Man Says 3 Deputies Beat Him : Jail: An inmate says he was handcuffed before the attack. Officials say there is no evidence that an assault occurred.

A 31-year-old inmate in Ventura County Jail alleged Tuesday that sheriff’s deputies handcuffed him, then beat him Saturday night after he complained about being locked into his cell.

Three fellow inmates also told The Times that Andre Bennett, a convicted burglar, was handcuffed by three deputies who then punched and kicked him and bent his wrists and fingers without reason.

Sheriff’s Cmdr. Robert Brooks, who oversees the jail, said Tuesday that Bennett was handcuffed because he had turned around and talked back to deputies who were frisking him. Bennett suffered a scraped cheekbone when deputies put him down on the floor after he resisted being taken into an interview room, Brooks said.

But Brooks said he has no evidence that the deputies assaulted Bennett, a repeat offender who is serving one year for a May car burglary in Port Hueneme.

Brooks said his office will investigate the inmates’ claims.

If the deputies involved are found to have beaten Bennett, they could face discipline ranging from verbal reprimands to being fired, Brooks said.

“We haven’t received any complaint from Bennett” nor from other inmates in Room 3 of Quad G, the same cellblock where black and Latino inmates fought Aug. 6, Brooks said.

Bennett was ordered to spend five days in “the hole,” or solitary confinement, for making provocative remarks to the deputies, Brooks said.

While waiting for a cell in solitary to open up, Bennett said Tuesday that his hands and fingers were swollen and hurt, and that the jail physician gave him Motrin for headaches and the scraped cheekbone.

But he said he has no plan to file a grievance because he believes that it would be ignored.

“What would the outcome be?” Bennett said. “I’m not going to mess with these people. I’m just not going to mess with them.”

Police and inmate accounts agree on how the incident began.

About 12 of the 24 inmates in Room 3 had been allowed out of their cells to watch a beauty pageant on TV in the adjoining day room.

When the pageant broke for a commercial just after 9:30 p.m., most of the inmates jumped up and ran to their cells.

Seeing this, a civilian guard in a control booth outside the cellblock waited until they were inside their cells, then threw switches locking the doors and called deputies for assistance, Brooks said.

Three inmates who remained in the main room were ordered to go to their cells and close the doors too, he said.

“The staff is on real alert for any kind of disruption. This bears a similarity to the other night when the fight happened,” Brooks said. “They were being noisy, having a good time, and she was alarmed over whether they were beating somebody up in a cell or going to watch a sexual assault.”

But the inmates said they ran to their cells to get potato chips and candy, planning to eat in front of the TV when the pageant resumed.

“About 10 of us went to our rooms to get snacks, some cookies,” said Ronnie Bruner, 30, of Oxnard, serving time for a parole violation. “When we got into our rooms, they closed our rooms.”

“We went up to get some munchies, and we all got up at the same time. They panicked,” Bennett said. “On the one hand it was overreaction, but on the other hand you could see her point because of what happened a week prior to that.”

The inmates said they began shouting at the deputy to open the doors so they could get back to the TV.

Some littered the room with food and dinnerware that was shoved through slots in their doors. “They were expressing their displeasure at being locked down,” Brooks said.

After 10 or 15 minutes, Bennett said, he pushed the button on an emergency intercom buzzer in his cell and demanded to know why the inmates were locked down.

“They said, ‘Don’t ask questions, we run this room,’ ” Bennett said.

Three deputies who were already intending to search the locked-down cells rushed to Bennett’s cell first, Brooks said.

They pulled Bennett out and spread-eagled him against the wall to frisk him, Brooks said.

“They shook me down and asked me what’s my problem,” Bennett said. “I said, ‘I’m tired of playing games, just send me to the hole.’ ”

The deputies then took Bennett to an interview room in view of the cellblock.

Bennett dug in his heels, and the deputies threw him into the darkened room and pushed him around, according to Bennett, Bruner and two other inmates.

“When they got me inside, they said, ‘Hey! This is our jail, where you think you’re at, what’s your problem?’ ” Bennett said.

He said the deputies then pushed him face down to the floor and one or two knelt on his shoulders, bent his still-handcuffed wrists and began forcing his fingers apart.

“I was under tremendous pain,” Bennett said. “I screamed, and they told me to be quiet. About 20 seconds later, about 15 other deputies showed up.

“I was yelling at the top of my lungs,” he said. “Everybody in the hole could hear me. I got scratches . . . all over my body. They punched me a few times, kicked me, pulled my hair.”

Senior deputies arrived, and Bennett was allowed to get up and sit in a chair, where a jail nurse examined him but did not treat him, he said. After questioning, he was locked up again.

Bruner said he could see the beating from his cell, which is directly opposite the interview room.

One deputy “grabbed him, got him in the room, slammed him on the floor and put his knee in his back,” said Bruner, who was involved in the Aug. 6 fight.

“All of the inmates in our section were yelling at the deputies,” Bruner said. One deputy pulled Bennett up by his long hair, then kicked him between the shoulder blades, he said.

Walter Washington, 31, who was involved in the Aug. 6 fight, said he saw about five deputies crash to the floor with Bennett when he went down, and that each got in two or three blows.

“They covered him like a blanket,” he said.