After weeks of growing tension between Orange County's top law enforcement agencies, the district attorney Tuesday offered what he said was clear evidence that sheriff's deputies changed their stories and held to a "code of silence" in an assault case that ended with prosecutors dropping charges against a veteran deputy.
The case against Deputy Christopher Hibbs, accused of using excessive force by firing a Taser on a handcuffed suspect, was dropped last month after a hung-jury verdict, with jurors leaning 11-1 to acquit.
District attorney spokeswoman Susan Kang Schroeder said "inconsistencies" in the testimonies of Hibbs' fellow deputies prevented the case from succeeding and alluded to a "code of silence" between the lawmen.
Her comments sparked outrage from Sheriff Sandra Hutchens and the Assn. of Orange County Deputy Sheriffs, which demanded Schroeder's immediate resignation.
On Tuesday, Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas made his case, saying several deputies at the scene "softened" their version of events between the time they testified before a grand jury in 2008 and when they took the stand in the assault trial.
"The deputy sheriffs in this case were not truthful," he said, referring to the events on Sept 13, 2007, when Hibbs fired a Taser at Ignacio Lares, a convicted felon with outstanding warrants. Lares was handcuffed in the back seat of a squad car at the time.
District attorney officials said that none of the deputies at the scene reported the use of the Taser in the squad car during their initial write-ups of the incident. It was not until deputies allegedly began making jokes at the station house -- "What's your name? Clack, clack" -- that the event was investigated by the Sheriff's Department, which took the case to the district attorney.
Rackauckas said that Schroeder's statements about the "code of silence" referred only to the assault case and was not a comment on the entire agency. The statement seemed to quell some of the anger Hutchens expressed earlier with the district attorney.
"I was upset because when the statement was made, it seemed to refer to a pervasive code of silence in law enforcement in general, and nothing could be further from the truth," she said Tuesday.
