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Five years after her son was badly beaten by Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputies, Vanessa Perez is still looking for answers as he needed more than 30 stitches and staples on his face and head. Similarly, county officials are tasked with holding the department accountable for fraud.
Despite the summons and the ongoing legal battle, it has proven impossible, at least so far, to give a full explanation of what happened to Vanessa’s son, Joseph Perez.
The Sheriff’s Office has released a heavily edited report that outlines a version of what happened in the San Gabriel Valley community in East Valinda on July 27, 2020.
According to the report, a deputy from the Industrial Bureau stopped Joseph, 27, on suspicion of breaking into a vehicle. He punched them multiple times, the documents say. Three deputies injured their hands and a fourth broke their leg off the curb. Six deputies punched Joseph, deployed various holds and takedowns before being arrested, and were charged with five counts resisting executive officers, court records show.
However, the entire page of the department’s “using force” report has been blacked out, and Vanessa and members of the Private Surveillance Committee are wondering what details are kept secret.
County surveillance officials issued three subpoenas in February for cases under scrutiny, including those seeking unedited copies of the Perez files. The county’s attorney’s office resisted, claiming that the files should remain confidential, and the LA County Sheriff’s Office refused to hand them over.
In a subpoena standoff, Vanessa, 43, appears to speak at almost every monthly meeting of almost every oversight committee wearing a black T-shirt depicting a photograph of her son’s bloody face.
“Surviving an arrest should not look like Joseph, and it should not look like a punch of 121 either. That’s what they admitted. She mentioned to the Times an informal tally she made based on the statements of representatives in the compiled documents.
Vanessa Perez is taking photos of her son, Joseph Perez, who was photographed after being beaten by Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies in July 2020.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
The assault was very serious, she said, leaving her son struggling to continue the conversation.
“He can’t do that anymore,” she said. “It’s difficult for him to socialize regularly and constantly with fear.”
LA County Sheriff Robert Luna responded by filing a lawsuit a month after the oversight board subpoena and asked the court to determine whether the department must comply. Luna said at the time the county attorney’s office advised the department to publish the document saying it “violates the law.”
In a statement by the Times, the Sheriff’s Office said “we are taking deliberate steps to resolve the dispute and ensure that its actions are in line with both the law and the principles of transparency.”
Last month, the County Advisors Office said it had “full support” the committee in its efforts to seek information to seek the information needed to serve as a strong surveillance role on behalf of LA County citizens. This includes helping the committee’s ability to seek judicial clarity in bringing judicial clarity.”
Joseph claims that he was not an invader in the July 2020 incident. His mother said he was in the middle of a “mental health episode.”
According to court records, Joseph has been jailed multiple times on various charges, including possession of methamphetamine and damage to the vehicle. In August 2022, he was sentenced to 32 months in state prison without pleading a dispute on one of five charges from the assault case.
He is currently jailed at Pitches Detention Center in Castatic after violating probation from another case convicted of resisting two West Covina police officers.
He suffers from addiction and is diagnosed with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, depression and psychosis, according to his mother.
Joseph’s public defense counsel Anne Golden said at a recent court hearing that he was suffering from impaired executive function due to traumatic brain damage suffered by lawmakers.
In a brief call from prison last month, Joseph told the Times he believes a full report of what happened to him should be released to “show me I am on the right.”
Vanessa Perez has a photo of her and her son, Joseph Perez.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
“They’re lying a lot to my case,” he said. “They lied about how it went down. They say I’m an invader when I wasn’t. The reality is that they beat me – they died.”
The Sheriff’s Office said the deputies involved in the incident declined to comment.
In a statement, the department said “all use of the ‘incident’ has been thoroughly reviewed to assess whether the incident and procedures have been followed,” adding, “in this case, the use of force was determined to be within the scope of the policy.”
According to Professor Sean Kennedy of Loyola Law School, surveillance personnel seeking records related to Joseph’s case are hampered every turn. Kennedy resigned from the committee in February following a dispute with the county attorney over another matter.
“To ensure effective and meaningful civilian surveillance, the committee must be able to verify confidential documents relating to police misconduct and the use of force,” Kennedy said. “If it doesn’t, this is all a surveillance theatre.”
Last month, Robert Bonner, chairman of the oversight committee, revealed that LA County supervisor Kathryn Berger was planning to replace him despite his desire to finish his ongoing work.
In an email last month, Berger said the move “reflects my desire to continue to cultivate public trust in the surveillance process by introducing a new perspective that supports the committee’s important work.”
At the committee’s June 26 meeting, Bonner, 84, argued that strong county government people didn’t want meaningful surveillance on the Sheriff’s Department. Bonner, a former federal judge who once served as a US lawyer in Los Angeles and headed the Drug Enforcement Bureau, was flapping up with what he said.
He said he believes the county attorney’s office is counseling the sheriff to withhold documents as a way to communicate what they can and cannot do to this committee.
“Surviving an arrest should not look like Joseph, and it should not look like a punch of 121 either. That’s what they admit.”
– Vanessa Perez with the arrest and beating of his son Joseph Perez
“They treat our subpoena like a public record request,” Bonner said.
The Private Oversight Board said it was willing to proceed to a closure session to confirm the full report, but the county lawyers argue that it is not legal.
On Tuesday, the state Senator’s Public Safety Commission approved a bill previously approved by the state legislature that allowed oversight committees across California to conduct closure sessions to review personnel records and other confidential materials.
However, this proposal, AB 847, still requires full approval from the state’s Senate and governor. And even if it becomes law, the county advisory office claims that the LA County Code expressly prohibits review of confidential documents in closed sessions.
Robert Bonner, chairman of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office’s Civil Supervisory Board, will speak at the committee meeting at St. Anne’s Family Services in Los Angeles on June 26th.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Bonner pushed for changes to county law, saying that he and other members of the watchdog were “strongly opposed to the interpretation of the county advisors.”
“This committee needs subpoena authority to be effective and must have effective subpoena authority, meaning they must be able to enter a closure session,” Bonner said at its June meeting.
The Sheriff’s Department said it would “comply with the ultimate judicial decision on whether these records can be legally disclosed.”
Whether or not the watchdog can issue a subpoena is not a dispute. March 2020 – Four months before Joseph was beaten – LA County voters overwhelmingly approved Measure R, a voting initiative that granted the committee’s subpoena.
But the county is blocking the legal order, according to Bert Daysler, a former special adviser to the Private Oversight Board. That incompromise contributes to the Sheriff’s Department’s culture of immunity, he said.
“More momentum is built in the wrong direction, the county continues to be sued, the county continues to have more and more financial challenges, and that’s a race to the bottom,” he said.
On June 3, Vanessa Perez drove from his West Covina home and attended a hearing for his son at the courthouse at Stanley Mosque in downtown Los Angeles.
After waiting several hours for him to appear, she became emotional when Joseph finally walked through the side door to court. His hands were cuffed in front of a wrinkled yellow prison t-shirt, and the leaves of his ears were stretched out with a white paper plug around the neck of his tattoo.
Vanessa Perez is standing in the East Valinda location where her son, Joseph Perez, was beaten by Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies in July 2020.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
However, despite lawyers to the court allowing Joseph to join the vocational training program and immediately begin treatment for mental health issues, Judge James Bianco ordered him to stay behind the bar waiting for a mental health diversion recovery hearing.
“Perez is given all the opportunities I tend to give him,” Bianco said.
Joseph looked back at his mother before being escorted from the court.
Her son remains trapped for now, but Vanessa is requesting that an unedited version of the Beat Report be released. She wants to understand why his assaults did not guarantee internal investigations or discipline for lawmakers involved.
“We know that Joseph is not the first, not the last,” she said. “With Joseph’s story being revealed, we will… know how they lied, how they covered their asses.
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