Following a federal judge's approval of a $1.4 million class action settlement against a California jail, a video from an incident ...
Following a federal judge's approval of a $1.4 million class action settlement against a California jail, a video from an incident of abuse two years ago was released.
The video was released by civil rights attorney Mark Merin after a fighting to unseal footage that led Placer County to settle the class action by nearly 500 former inmates, according to the Sacramento Bee.
After abuse allegations led to the firings of three officials at the Auburn Main Jail in Auburn, California, the records of the incidents officials tried to keep from the public were released including disturbing footage of the assault on a mentally ill inmate.
Beau Bangert, 28, was placed on suicide watch on May 14, 2017, and the cell camera shows the disturbed man in a fighting stance, laughing, before Placer County sheriff's officials rush him with a plastic body shield, smashing him into the wall.
After bashing him several times, four corrections officers grab him, put him in a choke hold and tell him to get on the ground as they wrestle with him.
Bangert, not fighting back but not getting to the ground either, is then brutally punched and kicked by one officer, and Tased by another.
Four more officers then enter the tiny cell, one of them adding kicks, before they are able to bring him face down to the floor. One of them says 'there's blood, be careful.'
The video then cuts to the restrained Bangert still laying on the floor with a 'spit mask,' a type of mesh bag, placed over his head before they lift him up and remove him from the cell, a patch of blood visible on the tiles.
He is then placed in a 'safety chair' in the office area surrounded by officers while a medical technician of some kind appears in the frame.
After he his locked to the chair, he is wheeled back into the tiny cell before one officer holding a plastic shield before him enters with another holding a camera.
The shield is held over the face of Bangert as the jail official removes the spit mask and the other one records images of his face. He is then left alone without medical attention before the clip ends.
'They demonstrated total insensitivity and it was clearly an abusive gang attack on a defenseless individual,' attorney Merin said of Bangert's treatment. 'And it showed absence of training and malevolence on the part of the deputies who participated.'
Two deputies, Jeffrey Villaneuva and Robert Madden, and Sergeant Megan Yawa were fired stemming from the abuse allegations, but Yawa, accused of filing false reports, had her case dismissed.
Villaneuva and Madden pleaded no contest to felony assault charges, according to court records.
'We brought these alleged misdeeds to your attention when they occurred in 2017, and to continue to be transparent,' said Lt. Andrew Scott for the Placer County Sheriff's Office in a video statement posted to Twitter, referencing their position to keep the video sealed for the time being.
'We wanted to be the first to release these videos to you as well once litigation involving these incidents is over, however some of that litigation is still unresolved.'
The judge noted that three criminal cases of the fired jail workers are resolved and that there are 'no ongoing civil cases whose jury pools might be tainted.'
The brutally assaulted Bangert received a separate $250,000 settlement and will be also be getting a $50,000 incentive award as the representative plaintiff for the class action lawsuit.
The attorney for the plaintiff, Merin, said he was 'not confident' reforms have fixed the jails in Placer County, and added 'we are auditing their response to claims of use of force and excessive force, and I think that process will improve the response of the jail personnel to the conduct of inmates.'
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