Police Misconduct

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department has suspended three deputies and opened a criminal investigation into allegations that they assaulted a jail inmate and pepper-sprayed his genital area. The investigation started after Alejandro Franco, 23, alleged that jailers, upset because he swore at one of them, took him to an isolated place and assaulted him in November.

A director of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department's Multicultural Advisory Council has been stripped of his reserve deputy status after Glendale police complained that he showed up at the scene of a suicide last week, flashing his badge and demanding access to a restricted area. The Glendale incident marks the latest in a string of cases in which reserve deputies or volunteers working for sheriff's departments around Southern California have been accused of overstepping their authority.

The state attorney general is reviewing whether interim Orange County Sheriff Jack Anderson broke the law by appearing in uniform while trying to dissuade the San Clemente City Council from endorsing a former sheriff's lieutenant as a replacement for indicted Sheriff Michael S. Carona, who later resigned. During a council meeting in November, shortly after Carona was indicted on corruption charges, Anderson, then an assistant sheriff, told the council members that Lt.

Winston Hayes knows it was probably the "biggest mistake" of his life when he led Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies on a low-speed chase through a Compton neighborhood three years ago: He was driving under the influence, evading arrest and was shot at 120 times by deputies during a wild incident captured by a freelance cameraman and televised on newscasts nationwide. "Mr.

Once a month, Ilana Rosenzweig faces an angry crowd at the public meeting of the Police Board and tries to convince them that the bad old days of corrupt Chicago cops are coming to an end. It's a tough sell for the Los Angeles lawyer, who became chief administrator of Chicago's Independent Police Review Authority in September.

Los Angeles Police Department investigators routinely fail to fully investigate citizens' complaints against allegedly abusive officers, often omitting or altering crucial information in ways that help exonerate the officers, according to a report to be released today. The 34-page report by the Police Commission's inspector general raises questions about the department's ability to police itself, adding to still-unresolved problems highlighted in previous reports.

The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to reconsider the reach of the "exclusionary rule," a doctrine that has been controversial since the 1960s because it requires judges to throw out evidence if it was obtained improperly by the police. Several of the court's conservatives, including Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Antonin Scalia, have signaled they would like to rein in this rule.

Orange County supervisors Tuesday gave final approval to a plan to create a civilian oversight agency that will review misconduct complaints against county law enforcement officers, capping months of planning to establish it. The plan, put forward in May by board Chairman John Moorlach, creates a review board modeled on one used in Los Angeles County to take citizen complaints, investigate deaths and serious injuries involving Sheriff's Department personnel, and examine all deaths in custody.

A nine-month grand jury investigation into the beating death of an Orange County jail inmate found that no crimes were committed by sheriff's deputies accused of instigating the assault and ignoring the victim's cries for help, Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas said Friday. But Rackauckas said the 2006 slaying of John Chamberlain could have been avoided and admonished the Sheriff's Department for not following its own procedures to ensure inmate safety, although he wouldn't elaborate.

A special grand jury that reviewed the fatal beating of a Theo Lacy Jail inmate scolded the Orange County Sheriff's Department for investigating the death itself rather than turning the case over to the district attorney, violating a 20-year-old policy "through conscious choice or negligent action." In a letter made public Wednesday, the panel pointed out that the policy adopted in 1985 had been honored in 129 out of 130 custodial death investigations.