6 Complaints Filed Against Sheriff’s Department : Latinos: Two families and one woman say deputies recently harassed or abused them.

A group of Latinos has filed six complaints against the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department, charging that deputies have harassed and physically abused members of three Camarillo and Ventura families over the past few months.

Lt. Richard Rodriguez, director of internal affairs for the Sheriff’s Department, said that only one of the complaints, which were filed Tuesday, named a deputy.

Ramona Ayala, a 45-year-old Camarillo resident who heads the group Padres y Hijos Unidos, said three of the complaints were filed by one Camarillo family and two were filed by another.

The sixth complaint was filed by a Ventura woman who alleges that she was harassed by deputies during an incident in El Rio, the unincorporated area east of Oxnard.

Ayala said she has helped Latino families file at least nine complaints against the Sheriff’s Department over the past year.

“Many of our youth are constantly getting abused” by deputies, she said. But most families are afraid to formally complain, she said.

The family that filed three complaints Tuesday allege that on Sept. 27, deputies entered the family’s home without a search warrant when no one was there.

“They said they were looking for some kids who had been in a fight” at a party at a nearby church, Ayala said.

But while the deputies were at the home, they recorded the license numbers of the family’s bicycles to check if they were stolen, she said.

In a separate complaint, the same parents allege that their teen-age son had his thumb broken when a deputy handcuffed him on Dec. 11.

The boy had confronted the officer as the officer dealt with one of the boy’s friends, Ayala said.

Then the officer “grabbed this boy, handcuffed him and the thumb got stuck on the handcuff,” she said.

She said the family has medical records verifying the injury.

Rodriguez would not comment on the complaints, but said his office will investigate them.