Deputies Face Brutality Probe

The Sheriff’s Department on Tuesday was investigating a brutality complaint by a Gardena grocer who says deputies beat him up in his store and shoved his head through a wall in front of his wife and daughters.

In an exchange that preceded the incident, the grocer said, one of the deputies addressed him with an anti-Mexican slur.

The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department says it is not at liberty to comment on exactly what happened Thursday at El Indio Market, the anchor of a bustling strip mall of Latino businesses at Crenshaw Boulevard and West Marine Avenue.

“The department is conducting an administrative investigation into the allegations of misconduct by Lennox station personnel,” Sgt. Vince Callier said.

Sgt. David Holm said, “Any time there’s any kind of citizen complaint against a deputy or allegation of misconduct, we investigate it.”

The grocer, Rafael Navarro, 33, was booked Thursday on suspicion of making a terrorist threat, battery against a law enforcement officer, creating a public disturbance and obstruction of justice, Lt. Sam Jones said. Navarro, freed Friday morning on $100,000 bail, denies the charges.

Lennox station Capt. Ruddie Jefferson said that according to the arrest report, Navarro “made some verbal threats on [the deputy’s] life” in the parking lot. When the deputy went to arrest Navarro, Navarro reportedly resisted, hitting a deputy at least once, he said.

Jefferson said the deputy sustained facial injuries and had two teeth chipped and loosened in the melee inside the store.

“We’re investigating to see if there were any violations of administrative policy,” Jefferson said.

Witnesses said the incident began when a deputy ticketed an employee of El Indio for not possessing a valid driver’s license. The employee was parking a truck that belongs to El Indio, and the deputy impounded the truck and ordered it towed, witnesses said.

Navarro said he walked out to the parking lot and asked the deputy for an explanation.

He said the deputy answered with a curse, a racial slur and muttering that if he didn’t leave, he would “kill” him.

Navarro said he was angered and swore back.

But when the deputy got his gun and muttered that he was “going to kill” Navarro, the merchant said, he went back in his store.

“They had an exchange of words and Rafael walked away,” said Saturnino Ortiz, the private security guard who watches the lot. Ortiz has been interviewed by sheriff’s investigators.

“It was purely an argument,” said Ortiz. “They never even got closer than 15 feet from each other.”

As the deputy waited for the tow truck to leave, he got on his radio. Two other deputies arrived within 10 minutes, and the three chatted a few minutes, witnesses said.

“They were out there so long I thought they were eating lunch,” said Caridad Toscano, a Havana-born U.S. citizen who sells religious jewelry and effigies at her botanica, two doors down from El Indio. “It seemed like it was all resolved.”

Then the deputies walked into Navarro’s store, and screams and shouts were heard.

“People were yelling, ‘They’re killing Rafael!’ ” Toscano said.

Shop owners called 911.

Inside El Indio, said Laura Lopez, 23, Navarro’s wife, two of the deputies lunged behind the counter and grabbed her husband.

“I was yelling, ‘Please, stop!’ ” she said.

Lopez said the deputies punched Navarro and slammed his head through the wall near the cash register, as she and their two little girls watched in horror.

“Force was used and his head may have struck the wall,” Jefferson said. “But there was no intent to bash his head into the wall.”

They doused Navarro with pepper spray, Lopez said, and she was sprayed in the face.

“I yelled to an employee, ‘Get the girls out of here!’ ” Lopez said. “But my little girls saw everything.”

Lopez said one of the deputies choked Navarro with the gold chains around his neck--leaving red marks--while another punched him in the ribs.

Someone in the family called his sister, Lilia Navarro, 31. As she ran into the store, a panicked soft drink deliveryman told her that her brother ‘almost got killed’, she said. Then she saw her brother’s bloodied face.

“I screamed ‘Help! What did you do to my brother?’ ” she said.

In response, Navarro said, the deputies handcuffed her too and charged her with obstructing an officer.

When the ambulance arrived, she said, paramedics argued with the sheriff’s deputies, who wanted to take them both to the station.

At the paramedics’ insistence, Navarro was taken to Gardena Memorial Hospital and released to the deputies with a stitched head wound.

“They beat me like a dog in front of my family,” Navarro said. “They said I was a terrorist. Why did they even come into my store? They hadn’t accused me of committing any crime.”

The owners of neighboring businesses are furious with the Sheriff’s Department. They said the incident demonstrates that some deputies do not respect the local Latino entrepreneurs. “If it was legal for the deputy to handcuff and arrest Rafael for insulting him, why didn’t he do that?” asked Ana Yancey, the owner of a 25-year-old business, Diana’s Draperies, next door. “There was no reason for him to call his friends to come and help him beat up Rafael.”

“This is an issue in which the entire Latino community has something at stake,” she said. “We want justice and protection. We have enough problems with crime without having to put up with police abuse.”

“We need to get to the bottom of this,” said George Medinilla. “There needs to be a reform system to filter bad elements before they hit the streets and expose our children and neighbors to this. It seems to me we are paying very dearly for the services that were rendered here Thursday.”

It was not the market’s first brush with deputies. Recently, officers went to check El Indio and Toscano’s botanica for illicit medical remedies, Toscano said, as part of a citywide crackdown. Deputies found nothing, the proprietors said.

The deputies also told El Indio staffers they could not sell produce from their truck, Lilia Navarro said.

“Deputies have all the means at their disposal to enforce the law in an orderly manner,” Toscano said. “But beat up a merchant? I’m disgusted.”