Burke Foe Was Found Liable in Brutality Case

Guy Mato, the former Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy challenging county Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke in the March 2 election, was involved in a major police brutality case against sheriff’s deputies in Lynwood in the early 1990s.

In 1995, a federal jury ordered Mato to pay $40,826 to Darren Thomas, an African American man from South Los Angeles. The jury concluded that Mato had led a beating that knocked out Thomas’ front teeth and that the deputy had rendered Thomas nearly unconscious with a chokehold. By the time of the judgment, Mato had retired from the department.

The judgment resulted from class-action litigation begun in 1990, when residents, mostly black and Latino, accused dozens of deputies of “systematic acts of shooting, killing, brutality, terrorism, house-trashing and other acts of lawlessness and wanton abuse of power,” according to court records.

On Wednesday, Mato said he had been unfairly tarred as a bad cop. “There was no beating that was led. It was a fight. This guy came after me,” he said. “I had to defend myself.... I felt my life was in jeopardy.”

Mato was not criminally charged in the case, and the county later paid his civil judgment. “I have honestly nothing to hide,” said Mato, now a Gardena real estate executive. “I was a good cop.”

Word that Mato, 46, was running for office -- and had been recruited to do so by the Assn. for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs -- stunned some who recalled his role in the brutality case.

“He’s a thug,” said Carol Watson, an attorney who represented plaintiffs in the case. “He’s a racist and a liar, and I’m not using those words lightly.”

On April 28, 1990, deputies arrested Thomas and others for drinking beer in the frontyard of a Lynwood home. Watson said Mato took Thomas into a trailer behind the Lynwood sheriff’s station and beat him “mercilessly.” Mato, who is of Japanese and Portuguese descent, was also the subject of other complaints from black men who said he kicked them, she added.

Mato said he had used a department-approved hold to restrain Thomas and that Thomas had lost his teeth when he hit the ground. The former deputy said the other complaints against him were unfounded.

Thomas, who now lives in Corona, recalled that the deputy apologized to him as Thomas lay in the hospital. “I know that he probably started out as a good cop, but he got corrupted when he got in there,” he said. “I believe in forgiving people, no doubt ... but I don’t feel comfortable with him being in office.”

Roy Burns, president of the union, said the jury verdict “did not concern us” when the group asked Mato to run.

“By far, the majority of people in their past have something that could be questionable,” Burns said, adding that juries are sometimes wrong. “The people of South-Central Los Angeles know the type of criminals who are out there and what law enforcement is up against.”

Calling Burke’s record atrocious, he said, “Would it be fair for us to put out a squeaky clean candidate?”

The supervisor voiced surprise that the union would back Mato, considering his past. But she said, “I’m not going to get involved in a smear campaign, because I don’t think I need it.”