an email last month that the move “reflects my desire to continue cultivating public trust in the oversight process by introducing new perspectives that support the Commission’s vital work.”

During the commission’s June 26 meeting, Bonner, 84, alleged that powerful people in county government do not want meaningful oversight over the sheriff’s department. A former federal judge who once served as U.S. attorney in Los Angeles and led the Drug Enforcement Administration, Bonner was fiery in his remarks.

He said he believed the County Counsel’s Office was advising the sheriff to withhold documents as a means of “telling this commission what it can and can’t do, and that goes over the line.”

“They treat our subpoenas like public record requests,” Bonner said.

The Civilian Oversight Commission has said it is willing to go into closed session to review the full reports, but the county’s lawyers argue that’s not legal.

On Tuesday, the state Senate’s public safety committee approved a bill previously approved by the state Assembly that would allow oversight commissions across California to conduct closed sessions to review personnel records and other confidential materials.

But the proposal, AB 847, still requires approval from the full state Senate and governor. And even if it does become law, the county counsel’s office argues that the L.A. County code explicitly bars the commission from reviewing sensitive documents in closed session.

Robert Bonner, chair of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Civilian Oversight Commission, speaks during the commission’s meeting at St. Anne’s Family Services in L.A. on June 26.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Bonner has pushed for the county code to be changed, saying he and other members of the oversight body “vigorously disagree with County Counsel’s interpretation” of it.

“This commission needs subpoena power to be effective, and it needs to have effective subpoena power, which means it needs to be able to go into closed session,” Bonner said during the commission’s June meeting.

The sheriff’s department said it “will abide by the ultimate judicial determination as to whether those records can be lawfully disclosed.”

Whether the oversight body can issue subpoenas is not in dispute. In March 2020 — four months before Joseph was beaten — L.A. County voters overwhelmingly approved Measure R, a ballot initiative that granted the commission subpoena power.

But the county is thwarting the legal orders, according to Bert Deixler, former special counsel to the Civilian Oversight Commission. That intransigence, he said, contributes to a culture of impunity in the sheriff’s department.

“More momentum will be built in the wrong direction, the county will continue to get sued, the county continues to have more and more financial challenges, and it’s a race to the bottom,” he said.

On June 3, Vanessa Perez drove in from her home in West Covina to attend a hearing for her son at the Stanley Mosk Courthouse in downtown L.A.

After waiting several hours for him to emerge, she became emotional as Joseph finally walked into the courtroom through a side door. His hands were cuffed in front of his wrinkled yellow jail T-shirt and his ear lobes were stretched with white paper plugs over his tattooed neck.

Vanessa Perez stands at the location in East Valinda where her son, Joseph Perez, was beaten by Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies in July 2020.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

But despite his lawyer’s pleas for the court to allow Joseph to enter a job training program and immediately begin receiving treatment for his mental health problems, Judge James Bianco ordered him to remain behind bars pending a mental health diversion reinstatement hearing.

“Mr. Perez has been given all the chances that I’m inclined to give him,” Bianco said.

Joseph looked back at his mother once before being escorted back out of the courtroom.

While her son remains locked up for now, Vanessa is demanding the unredacted version of the beating report be made public. She wants to understand why his beating didn’t warrant an internal affairs investigation or discipline for the deputies involved.

“We know Joseph wasn’t the first and won’t be the last,” she said. “With Joseph’s story exposed we … will know how they lied, how they covered their asses, from the deputies to the sergeant to the captain.”

When a top official responsible for oversight of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department announced recently that he is being forced out of his position, it brought to a fever pitch tensions that had been building for months.

On one side are watchdogs who say efforts to bring reforms and transparency to the Sheriff’s Department are being stymied. On the other are county officials who claim fresh perspectives are needed on the Civilian Oversight Commission.

The showdown is playing out as the commission continues fighting the county for access to internal sheriff’s department records on deputy misconduct, including investigations into gang-like cliques said to rule over certain stations and promote a culture of violence.

Robert Bonner, the oversight commission chair, wrote in a letter last month that he was “involuntarily leaving” the body he has been a member of since its founding in 2016. Bonner, 83, said in an interview that he was chairing the commission’s May meeting at the L.A. County Hall of Records when he unexpectedly received a letter from County Supervisor Kathryn Barger stating that she would be appointing someone to replace him.

On Thursday, Bonner gave his first address to the commission since revealing his time as chair will end this month.

Bonner said he was “still surprised” that he had been “dismissed without so much as a phone call from Supervisor Barger.”

And he had choice words for other county operators that he described as thorns in the commission’s side.

“It can be treacherous. The county bureaucrats — and this includes, by the way, the county counsel’s office — they guard their turf and see an independent commission as a threat to that turf,” Bonner said.

“There are forces within the county,” he added later, “that do not want to see real, effective and meaningful oversight over the sheriff’s department.”

Helen Chavez, a spokesperson for Barger, said in an email that Bonner’s claims that the supervisor summarily dismissed him were made “for dramatic effect” and “are not only inaccurate but also mischaracterize the circumstances of his departure” from the commission.

“His assertion that his presence alone was essential to achieving reforms is both self-serving and dismissive of the dedicated Commissioners and staff who are collectively advancing the Civilian Oversight Commission’s mission,” the statement said. “These reforms are bigger than any one individual, and they will continue without interruption.”

Barger, who chairs the county‘s Board of Supervisors, told The Times in a statement last month that she is “committed to broadening the diversity of voices and expertise represented on the Commission.”

Fifth District Supervisor Kathryn Barger attends a Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors meeting in 2023.

(Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times)

She said her decision to replace Bonner “reflects my desire to continue cultivating public trust in the oversight process by introducing new perspectives that support the Commission’s vital work.”

On Thursday, Patti Giggans, an ally of Bonner’s on the commission, stood up for the departing chairman during what he said would likely be the last of the body’s monthly meetings he’d attend as a commissioner.

“I have a feeling all of us here, all the commissioners, appreciate your leadership, your tenacity, your brilliance and courage to go up against forces that are not necessarily yet in agreement with what effective oversight means,” she said.

The County Counsel’s office said in an email that it “has fully supported the COC, as an advisory body to the Board, in its efforts to seek the information it needs to play a powerful oversight role on behalf of LA County citizens.”

But some observers note that the county counsel is in an awkward position, since the office represents multiple parties involved. That includes the Civilian Oversight Commission, which has been trying to enforce subpoenas, as well as Barger’s office and the sheriff’s department.

Peter Eliasberg, chief counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, said it seems to him that nearly every time such a dispute comes up, the county’s lawyers side with the sheriff’s department.

“It’s either intentional or it’s incredibly short-sighted for Commissioner Bonner to be pushed out at this point, at a time when he’s been spearheading incredibly important reforms,” Eliasberg said. “It feels to me like this is an effort once again to hamstring this commission.”

Bonner, who previously served as a federal judge and was head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, isn’t the only commissioner to acrimoniously leave the oversight body this year.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna, right, talks with former oversight official Sean Kennedy during the annual Baker to Vegas law enforcement relay on April 5 in Baker, Calif.

(William Liang / For The Times)

In February, Loyola Law School professor Sean Kennedy resigned after county lawyers sought to stop him from filing a brief in court in support of Diana Teran, an advisor to former L.A. County Dist. Atty. George Gascón who faced felony charges from the state. Teran was accused of improperly accessing records about sheriff’s deputies, but a state appellate court recently moved to dismiss the case.

Kennedy said in February that he quit because he believed it was “not appropriate for the County Counsel to control the COC’s independent oversight decisions.”

Last month, Kennedy received notification that a law firm had “been engaged by the Office of the County Counsel” to investigate him for allegedly retaliating against a sergeant in the sheriff’s department who had faced oversight scrutiny. Kennedy has denied any wrongdoing, claiming the probe against him is politically motivated.

In an email this week, Kennedy described Bonner’s removal as “the death-knell for meaningful civilian oversight of the LASD.” He claimed that the Board of Supervisors “supports the sheriff in preventing the commissioners from accessing confidential documents to do their job.”

Barger’s office pushed back against the criticism, pointing to correspondence from Bonner earlier this year that the supervisor’s office said suggested he was willing to step down.

In an April 18 email to Barger, Bonner wrote that “if you decide not to reappoint me, please be assured that I am fine with that.”

Chavez, Barger’s spokesperson, questioned the “stark contrast” between “his posture and tone” then compared with Bonner’s recent public remarks.

Bonner told The Times he followed up his April 18 email to express that he “wanted to be extended” to achieve his goals as chair.

“I never wanted to her to think I lusted for the job,” Bonner said in a text message.

The abrupt departures of Bonner and Kennedy have raised concerns about who will fill the void they leave behind.

The Civilian Oversight Commission voted on Thursday for the body’s co-vice chair, Hans Johnson, to fill Bonner’s shoes when his time in the role concludes on July 17.

“The loss of Rob and Sean, who were deeply committed to getting to the bottom of problems in the sheriff’s department, is a blow to the county,” said Bert Deixler, former special counsel to the oversight commission. “These were two special guys who knew what they were talking about. Long, long history.”

Deixler attributed the turmoil to “political machinations” within the county and decried the move to replace Bonner.

“I just can’t understand it,” he said. “There couldn’t be a merits-based reason for making that decision.”

At the commission’s meeting Thursday, Bonner listed several goals he had hoped to accomplish before his time as chair ends. His priorities included bolstering the board’s ability to conduct effective oversight and compelling a commitment by Sheriff Robert Luna to enact a ban on deputy gangs and cliques.

It’s not yet clear how Bonner’s dismissal will affect those plans.

“I’m leaving,” he said. “You guys have got to pick up the ball here after July 17.”

The former chairman of the Los Angeles County Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission is under investigation for alleged retaliation against a Sheriff’s Department sergeant who faced scrutiny for his role in a unit accused of pursuing politically motivated cases.

Sean Kennedy, a Loyola Law School professor who resigned from the commission this year, received notification from a law firm that said it had “been engaged by the Office of the County Counsel to conduct a neutral investigation into an allegation that you retaliated against Sergeant Max Fernandez,” according to an email reviewed by The Times.

Kennedy and other members of the commission questioned Fernandez last year about his connections to the Sheriff’s Department’s now-disbanded Civil Rights and Public Integrity Detail, a controversial unit that operated under then-Sheriff Alex Villanueva.

Kennedy said the commission’s inquiry into Fernandez appears to be what landed him in the crosshairs of the investigation he now faces. Kennedy denied any wrongdoing in a text message Thursday.

“I was just doing my job as an oversight official tasked by the commission to conduct the questioning at an official public hearing,” he wrote.

Last week, Kennedy received an email from Matthias H. Wagener, co-partner of Wagener Law, stating that the county had launched an investigation.

“The main allegation is that you attempted to discredit Sergeant Fernandez in various ways because of his role in investigating Commissioner Patti Giggans during his tenure on the former Civil Rights & Public Corruption Detail Unit,” Wagener wrote. “It has been alleged that you retaliated for personal reasons relating to your relationship with Commissioner Giggans, as her friend and her attorney.”

The Office of the County Counsel confirmed in an emailed statement that “a confidential workplace investigation into recent allegations of retaliation” is underway, but declined to identify whom it is investigating or who alleged retaliation, citing a need to “ensure the integrity of the investigation and to protect the privacy of” the parties.

“In accordance with its anti-retaliation policies and procedures, LA County investigates complaints made by employees who allege they have been subjected to retaliation for engaging in protected activities in the workplace,” the statement said.

The Sheriff’s Department said in an email that it “has no investigation into Mr. Kennedy.”

Reached by phone Thursday, Fernandez said that he doesn’t “know anything about” the investigation and that he has not “talked to anybody at county counsel.”

“This is the first I’m hearing about it,” he said. “Who started this investigation? They haven’t contacted me. I don’t know how that got into their hands.”

In a phone interview, Kennedy described the inquiry as “extraordinary.”

“I think that this is just the latest in a long line of Sheriff’s Department employees doing really anything they can to thwart meaningful oversight,” Kennedy said. “So now we’re at the point where they’re filing bogus retaliation complaints against commissioners for doing their jobs.”

Kennedy resigned from the Civilian Oversight Commission in February after county lawyers attempted to thwart the body from filing an amicus brief in the criminal case against Diana Teran, who served as an advisor to then-L.A. County Dist. Atty. George Gascón.

The public corruption unit led several high-profile investigations during Villanueva’s term as sheriff, including inquiries into Giggans, the Civilian Oversight Commission, then-L.A. County Supervisor Shelia Kuehl and former Times reporter Maya Lau.

One of the unit’s investigations involved a whistleblower who alleged that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority unfairly awarded more than $800,000 worth of contracts to a nonprofit run by Giggans, a friend of Kuehl’s and vocal critic of Villanueva. The investigation made headlines when sheriff’s deputies with guns and battering rams raided Kuehl’s Santa Monica home one early morning in 2022.

The investigation ended without any criminal charges last summer, when the California Department of Justice concluded that there was a “lack of evidence of wrongdoing.”

Asked Thursday about the claim that Kennedy — who served as a lawyer for her while she was being investigated by the public corruption unit — interrogated Fernandez as a form of retaliation, Giggans called it “bogus” and said Fernandez “was subpoenaed because of his actions as a rogue sheriff’s deputy.”

Lau filed a lawsuit last month alleging the criminal investigation into her activities as a journalist violated her 1st Amendment rights. California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta ultimately declined to prosecute the case against Lau.

Critics have repeatedly alleged that Villanueva used the unit to target his political enemies, a charge the former sheriff has disputed.

In October, Kennedy and other members of the Civilian Oversight Commission spent five hours interrogating Fernandez and former homicide Det. Mark Lillienfeld about the public corruption unit, of which they were members.

Kennedy questioned Fernandez’s credibility during the exchange, asking about People vs. Aquino, a ruling by an appellate court in the mid-2000s that found he had provided false testimony during a criminal trial that was “deliberate and no slip of the tongue.”

Fernandez argued that he had “never lied on the stand,” adding that “that’s ridiculous, I’m an anti-corruption cop.”

Fernandez also fielded questions about whether he was a member of a deputy gang. Critics have accused deputy cliques of engaging in brawls and other misconduct.

Fernandez said he was not in a deputy gang or problematic subgroup. But he acknowledged that he drew a picture of a warrior in the early 2000s that he got tattooed on his body.

A lieutenant tattooed with that image previously testified that it is associated with the Gladiators deputy subgroup, of which Fernandez has denied being a member.

Kennedy also asked Fernandez about a 2003 incident in which he shot and killed a 27-year-old man in Compton. Fernandez alleged the man pointed a gun at him, but sheriff’s investigators later found he was unarmed.

In a 2021 memo to oversight officials, Kennedy called for a state or federal investigation into the Civil Rights and Public Integrity Detail and its “pattern of targeting” critics of the Sheriff’s Department.

Then-Undersheriff Tim Murakami responded in a letter, writing that the memo contained “wild accusations.”

On May 30, Wagener questioned Kennedy about “why I examined Max Fernandez about his fatal shooting of a community member, his Gladiators tattoo, his perjury in People v. Aquino, and why he put references to people’s sexual orientation in a search warrant application,” Kennedy wrote in a text message Thursday. “I told him I was just asking questions that relate to oversight.”

Robert Bonner, chair of the Civilian Oversight Commission, provided an emailed statement that called the investigation into Kennedy “extremely troubling and terribly ironic.”

“The allegation itself is rich,” Bonner wrote. “But that [it is being] given any credence by County Counsel can only serve to intimidate other Commissioners from asking hard questions.”