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Perez had told police that his father, 71-year-old Thomas Perez Sr., went out for a walk with the family dog at about 10 p.m. on Aug. 7, 2018. The dog returned within minutes without Perez’s father. Investigators didn’t believe his story, and over the next 17 hours they grilled him to try to get to the “truth.”
Later, during their interview, the detectives told Perez his father’s body actually had been found already.
According to court records, detectives told Perez that his father was dead, that they had recovered his body and it now “wore a toe tag at the morgue.” They said they had evidence that Perez killed his father and that he should just admit it, records show.
Perez insisted he didn’t remember killing anyone, but detectives allegedly told him that the human mind often tries to suppress troubling memories.
At one point during the interrogation, the investigators even threatened to have his pet Labrador Retriever, Margosha, euthanized as a stray, and brought the dog into the room so he could say goodbye. “OK? Your dog’s now gone, forget about it,” said an investigator.
“How can you sit there, how can you sit there and say you don’t know what happened, and your dog is sitting there looking at you, knowing that you killed your dad?” a detective said. “Look at your dog. She knows, because she was walking through all the blood.”
“When can you take us to show us where Daddy is?” asked one of the investigators.
Perez became so distraught that he began pulling out his hair, hitting himself, making anguished noises and tearing off his shirt while police encouraged him to confess, according to a summary of the case written by U.S. District Court Judge Dolly Gee.
Finally, after curling up with the dog on the floor, Perez broke down and confessed. He said he had stabbed his father multiple times with a pair of scissors during an altercation in which his father hit Perez over the head with a beer bottle. He was so distraught that he even tried to hang himself with the drawstring from his shorts after being left alone in the interrogation room. Perez was arrested, handcuffed and transported to a mental hospital for 72-hour observation.
Perez’s father wasn’t dead — or even missing. Thomas Sr. was at Los Angeles International Airport waiting for a flight to see his daughter in Northern California. But police didn’t immediately tell Perez.
“Mentally torturing a false confession out of Tom Perez, concealing from him that his father was alive and well, and confining him in the psych ward because they made him suicidal, in my 40 years of suing the police I have never seen that level of deliberate cruelty by the police,” said Jerry Steering, Perez’s attorney in Newport Beach.
Perez’s lawsuit claims detectives also refused for several hours to retrieve his medication for high blood pressure, asthma, depression and stress.
Police picked up the father at the airport and brought him to the Fontana station.
But the investigation didn’t stop there. Detectives obtained a warrant to again search Perez’s house for evidence that he had assaulted an “unknown victim,” according to Gee’s summary.
It appears none was found.
Fontana police did not return an email seeking comment. Three of the involved officers remain employed with the department. One other officer has retired.
This is why you can't make the "bad apples" argument. The fact that the department still tolerates them shows that they're all rotten.
Ironically the bad apples argument leaves out the part that they spoil the bunch.
i still cannot fathom how the common use of that phrase (in this context anyway) has become "not ALL apples are bad!"
one
bad
apple
spoils
the
bunch
why do they use a saying which means the literal opposite of what they believe and are trying to argue
I've had multiple conversations with chuds who kept insisting it was really stupid for leftists to use the phrase "bootstraps mentality" because you can't pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Separate people.
A lot of common sayings in English have been twisted to excise their original meaning: curiosity killed the cat (but satisfaction brought it back), blood (of the covenant) is thicker than water (of the womb), etc
Bootstraps is another one.
Kind of an impressive win for capitalist propaganda to turn these common sense phrases against their obvious meaning.
Like that line from William S Casey: "we will know we have acheived our objective when everything the public believes is false."
The proof is in (the eating of) the pudding!!! Don't know why but the misuse of this one annoys me frequently.
The two examples you cite actually were changed down the line, so their common forms are not twisted from their original.
And the only way to bring them to justice is by mobilizing a few million people for months, destroying a billion of dollars in property, and sacrificing a dozen martyrs. Great justice system.
well i mean, they investigated the indicident and found no wrong doing, so they're clear, what's the big deal? you calling them liars or what?
The officers involved in this case should be executed by the state in the same way that a rabid dog that attacked someone is put down. All arrests connected to them should be thrown out and prisoners released. All confessions obtained by them should be assumed to be coerced and thus null and void. All higher officers should at a minimum be thrown in prison as they allowed these rabid dogs to run wild under their supervision. The entire precinct should be gone over with a fine-tooth comb to find any and all evidence of corruption given that this was an acceptable thing the officers felt they could do.
This is what would happen if we lived in the country we were taught we lived in as kids.
Someone said that communists are people who take the stated values of liberalism seriously, and this is the kind of thing that hastens the transition
true.. the only thing is they don't tell you that's a fairytale like they do with the rest of the lies they tell you when you're a kid
Like the Santa and Easter Bunny, etc but less believable. I hadn’t thought of it like that, but now I’m wondering what I was told as a kid that ended up being the truth.
in my experience, almost nothing i was told as a kid turned out to be even remotely true
It takes him about 6-7 years to power up. Are you really going to risk not seeing it happen? I find your lack of faith disturbing.
I’m holding out on my vote so trump can have another turn. I’ll vote for biden in 2028 so he can spend some time thinking about how to do a better job. Maybe he’ll be powered up by then like you said
just remember to vote hard enough to push him left.. otherwise he might not fix it when u get him elected
They just need more money for training. Poor detective didn't know you can't just threaten to kill someone's dog to get a confession.
One of the most evil things I've ever read. ACAB. Maybe put a CW for descriptions psychological torture.
It's disgusting. Even when you need actually need help, calling the cops can be your life's biggest mistake.
Holy shit this isn't fire the cop levels of Acab.
This is dig a moat around the police station, fill it with broken glass and light the station on fire with everybody inside it levels of acab.
The judge still insanely ruled that the officers had reason to suspect him of committing a crime.
This is “throw the pigs into the needle pit from Saw II” levels of ACAB
Calling them pigs and bastards doesn’t do this justice, monster behavior
There’s a couple of Final Fantasy bosses that would give you vivid imaginings. They really liked having walls as mini-bosses for a time. Walls with big mouths and lots of hands.
Edit: I really thought there were more but I just mis-remembered a FFXII mini boss I guess.
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I'm gonna need proof of life before I dont assume they just murdered the dog for good measure.
Same, until I meet this dog in person I will re.ain hesitant to say it's alive. Those cops should have a reversal pulled and have their fathers lives threatened until they confess to killing the dog.
article link seems to be missing. could you also maybe change the formatting of the text block so that it wraps?
https://www.ocregister.com/2024/05/23/fontana-pays-nearly-900000-for-psychological-torture-inflicted-by-police-to-get-false-confession/
Within hours after Thomas Perez Jr. called police to report his father missing, he found himself in a tiny interrogation room confronted by Fontana detectives determined to extract a confession that he killed his dad.
Perez had told police that his father, 71-year-old Thomas Perez Sr., went out for a walk with the family dog at about 10 p.m. on Aug. 7, 2018. The dog returned within minutes without Perez’s father. Investigators didn’t believe his story, and over the next 17 hours they grilled him to try to get to the “truth.”
According to court records, detectives told Perez that his father was dead, that they had recovered his body and it now “wore a toe tag at the morgue.” They said they had evidence that Perez killed his father and that he should just admit it, records show.
Perez insisted he didn’t remember killing anyone, but detectives allegedly told him that the human mind often tries to suppress troubling memories.
At one point during the interrogation, the investigators even threatened to have his pet Labrador Retriever, Margosha, euthanized as a stray, and brought the dog into the room so he could say goodbye. “OK? Your dog’s now gone, forget about it,” said an investigator. Thomas Perez Jr. curls up in the fetal position with his dog after being grilled by police to confess to killing his father -- who had been reported missing but was later found alive. (Screen grab from Fontana police video) Thomas Perez Jr. curls up in the fetal position with his dog after being grilled by police to confess to killing his father — who had been reported missing but was later found alive. (Screen grab from Fontana police video)
“How can you sit there, how can you sit there and say you don’t know what happened, and your dog is sitting there looking at you, knowing that you killed your dad?” a detective said. “Look at your dog. She knows, because she was walking through all the blood.”
Finally, after curling up with the dog on the floor, Perez broke down and confessed. He said he had stabbed his father multiple times with a pair of scissors during an altercation in which his father hit Perez over the head with a beer bottle. Suicide attempt
He was so distraught that he even tried to hang himself with the drawstring from his shorts after being left alone in the interrogation room. Perez was arrested, handcuffed and transported to a mental hospital for 72-hour observation.
But later that day, the truth derailed the detectives’ theory and their prized confession.
Perez’s father wasn’t dead — or even missing. Thomas Sr. was at Los Angeles International Airport waiting for a flight to see his daughter in Northern California. But police didn’t immediately tell Perez.
“Mentally torturing a false confession out of Tom Perez, concealing from him that his father was alive and well, and confining him in the psych ward because they made him suicidal, in my 40 years of suing the police I have never seen that level of deliberate cruelty by the police,” said Jerry Steering, Perez’s attorney in Newport Beach. $900,000 settlement
Steering filed a civil rights lawsuit in federal court against the city of Fontana, alleging that police psychologically tortured Perez and coerced a false confession without first determining that the father had actually been slain. The suit was recently settled for nearly $900,000.
Fontana police did not return an email seeking comment. Three of the involved officers remain employed with the department. One other officer has retired.
So how could this happen? Why police were suspicious
In court documents and depositions, police say they had reason to believe Perez was lying.
First, they noted he seemed “distracted” and “unconcerned” during the 911 call, according to court records. Officers responding to the call noted the father’s cellphone and wallet were still at the home, which was in disarray. Police saw the mess as a sign of a struggle, but Steering said Perez was renovating the house and had argued with his father about it.
Additionally, a police dog sniffed out the scent of a corpse in the father’s bedroom. And there were small blood stains in the house. Steering later would say the blood stains were caused by the father’s finger-prick diabetes tests.
Perez’s lawsuit claims detectives also refused for several hours to retrieve his medication for high blood pressure, asthma, depression and stress. Thomas Perez Jr. is interviewed by police in the killing his father -- who had been reported missing but was later found alive. (Screen grab from police video) Thomas Perez Jr. is interviewed by police in the killing of his father — who had been reported missing but was later found alive. (Screen grab from police video) Emotional distress
Perez became so distraught that he began pulling out his hair, hitting himself, making anguished noises and tearing off his shirt while police encouraged him to confess, according to a summary of the case written by U.S. District Court Judge Dolly Gee.
“He was sleep deprived, mentally ill and significantly undergoing symptoms of withdrawal from his psychiatric medications,” Gee wrote.
At one point during the interrogation, investigators drove Perez to get coffee and then to some housing tracts where he had been looking to buy. Detectives berated Perez, insisting he did not need his medication and that they knew he killed his father, according to the case summary.
“When can you take us to show us where Daddy is?” asked one of the investigators.
Later, during their interview, the detectives told Perez his father’s body actually had been found already.
Asked in a deposition about his line of questioning, one of the detectives said: “I believed at the time if we told him that we had located the body, then maybe he would give us more information about what had occurred.”
Police, in court records, insisted Perez was voluntarily undergoing questioning and was free to go at any time. However, in her case summary, Gee wrote that the “circumstances suggested to Perez that he was not free to leave.”
She also noted that there was “no legitimate government interest that would justify treating Perez in this manner while he was in medical distress.” Father turns up alive
Perez’s nightmare ended shortly after police got a phone call from his sister, who said their father was alive and well. He had actually walked to the train station in Fontana and rode the line to Los Angeles County to visit a relative and then took a bus to visit a female friend, Steering said. Perez Sr. later went to the airport to await a flight to Oakland to visit his daughter.
Police picked up the father at the airport and brought him to the Fontana station.
But the investigation didn’t stop there. Detectives obtained a warrant to again search Perez’s house for evidence that he had assaulted an “unknown victim,” according to Gee’s summary.
It appears none was found.
Perez was not released until after the end of the three-day psychological observation period. He then retrieved his dog from Riverside County Animal Services, tracking her down through an implanted chip, Steering said.
While Gee concluded Fontana detectives had sufficient reason to believe an offense had been committed, she criticized officers for their interrogation tactics.
“A reasonable juror could conclude that the detectives inflicted unconstitutional psychological torture on Perez,” Gee wrote in her summary judgment. “Their tactics indisputably led to Perez’s subjective confusion and disorientation, to the point he falsely confessed to killing his father, and tried to take his own life.”
damn those cops really need more funding for more training i cant believe they didnt have to go through the "dont torture innocent people for 17 hours" course it really is our fault for not requiring them to do that to be honest
"People do love their pets. I know! lets threaten to kill, or just actually kill as many of them as humanly possible."
they were just a couple of bad apples cmon, its a honest mistake any cop could make, they were overworked and going thru personal problems cut them slack jack
