France Asks U.S. to Probe Couple’s Charges

The French Consulate has asked the U.S. State Department to investigate charges that four Riverside County sheriff’s deputies beat a French woman and her mentally disabled American husband after the couple failed to pay a bar tab.

Consulate officials in Los Angeles filed a complaint with the State Department earlier this month, asking for an explanation of the couple’s injuries, including a broken arm that the man allegedly suffered while being questioned at home July 23.

Isabella Behrens, 41, and Martin Behrens, 44, were arrested at their Palm Desert home. They have said that deputies beat them before taking them into custody, and later charged the couple with battery on a police officer and defrauding an innkeeper. The two pleaded not guilty to those charges in an Indio courtroom last week.

“It’s just shocking,” said Valerie Luebken, press spokeswoman for the consulate. “America is supposed to be the country of immigration, civil rights and tolerance.”

Although Riverside County sheriff’s officials said the couple had never filed a complaint with the sheriff’s office, an internal investigation has begun, said Tom Freeman, executive officer for the agency.

“It’s sad, if what they said is true,” Freeman said. “If a person does something out of line, the sheriff has a long-standing policy to administer discipline, which can include up to termination.”

Freeman said he could not discuss the incident further because of the investigation.

Isabella Behrens and her husband said they are in physical therapy, recovering from the beating. “I understand sometimes police might be in danger,” said Isabella Behrens, sole caregiver for her husband since an accident left him partially brain-damaged four years ago. “But we’re not criminals.”

The dispute began after the couple ate dinner at Bananas Bar and Grill in Palm Desert and moved into the bar area. As they joined in with some karaoke singers, Isabella Behrens said, a group of men and women sitting nearby mocked them, mimicking her French accent and her husband’s pronounced slur.

As the teasing intensified, Isabella Behrens said, she tossed a glass of water onto a man she described as the ringleader, prompting a Bananas employee to ask the Behrenses to leave.

Outside the bar, a Bananas manager demanded money for their tab, which was less than $20, Isabella Behrens said. She told him she would not return inside for him to run her credit card as long as her tormentors were there. She promised to return the following day with the money.

As they left, the Bananas manager became furious and threatened to call police, she said.

Bananas representatives did not return calls seeking comment.

The Behrenses were only home long enough to change into pajamas when deputies arrived, Isabella Behrens said.

“They just barged in and started screaming, ‘You didn’t pay your bill!’ ” she said.

Behrens told the deputies that she was a French citizen and wanted to call the consulate. But that just seemed to anger one of the deputies, she said.

“He pushed me on the couch and hit me twice on my kidney with his baton,” she said. “I got punched on top of my nose, eyebrow, chin, stomach, back.

“I kept saying, ‘I’m not fighting, why are you hurting me?’ ” said Isabella Behrens, who is 5-foot-4 and weighs 108 pounds. At one point, an officer picked her up and slammed her against a hallway wall, she said. “Then he said, ‘Do you need a translator for that?’ ” Behrens said.

Martin Behrens was also slammed against the ground and beaten, she said. Assuming that the deputies thought her husband was drunk because of his unstable walk and slurred speech, she said, she tried to tell them about his disability.

Isabella Behrens was taken to jail. She later learned her husband had been taken to a hospital before also being jailed.

They were released the next morning.

Both appeared in court last week to plead not guilty to all the charges.

A few days after their release from jail, the consulate’s office in Los Angeles sent them to a doctor, who treated them for swellings, bruises and cuts. Martin Behrens also had a broken arm.

“He had bruises all over his face,” Luebken said. “Half of her face was black and blue. It was obvious what was done to them.”

Luebken said she had asked State Department representatives for an investigation. A Newport Beach attorney, Jerry Steerings, who has been hired to represent the couple, said charges that the Behrenses beat the deputies are ridiculous.

“This petite woman and this disabled man beat up the cops?” said Steerings, who said he plans to file a lawsuit on their behalf. “It’s nonsense.”

Isabella Behrens came to the United States in 1995 to live in what she called her dream country. She worked as a waitress and soon met Martin. They married two years later, and her husband supported them with contract work until he fell 50 feet while pruning a tree. He was left with permanent brain damage and they live on his disability benefits, she said.

Isabella Behrens said the incident had changed her feelings about this country.

“On Sept. 11, I was out on the streets waving my American flag with everyone else,” Behrens said. “I love this country. And at the end of the year, I would become an American citizen. Now? No, no, I don’t think so.”