Officer legally justified in kicking suspect, union attorney says

An El Monte police officer was legally justified in kicking a car chase suspect in the head as he was lying on the ground at the end of a televised high-speed pursuit because it was a “distraction blow,” a police union attorney said Friday.

Dieter Dammier, attorney for the El Monte Police Officers Assn., said the officer acted within his training and department policy when he delivered the kick.

“Unfortunately these things never look good on video. Sometimes officers have to use force when dealing with bad guys,” Dammier said. “The officer initially came upon the suspect alone. The suspect hadn’t been searched and was a parolee and a gang member.”

“The individual officer saw some movement. He feared the parolee might have a weapon or be about to get up. So the officer did what is known as a distraction blow. It wasn’t designed to hurt the man, just distract him.”

El Monte officers, he said, “are trained to deliver a distraction blow to stop a [suspect] doing what they are planning on doing.”

The decision by the officer to kick the head of a suspect who was surrendering has been criticized by use-of-force experts.

Samuel Walker, a criminology professor at the University of Nebraska, called the kick to the head “unprovoked and unnecessary. . . . It’s one of the worst incidents of this kind that I’ve seen.”

The incident began Wednesday afternoon when gang officers recognized a man they believed was a gang member driving a Toyota. They were trying to determine if the car was stolen when the driver committed an unspecified traffic violation.

Richard Rodriguez sped off, blowing through stop signs and running red lights at speeds reaching 80 mph, department spokesman Lt. Ken Alva said.

Video shows Rodriguez being kicked in the face after he had put his hands up and fell to the ground with his arms above his head. Two officers are seen in news footage giving each other high-fives.

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richard.winton@latimes.com