County Rules for Victims in Suits Involving Deputies

The Los Angeles County Claims Board has awarded $80,000 to a Pico Rivera couple and six guests at their 1988 wedding reception, which ended in a melee when 10 sheriff’s deputies chased a man through the party.

The board also awarded $60,000 on Monday to two Whittier men who claim they were falsely arrested by deputies and $60,000 to a mentally handicapped Lennox man who was seriously injured after fleeing from deputies who thought he was acting suspiciously while taking trash to a dumpster next to his apartment.

County lawyers said they recommended the settlement in the Pico Rivera case partly because “several innocent people” were cut or bruised when deputies entered the Veterans of Foreign Wars reception hall in pursuit of a guest who had “become verbal” with them.

One 50-year-old guest was used as a battering ram to force open a door, a 40-year-old woman was cut on the eye when struck with a nightstick, and another guest’s videotape of the incident was confiscated and destroyed, plaintiffs’ attorneys alleged.

Six of the eight plaintiffs, including newlyweds Cassandra and Daniel Herrera, were arrested for assaulting or interfering with officers but were cleared. Vincent Jacquez, who allegedly lunged at a deputy with a wedding cake knife, was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon, and a youth was found guilty of obstructing an officer, lawyers said.

The deputies had been called to the VFW hall to take into custody a bounty hunter who was creating a disturbance by seeking a man not at the reception, lawyers for both sides said.

After the bounty hunter’s arrest outside the hall, Alfonso Jacquez began arguing with deputies and was shot with a taser dart “to keep him quiet and control him.” But the dart had little effect and the man ran back into the reception, according to a case summary for the Claims Board.

The deputies rushed into the wedding hall as “storm troopers . . . and destroyed plaintiffs’ wedding by throwing tables and chairs and striking, beating and arresting plaintiffs’ guests,” the suit alleges. “The defendants created a mob scene.”

Six of the eight plaintiffs received minor injuries, the most serious a three-inch cut to a woman’s eye, said their lawyer, Edward M. Fox.

Eleven deputies were named as defendants in the suit. Only three were identified by both first and last names. They are Robert Barum, Loretta Nevarez and Patrick Gomez.

Whether any deputy was disciplined in any of the cases settled Monday is unknown because state law prohibits disclosure of such information about public employees.

In a second settlement involving Southeast-area residents, the Claims Board awarded $60,000 to two men who say they were arrested without a good reason outside the Roman Knight bar in November, 1986.

Robert Palomino, 35, and Armando Matas, 31, were arrested by deputies responding to a robbery call from the South Whittier bar. The men were not robbery suspects, but became involved in a confrontation with the deputies, according to county lawyers.

Matas claims he was struck across the back with a short leather-covered baton called a sap and kicked repeatedly in the groin.

Both men, who are air-conditioning system installers, were charged with assaulting an officer but were acquitted.

They filed a civil lawsuit against Deputies Gary B. Hellman and Bruce Prewett, which ended in a 5-1 hung jury last June. Although injuries were minor, county lawyers said they recommended a settlement because a verdict against the deputies would lead to payment of attorneys’ fees that would “greatly exceed” the $60,000 settlement.

Thomas Beck, attorney for the two men, said his fees would have exceeded $100,000.

Beck maintained that Matas and Palomino were arrested without probable cause and that Matas was battered by Hellman.

“The physical injury is over, but here’s a cop who overreacts, has a history of overreacting, and so he charges these guys with criminal acts that he knows they have not committed,” Beck said.

Court records show that Hellman has been accused of brutality in at least 10 lawsuits in the last decade. Since 1986, the county has paid cash settlements totaling $160,500 in four of those case, records show.

Prewett has been named in two other excessive-force lawsuits since 1986, with one settled last year for $150,000.

Monday’s $60,000 settlement of the third brutality case--one involving a 29-year-old Lennox man--was the most prompt Claims Board award since 1986, a review of county records shows. Only settlements of $20,000 or more must be approved by the board.