Press Is Invited Into Jail to Speak With Inmate Who Charges Abuse : P.R.: Meecee Parks, formerly Sagon Penn, claimed deputies beat him, so the Sheriff’s Department holds a press conference to show it has nothing to hide.

In what sheriff’s deputies heralded as “a show of good faith and openness to the community,” the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department arranged a press conference Friday inside the Vista jail for Meecee Parks, formerly Sagon Penn, to air his allegations of abuse at the hands of deputies.

The press conference was called by the Sheriff’s Department after Parks told the local media through his fiancee, Annilee Carmichael, that he was being denied visitors so that outsiders would not see injuries Parks said he suffered in a beating by deputies on Sunday.

“We’re not concerned about how he looks, and to show good faith to the community and the members of the media, we have asked him and he has agreed to speak to the media,” Sgt. Glenn Revell said.

A few years ago, Parks, then known as Penn, was the focus of two controversial trials in which he was accused of killing a San Diego policeman and seriously wounding another after a confrontation with racial overtones. Parks, who is black, was acquitted.

Since his acquittal, Parks has had several run-ins with the law, including convictions for malicious mischief, altering court documents and, most recently, battery and violating probation. He is scheduled to be released June 25.

Parks was placed in solitary confinement and denied visiting privileges for three weeks Sunday after an alleged altercation with deputies following a visit from his fiancee, during which Parks conceded that he “punched a window.”

Parks, with a black left eye, spoke to reporters through a visiting room phone and claimed that, after he hit the window, a deputy handcuffed him. Then, Parks said, several other deputies began beating him, slamming his face against a window at least seven times.

“After they banged my face on the window, they put me on the ground and someone stepped on my face,” Parks said.

Parks claimed that he could not hear out of his left ear, his eye stung and his lower back hurt. He said a jail nurse attended to a cut over his eye, and a doctor examined him on Wednesday.

Parks was expected to be examined by a doctor again Friday night, Revell said, but he could not comment on the incident until an internal investigation, which began Monday, is completed.

“He has a black eye . . . . It may have been self-inflicted, he may have suffered it at the hands of other inmates, or it may well have been at the hands of deputies,” Revell said.

Parks gained notoriety from two police murder trials in the late 1980s. In 1985, he was accused of fatally shooting San Diego police officer Thomas Riggs, and wounding another officer and a passenger in the police car during what was characterized at the trials as a racially motivated police stop.

Parks was acquitted of all major charges related to the incident, using the defense that the officers had incited the shooting by beating him and subjecting him to racial epithets.

Sheriff’s deputies said Friday that Parks continues to be “difficult to manage.”

The press conference, the first of its kind in three years, was held at the direction of Capt. Bill Flores, the commander of the jail. Sheriff Jim Roache was informed of the press conference but did not initiate it, Revell said.

“The department under Sheriff Roache is considerably more open, and we don’t want to give the impression that we have anything to hide,” Revell said.

“It’s an attempt department-wide that the sheriff specifically wants the department to be open in its dealings with the community, and this is one small facet of those dealings,” Revell said.

In light of the recent beating of a man at the hands of Los Angeles police officers, the Sheriff’s Department expects more complaints of abuse from inmates, Revell said.

As a result of the incident Sunday, sheriff’s deputies began routinely videotaping Parks when he leaves his cell to keep a record of his treatment.