SAN DIEGO MAN SUES RAMONA SHERIFF's DEPUTIES FOR BRUTAL ASSAULT AND BATTERY
A guy walks into a bar in Ramona...By Greg Moran
June 4, 2009, 6:19 p.m.
...and after a few minutes, a dozen different kinds of cross-eyed ugly breaks out. Allegedly.
That's the gist of a rather hair-raising complaint filed in federal court this week by Allen Baker of Ramona and James Playford. They sued the county, the sheriff's department and five deputies for using excessive force, assault and civil rights violations all stemming from an incident at Molly Malone's bar last July. Baker said he had seen deputies at the bar several times a week, fraternizing with women and sometimes handcuffing them and placing them in the back of the squad car. For fun. Apparently. Photos were taken and one of the young women even posted it on her MySpace page, according to the complaint, and captioned it "Bong loads in a cop car."
Well, Baker approached two members of the local constabulary, deputies Colby Hodge and Jeffrey Guthrie, and asked if they were there to pick up girls. They told him to shut up or he would be arrested, which triggered a First Amendment defense kind of response from Baker ("Plaintiff Baker asked Hodge and Guthrie if freedom of speech is illegal" the suit dryly recounts.) Baker says he was put under arrest, there in the bar, and then the suit contends things went from bad to very much worse very quickly.
The suit says he was hit with flashlights, tasered, kicked, beaten and put in a choke hold until he was unconscious. At one point he contends he lost control of his bowels. Taken to jail he was charged with resisting arrest and being drunk in public. But at a preliminary hearing last September Judge Louis Hanoian dismissed one of the resisting charges and reduced a similar charge to a misdemeanor. Eventually Baker pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor of disturbing the peace.
The incident got pretty good play on local television, partly because of the photos. A video of some of the incident is posted on YouTube. The person who took the video, Playford, contends in the suit that when he showed up at court for a hearing in Baker's case he was harassed by other deputies and was so intimidated he said he would not testify for Baker. The suit alleges a conspiracy among the deputies and faults the county for not investigating the matter.
It's not a pretty picture described by attorney Mary Prevost in the lawsuit, but these police misconduct cases are no walk in the park. There's a way to go here, but there is also lots of intriguing material. We're working on setting up a link to the suit, and are awaiting the response from the county.
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