A lawsuit against seven Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies accused them of beating a man dozens of times in the face, leaving him with broken bones and loss of sight in one eye, his attorneys announced Monday.
Christopher Bailey has filed a civil rights lawsuit against the deputies and the Sheriff’s Department over the May 2020 beating in the Los Angeles suburb of Inglewood, he and his lawyers said at a press conference in Century City.
Bailey was returning home from work as a mail-sorting contractor for the U.S. Postal Service when his car was pulled over at around 2 a.m. for allegedly straddling a lane.
Attorneys for Bailey said he was attacked even though he complied with deputies’ orders, although a police report said he resisted arrest.
“I was screaming out (that) I wanted to live. I really feared for my life, I thought I was going to die,” Bailey said.
“He sustained 64 to 86 total body and face hits. He was pummeled in the face approximately 35 to 44 times,” attorney Toni Jaramilla said during a news conference.
Bailey lost teeth, suffered broken bones in his face and can’t see out of his left eye, Jaramilla said.
“Mr. Bailey recalls that he heard deputies say, ‘Pull his pants down,’ and he could feel tugging in his pants, and he was Tasered in the lower abdomen near his groin area,” Jaramilla said.
Bailey was charged with three felony counts of resisting arrest but the charges were later dropped, his attorneys said. They want the deputies criminally charged.
“This was a gang-like beatdown of a Black citizen,” Jaramilla said.
“All use of force incidents which result in injury are unfortunate,” a Sheriff’s Department statement said, but added that the department couldn’t offer further details because of the pending legal action.