$1.5 million settlement for family of man slain by LA deputy

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Tuesday agreed to pay $1.5 million to the family of Arturo Cabrales, who was fatally shot by a Sheriff’s deputy three years ago. The payment settles a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by the family.

Cabrales, 22, was unarmed and inside his South LA home when he was fatally shot, according to the lawsuit. “This shooting was entirely unjustified…and constituted an unreasonable excessive use of force,” the lawsuit states.

The shooting occurred after three anti-gang deputies stopped a group of men for allegedly drinking in public on the afternoon of March 12, 2012. Deputies said Cabrales was “immediately uncooperative and hostile” and went into his home, according to a report from the County Counsel.

Deputy Anthony Manuel Paez said Cabrales pointed a gun at him while inside his home.

Within 18 months, the sheriff and district attorney determined that Paez acted in self defense.

But the deputy's credibility came into question last Spring, when the DA charged Paez with conspiracy to obstruct justice in another case. He and another deputy allegedly planted guns inside a medical marijuana dispensary to justify a 2011 arrest, according to prosecutors and detectives with the Sheriff’s Internal Affairs Bureau.

Within a couple of months, county attorneys offered a tentative settlement in the Cabrales shooting.

“I'm happy for my client," said Cabrelas family attorney Humberto Guizar. "At least they are going to get some justice for the death of their son.”

Guizar acknowledged deputies found a gun inside the house but believes Arturo Cabrelas never pointed it at Paez.

The Board of Supervisors approved two other settlements Tuesday. It agreed to pay $250,000 to Marguerite Boyd, a 77-year-old African American woman who claimed Sheriff deputies “brutally tackled, handcuffed and had her head slammed into a metal door” when they arrested her for possessing a loaded gun inside her Lancaster home in 2012. Her adult grandson claimed she had pointed the gun at him, and called deputies. The gun was in her bedroom at the time of the altercation with deputies.

The board also agreed to pay $350,000 to the mother of Steve Ulysses Cabrera, who committed suicide inside Men’s Central Jail. The mother claimed Sheriff’s deputies failed to provide adequate medical care, even though her son had tried to commit suicide twice before inside the jail. He hung himself in 2010.

That payout comes amid increasing scrutiny of mental health care inside the jails by the U.S. Justice Department.

The county counsel says LA County paid $40 million in settlements and judgments against the Sheriff’s Department in the last fiscal year that ended June 20, 2014 - about the same as the year before.