Brickbat: Let's Go for a Ride

Former Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office Deputy Christopher Hernandez has been sentenced to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy to violate the civil rights of skateboarder Jesus Alegria. Hernandez and now-former Deputy Miguel Vega kidnapped Alegria after he told them to stop picking on teens in a Compton park. The two drove him around in their patrol car and threatened to beat him up, drop him off in gang-controlled territory, and tell people he was a member of a rival gang. Vega was previously sentenced to two years in federal prison after pleading guilty to one count of deprivation of rights under color of law.

Comments

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[Vernon Depner]

So, the libertarian take: Yes to cops doing time for rights violations; no to the double jeopardy.

[ducksalad]

What's the double jeopardy here? Went to the linked article and couldn't find anything about a previous state (criminal) trial, but maybe I missed it.

[Nazi-Chipping Warlock]

I believe you are confused. First one cop was tried and sentenced, now the other has been.

I'm pretty amazed to see someone actually charged under that "deprivation of rights under color of law", it isn't applied nearly as often as needed.

[ducksalad]

Seems two different readers were confused about different aspects of the story. It could be Charles Oliver was trying a little too hard for brevity here, a few more words would have helped.

[Sometimes a Great Notion]

Where does Oliver or Reason state their opinion in this brief summary of facts?

Was a reply to vernon. Now that is something Reason needs to fix!

[Fist of Etiquette]

…and tell people he was a member of a rival gang.

Rival gang to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office gang?

[Idaho-Bob]

LAPD CRASH Unit is legit a rival gang to LACS.

[mad.casual]

The story is from 2020, so worse. He may be a part of the gang that opposes The Science!

[mad.casual]

JFC. Four sentences. Four.

Hernandez and now-former Deputy Miguel Vega kidnapped Alegria after he told them to stop picking on teens in a Compton park.

OK, so *kidnapped* kidnapped? Like he's a minor whose guardians expected him to be someplace and the police removed him or convenient-to-the-narrative "kidnapped"? Because 'picking on teens' makes it sound an awful lot like he's not a teen and the people he's harassing are, which is something the police should actually be preventing and ideally, at least by libertarian standards, doing so without a formal arrest or spending all day camping on the skate park collecting overtime.

[mad.casual]

Go fuck yourself, Oliver.

A federal judge on Tuesday sentenced a former Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy to 18 months in prison for conspiring to violate the civil rights of a 23-year-old skateboarder.

Christopher Hernandez is the second former sheriff’s deputy sentenced to prison in connection with the case of Jesus Alegria, who accused the two deputies of kidnapping and abusing him after he yelled at them to stop picking on teens in a Compton park. The deputies forced Alegria into the back of their cruiser minutes before crashing the vehicle while chasing another man, prosecutors said, then fabricated a drug arrest to cover it all up.

Seriously, why other than abject retardation or a pathological need to deceive people (or both) would you bury the fact that they crashed and fabricated a drug charge and try to impugn officers for doing a part of their job that they may've actually been doing correctly?

[ducksalad]

Tell us which part the officers did correctly.

Picking on teens?
False arrest?
Crashing the car?

[mad.casual]

Huh.

Both former deputies were relieved of duty in connection with their treatment of Alegria in late 2020, by which point they’d already both been involved in another high-profile case, the killing of 18-year-old Andres Guardado, who was shot in the back after a foot chase. Coming on the heels of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Guardado’s death prompted weeks of protests and eventually led to a hefty legal settlement.

… and there we are. Can’t bother to attempt any sort of repair of the justice system so just cheer and paper over it’s breakage and re-ossification as firmly crooked.

[Minadin]

If he's 23 in 2024, and the incident happened in 2020, it's possible he was a teen at the time . . .

[mad.casual]

To me, “conspiring to violate the rights of a 23-year-old skateboarder” means they were conspiring to violate the someone who was 23 and skateboarding at the time, not violating the rights of someone who wasn’t yet 23 and may’ve later taken up skateboarding.

But, it’s 2024 jurinalisming, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ .

[Ajsloss]

Because ‘picking on teens’ makes it sound an awful lot like he’s not a teen and the people he’s harassing are, which is something the police should actually be preventing and ideally

I think you've misunderstood? The skateboarder told the pigs to stop picking on teens. So they decided to pick on the skateboarder instead.

[mad.casual]

Yeah. I got tripped up by "kidnapped" akin to the "Trump's Federal Agents in unmarked cars are disappearing people from Federal Courthouse Protests!!!11!!!!". It's getting hard to tell where the completely libertarian agnostic bullshit narrative crafting for and against Law Enforcement begins and ends any more.

It's a solid case of abuse of authority but the brickbat makes it sound like an activist selective interpretation nothingburger.

[ducksalad]

Mad, you're reading the story way differently than me. I admit the writing isn't super clear but it was officers Hernandez and Vega allegedly doing the "picking on teens" and ordinary guy Alegria was the one telling them to stop. The false arrest was retaliation for criticizing the officers.

[Nazi-Chipping Warlock]

Read it again. The cops were picking on the teens. The skater yelled at them about it. The cops decided to fuck with the skater. Hijinks ensued. Cops went to jail.

[mad.casual]

Read it again.

Right, but read the primary source. The arrest was almost 4 yrs. ago. They detained him, crashed the car, released him, fabricated a charge and the officer responsible for all of it was already charged. We're getting a, still, cherry-picked narrative (off a tree full of cherries) about the other officer who didn't speak up or didn't speak up enough.

It's an abjectly shitty form of journalism, maybe worse than Twitter. No story about Vega or Alegria from years ago. A brief mention of Guardado as a line item in a roundup way back when. This, as usual, isn't informing anyone about anything. It's just low-information, acontextual emoting.

[Dillinger]

>>drove him around in their patrol car and threatened to beat him up, drop him off in gang-controlled territory, and tell people he was a member of a rival gang

don't make us throw Colors in the VCR ...

[Derpifer]

No sympathy. We are waaaaaay past the point where people deserve whatever the government does to them.