Despite promises from sheriff’s officials to crack down on deputy cliques, fresh allegations have arisen of deputies in the department’s Compton station adorned with matching skull tattoos.
In January of 2016, high school student Sheldon Lockett was standing with a friend outside his godmother’s home in Compton. That’s all. Just standing there. But he is African-American, so naturally two Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputies drove up, leapt out of their vehicle, and pulled their guns on him. He fled. The deputies chased him. Lockett was unarmed, but the deputies radioed (falsely) that they were pursuing a suspect with a gun.
Lockett tried to hide. The deputies found him, grabbed him, used a stun gun on him, and beat him. “They were like beating me, kicking me, calling me [n-word], [n-word].” They then arrested him, and charged him with “resisting arrest and two counts of attempted murder.” Lockett sat in jail for eight months before he was released. He is now suing.
A few months later, 31-year-old Donta Taylor was walking to a corner store in Compton. That’s all. Just walking along the sidewalk. But he was African-American, so naturally two Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputies drove by, immediately pulled over, and (in their words) tried to “engage in conversation” with him. Taylor fled. The deputies chased him, radioed that they were pursuing a suspect with a gun, and shot him multiple times and killed him.
The deputies claimed they chased Taylor because he allegedly “pulled a silver handgun out of the waistband of his shorts before starting to run.” They also claimed they ultimately shot Taylor to death because he had allegedly “pointed the gun” at one of them.
There were no witnesses. And no gun was ever found.
Still, the deputies were not charged. The District Attorney decided that, even though Taylor “was unarmed when the shooting occurred,” there was “insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Aldama and Orrego did not act in self-defense and the defense of others when they fired their service weapons at Taylor.”
Dd I mention that both of these incidents involved the exact same two Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputies?
It appears they learned their lesson from Sheldon Lockett: When you’re planning to try to frame an unarmed African-American for attempted murder to justify aggressively attacking him for no reason, don’t make the mistake of leaving your victim alive to contradict your story.
