Prosecution Urged for Deputies in Immigrants’ Beating

Latino groups pressed the state attorney general’s office Friday to prosecute the two Riverside County sheriff’s deputies involved in the 1996 televised beating of two Mexican illegal immigrants at the end of an 80-mile car chase.

The request came after an announcement two weeks ago by the U.S. Justice Department that it would not prosecute Deputies Tracy Watson and Kurt Franklin on charges of violating federal civil rights laws.

Members of the Mexican American Political Assn., the League of United Latin American Citizens and other Latino groups held a news conference to criticize what they called the politically motivated inaction of local and federal agencies.

“I’m seeing these big billboards in the Latino community saying ‘Adelante con [ahead with] Lungren,’ ” said Danilo Becerra, referring to campaign signs for the gubernatorial candidate. “The community needs to know whether to really go ‘adelante’ with Lungren, or whether it should be ‘basta’ [enough] with Lungren.”

A spokesman for the state attorney general said the office would review the request.

The Los Angeles district attorney’s office launched an investigation shortly after the incident, but deferred to the Justice Department after it jumped into the case. Shortly after federal officials decided not to prosecute, the district attorney’s office also concluded that it would not seek charges. Los Angeles authorities were involved because the chase ended in South El Monte.

Federal officials said Watson and Franklin may have violated their department’s regulations, but there was not enough evidence that they “willfully and intentionally” violated the victims’ civil rights.

Watson was fired for his actions, and Franklin was briefly suspended by the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department. Riverside County also agreed to pay the injured immigrants, Alicia Sotero Vasquez and Enrique Funes Flores, a total of $740,000 as part of a settlement.

Sotero and Funes were among 21 illegal immigrants packed into a dilapidated truck that evaded an Immigration and Naturalization Services checkpoint in Temecula and led the deputies on a chase that ended in South El Monte.