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Men's Central Jail Employees Accused of Beating Up Visitor
Photo by tarasov via Shutterstock
Charges against deputies at LA County jails continue to pile up -- the LA Times reports today that an FBI investigation into the county's possibly corrupt system now includes allegations that prison employees beat up a visitor for no reason.
Gabriel Carrillo says that when he went to visit his brother in the Men's Central Jail, deputies arrested him after discovering that he had a cell phone. He says that they handcuffed him, took him to a break room and beat him up.
The deputies aren't disputing the beating, but say that Carrillo was being resistant, tried to escape and was physically aggressive. A photo taken after the attack shows Carrillo with two massive black eyes, and bruises and gashes all over his face.
A judge later ruled that Carrillo shouldn't have been arrested in the first place; carrying a cell phone into a jail is against the rules, but not against the law.
The district attorney had planned to press charges against Carrillo based on the deputy's statements, but Carrillo's version of events has launched in an investigation into the incident by the LA County Sheriff's Department in addition to being included in the FBI probe, so the case was "abruptly dropped," according to the Times, pending more info from the Sheriff's Department.
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