Group Wants Riverside Deputies Prosecuted
A community activist group is asking the state attorney general’s office to prosecute two Riverside sheriff’s deputies who were involved in a 1996 televised beating of two illegal immigrants at the conclusion of an 80-mile car chase.
Alex Jacinto, a member of the Mexican American Political Assn., said he wrote to Atty. Gen. William Lockyer last week asking him to review the case.
Nathan Barankin, a spokesman for Lockyer, said the letter would be reviewed as soon as it arrived.
The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office launched an investigation shortly after the incident, but the case eventually was handled by the Justice Department. In 1998, federal officials decided not to prosecute deputies Tracy Watson and Kurt Franklin for the beatings of Alicia Sotero Vazquez and Enrique Funes Flores.
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