Police Misconduct Attorney Los Angeles, CA

Police Misconduct Attorney Jerry L. Steering has been suing the police since 1984 for police brutality, false arrests, malicious criminal prosecutions and First Amendment retaliation cases. Mr. Steering in an Expert and Specialist in suing the police in federal court for constitutional violations in the City of Los Angeles, throughout Los Angeles County, and throughout the State of California. Mr. Steering has also sued the government as far away as in federal court in Alabama and in the District of Columbia.

Mr. Steering many years of experience and acquired knowledge can help you maximize your chances of actually winning your Police Misconduct Civil Rights case. Police Misconduct Civil Rights cases are extremely legally difficult and subtle cases, and a lawyer prosecuting these cases needs many years of experience, scholarship, insight and savvy to be able to win your Police Misconduct Civil Rights case.

THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS IN POLICE MISCONDUCT CIVIL RIGHTS CASE IS WHETHER YOU WIN OR LOSE.

In the end, the only thing that matters in Police Misconduct Civil Rights case is whether you win or lose, because if you can’t win your case, you have no constitutional rights, because you have no way to enforce those rights. A right without a remedy is no right at all.

As Chief Justice John Marshall stated to eloquently in 1803: “It is a general and indisputable rule that where there is a legal right, there is also a legal remedy by suit or action at law whenever that right is invaded.” Chief Justice John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803).

The converse of that proposition is also true; where there is no remedy, there is no right. That being said, the law is not what is says, but what it does. It doesn’t matter what they teach you in school, or what’s in a lawbook, or on the internet, or in the news. All that does matter is what happens to real people with real cases, with real judges and real juries. In the end, if you cannot get a jury to vote for you and against the police, you have no rights, because you have no way to enforce them. For various reasons discussed below, more often than not, in the real world in police misconduct civil rights cases, they win and you lose. In the real world, you really do (almost) have no rights.

THE POLICE IN LOS ANGELES ARE BRUTAL AND CORRUPT

In the movie “Training Day“, Denzel Washington, plays a real-life Los Angeles Police Department Police Officer named Rafael Perez, who worked out of the Rampart Division of the Los Angeles Police Department. In 1995 the LAPD formed a CRASH Anti-Gang Unit that was run out of the LAPD’s Rampart Division.

The Rampart Station’s CRASH Anti-Gang Unit attempted to take over the narcotics business in Central Los Angeles by killing and framing suspected gangster drug dealers. See, Rampart, 7 years later, Los Angeles Daily News, August 29, 2017. When Rafael Perez was eventually arrested and turned states evidence, over 100 convictions of real criminals in Los Angeles County Superior Court were overturned.

In 2004, Mr. Steering obtained an $850,000.00 award from the City of Los Angeles for a young man who Rafael Perez attempted to frame for a murder that took place in a McDonald’s restaurant in Central Los Angeles. Jorge Alvarez v. City of Los Angeles, et al., U.S. District Court (Los Angeles).

Although the Los Angeles Police Department’s “Rampart Scandal” showed how corrupt and brutal that police agency was, that incredible brutality and corruption was rivaled by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department; the largest Sheriff’s Department in the United States. .

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputy sheriffs know that the public is still in Fantasy Land about the police, and they know they are professional liars / perjurers, who the public almost always believes in a swearing contest with a civilian unless their victims have video evidence showing otherwise. The LAPD may consider themselves the “Badest Gang in Town”, but the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department almost makes the LAPD look civilized.

These days, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has come under political fire for fostering an ongoing culture of “Deputy Gangs” at the various Sheriff’s Department stations. Some of these deputy gangs require that a deputy literally murder someone while on-duty to be admitted to the gang, like the Compton Station’s “Executioners”. See, L.A. County deputy alleges “Executioner’ gang dominates Compton sheriff station“, Los Angeles Times, July 20, 2020. See also, the Database of Los Angeles Sheriffs’ Department (LASD) Gangs: Knock-la.com.

One of those gangs was “the Vikings”, whose “colors” was the Minnesota Vikings Football Team log tattooed on their lower legs. The Former Undersheriff, Paul Tanaka, was a Viking gang member when he was a Captain at the Lynwood Sheriff’s Station. The Vikings were found by United States District Judge Jesse Curits to be a Neo-Nazi / White Supremacist gang within the ranks of the Los Angles County Sheriff’s Department; See, Thomas v. County of LA, et al; 978 F.2d 504 (1992). Some of the LASD gangs of these gangster deputies are: The 3000 Club (the deputies who worked the third floor of the L.A. County Men’s Central Jail), The Grim Reapers, The Little Devils, The Regulators, The Vikings and The Jump Off Boys.

Deputy Gangs are not the only problem with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Beatings and torturing of inmates at the Los Angeles County Jails became an everyday occurrence.

On February 10, 2016, former Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca pleaded guilty to violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a)(2) for trying to stymie the federal probe into his deputies routinely beating and torturing inmates at the Los Angeles County Jails and in having his deputies hide an FBI informant – jail inmate from his FBI handlers. He admitted even approving a team of his deputy sheriff’s attempting to interfere with the government’s investigation by threatening an FBI agent at her home with arrest.

Thereafter, on April 6, 2016, former Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department Undersheriff Paul Tanaka was convicted by a jury of violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371(conspiring to obstruct justice) and 18 U.S.C. § 1503(a) (obstructing justice), for not only obstructing an FBI investigation into years of beatings and torturing of inmates at the Los Angeles County Jail, but also Tanaka and other high ranking Sheriff’s Department officials threatening one of the FBI agents involved in that investigation, with arrest for continuing that investigation.

Mr. Steering has also successfully sued police agencies throughout Los Angeles County. For example, Mr. Steering obtained $750,000.00 from the City of Torrance for two Torrance Police Department police officers painting a Swastika on the car of a Manhattan Beach man who they arrested dumpster diving. See, Kiley Swaine v. City of Torrance.

If you are the victim of police misconduct, we can help you.

Call Jerry L. Steering, Esq. at (949) 474-1849 or email Mr. Steering at jerry@steeringlaw.com FREE CASE EVALUATION