The High Cost of Eating Meat – When Cops Act Like a Street Gang

Here at Another Not Guilty, we appreciate your support. Don't forget to subscribe or follow us. And please visit our website at anothernotguiltypod.com. Without further ado, here's this week's episode of Another Not Guilty.

They broke themselves into what they called lettuce eaters and meat eaters. The sergeant at one point says, "Shut the fuck up." Grabs him by the arm, throws him down to the ground. It was like something out of Game of Thrones.

And the meat eaters were trying to take over the department. And this sounds crazy. You arranged for a 15 year old girl to hook up with an officer on surveillance to blackmail a fellow officer. Yeah, that's what happened.

I always say that we're suing to restore your dignity. The government really doesn't get larger than when it's beating you over the head with a baton.

Welcome to Another Not Guilty. I'm David Moore. Here, along with my fellow public defenders,

presenting to you the untold stories of the criminal justice system. Objection! That assumes there's justice in the system, which there ain't. I prefer calling it the American criminal system.

These stories are about the not guilty as public defenders get on a daily basis. In an unjust criminal system. With the deck stacked against us.

The not guilty.

We're gonna start. We're rolling. That's great. Welcome back everybody for another Not Guilty. We have a pretty special show today. Starting off with our co-host Cheryl. How are you doing over there?

Good. How are you? I'm good. And this is, uh, guys, this is Cheryl's first time co-hosting. Woohoo! It's my first time, guys. That's right. And if you recognize your voice, her voice,

she's from the, uh, the new, uh, the new A&G intro. So, another not guilty. I know. It's a little doctored on the, on the intro music,

but that's her, guys. I have no control over that. Right. That's, uh, after a couple of shots, you, you might start singing,

and another not guilty. That's how it goes. Don't give me alcohol. Today, guys, our guest is Greg Peacock. Hey, Greg. How, what kind of law do you practice, Greg? I practice plaintiff's civil rights,

more specifically police brutality, police misconduct. I represent people who are somehow victims of police

misconduct. Okay. And shootings, shootings, tasings, false arrest, things like that. So what case are you

here to talk to us about? I'm here to talk about a civil case that I handled in, um, it was a few years

ago out in a, it was a, it's a small town. They're, they're known for, um, it's a tourist town that you find

yourself driving through every now and again. And it's a family that was, um, arrested and beaten pretty

badly and tased and pepper sprayed and, uh, ultimately prosecuted for 148. Um, a violation of penal code

section 148 occurs when a citizen resists, obstructs, or delays a peace officer engaged in the lawful

performance of his duties or when a peace officer brutalizes a citizen and needs to protect himself

and the city against the lawsuit. But I didn't handle the criminal charges. We, we handled the

civil charges as, as they moved forward. And what, and what are the civil charges in this case?

The civil charges that we brought were false arrest, excessive force, First Amendment violation,

and a, what we call a Monell claim, which is a claim saying that the city itself has a custom

practice and policy of violating the constitution. And in this case, it was excessive force.

What was the First Amendment claim? What is that about?

So a lot of times we'll include First Amendment claims because a lot of our cases begin by someone,

you know, expressing some sort of First Amendment right that the cop, you know, interprets as being

disrespectful. So, hey, cop, do your job. Or, hey, I don't have to talk to you. I know my rights. Um,

that's all protected language by the First Amendment that can, you know, the police officer can find to be

disrespectful or that you failed the attitude test. And, uh, from that point, you know, it's on.

Well, how'd you receive this case?

This case had already been filed by the time it came to us. It was

filed by an attorney who, who ultimately passed away. So the clients were looking for a new law

firm to represent them. It's an interesting backstory. There's, there's a lot to this story.

The, the husband and father who came to us, he worked for this city in the public works department.

And the fellow public works employees, they took a basketball, he was, he was a black man,

and they took a basketball and drew basically a cartoon of him on the basketball with some racially

insensitive characteristics. Um, he sued the city for that. You know, public works works.

I know you said this case was like a couple of years ago. I didn't realize it was from like 1960.

No, apparently this still goes on.

Oh, this is like in 2015. The teens. This is very recent. Yes. Um, okay.

You know, public works works very closely with the police and this is a relatively small town. So

the police officers knew about the lawsuit. Um, he ultimately won that lawsuit. But during that lawsuit,

he was the victim of a burglary, his car was burglarized and these police officers arrived and

they were just refusing to investigate the burglary and we're focusing their attention on him. They're

trying to get him for something. They were accusing him of, um, being under the influence. They accused

him of making the whole thing up. And even at one point in time, they were interviewing his wife and

trying to get her to say that he had been aggressive towards her. They were just trying to get him to,

they were just trying to get him in some sort of trouble. So they started harassing him?

That's one way of putting it, I suppose you could say. Um, and they ended up using some sort of force

against him. You know, they, they grab him, push him up against the wall. Um, but that, that was a few

months before our incident. So that, but that kind of sets the stage for what happened in the incident

we sued for. Did they file any reports or against the police officers? My clients did not file any sort of

grievance, citizen's complaint lawsuit, claim for damages, anything like that.

Okay. So this is just backstory then, right?

Yeah, this is backstory. And I think it's important because on our case that we sued for,

his daughter was backing out of the driveway when she was struck by a car that ultimately took off.

So she's a victim of a hit and run. And she was pregnant at the time. She hit her head pretty hard.

She, she was, she was pretty dazed and confused and injured. So they call 911. And as you know,

that sometimes it's the police that respond first to a 911 call. And it just so happened to be the

same officers that, uh, went out to his house for that car burglary case. And when they arrive,

they immediately start treating my client and his family as if they're some sort of suspect.

They're not asking how his daughter's doing. They're not asking about who this person was.

Everything was on them. Everything was, you know, are you under the influence? What's going on?

Why are you acting so aggressive? Everything was, is, was directed towards them. And my client,

the father and husband ultimately became very frustrated with this, especially with the past

he has had with the city and these in particular officers. And again, he kind of starts doing

things like we talked about that are protected by the first amendment. You know, why don't you guys

actually do your job and go look for this person? What are you guys doing? Stop treating us like we're

the criminals here. And the Sergeant at one point says back to him, you know, shut the fuck up.

We're going to do things the way we do things. And he then grabs him by the arm, throws him down to

the ground. Um, the other officers see that this has taken place. They all jump in. How many officers

were there? There were approximately five at this point. And how did they get to be so many? So the

first officer who arrived on scene, um, he knew who my client was, uh, because he was in the first

incident that I talked about. And there's something called a CAD printout, a computer automated dispatch.

And what this is, is it's a printout that all of the officers, or it's a result of the information

input into the computer that the officers have in their car. So they say when they arrived, when they

were in route, when they left, and then all these sort of information that happens in between

suspects under the influence, you know, what, whatever they find feels pertinent will be on

that, that CAD printout. And what we learned on the CAD printout is that on his way to my client's home,

he had put in the, um, CAD that my client, or that there was a male who was uncooperative

and requested for other officers to arrive. And so what we learned on the CAD printout is that he

put that on the CAD printout prior to him actually arriving on scene. So there were multiple officers

who arrived on scene with the understanding and idea that there's an uncooperative male

and they show up and they see that there's force being used already. And they just kind of jump in

and, and start pepper spraying my client. They tased him in the back.

His wife began yelling at the officers, you know, verbally protesting all first amendment protected

stuff. They, they tased there. I'm sorry. They, they pepper sprayed her. They pepper sprayed the

pregnant daughter who was screaming that, you know, they were beating her father for no reason.

Um, and at one point the, the daughter testified to the fact that the sergeant had her mother by the

throat up against the wall. And, you know, the daughter is pleading with the sergeant to, to not

hurt her mother, that her mother had done nothing wrong and please don't pepper spray her. And she said

that this sergeant turned to look at her in the eye and kind of had this like sadistic smirk on his face

and then take, or I'm sorry, pepper sprayed her mom right in the face. So it was a pretty horrific,

stressful to say the least environment. What was the police defense?

So the sergeant who had the mom by the throat and pepper sprayed her, and he's the one who first

threw my client down to the ground, uh, and it started this whole scene. He said in his report

that my client had a piece of paper that he crumpled up and threw out of his chest when he said,

why don't you guys do your job?

And that was an excuse for the ass whooping that ensued.

Right. And what was really important about that is that he's the only one who said that. None of the

other officers claimed to have seen that. So the other officers justification for use of force was

seeing that their sergeant was engaged in force. So they assume that it must be lawful and they just

kind of fall in line and jump in. Hey, this is David. Hope you're enjoying this podcast. And if you are,

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So then what's the next step in the process then? Where do you guys go?

So in this particular case, since it had already been filed and some discovery had been done,

the next thing to do was to start taking depositions. But in that process, we learned quite a bit.

During our civil case, the sergeant that I had been talking about, who put the mom up against the wall

and pepper sprayed her, the US Attorney's Office, the Department of Justice filed charges against him.

He was indicted for excessive force on a different case, which was obviously very exciting news for us,

something we weren't expecting. Because up until this point, it was just kind of a regular excessive

force, false arrest case. There's a website called PACER. And what it is, is it's a document database

of every single document that's filed in federal court. So all you need to do is get a username and

a password. You sign up and you can access every single document that's ever been filed in federal

court. And so we would be periodically checking this sergeant's PACER case on PACER. And then one day,

the US Attorney's Office, they file a motion where attached as an exhibit are thousands and

thousands and thousands of what are called 302 reports from the FBI about this certain agency.

And a 302 report is a report that the FBI writes when they're investigating some sort of crime. So we

just got this treasure trove of information that we weren't really expecting. And in the information

that was in these documents, it was like something out of a movie. It really wasn't something,

it was something if somebody had told it to me, I wouldn't have necessarily even believed it.

And there was thousands and thousands and thousands of pages of misconduct,

not only related to our officer, but related to this entire department.

So what did you discover then?

I mean, some really horrific things. I don't even know where to start.

The department themselves, this is their term. This isn't a term that Greg Peacock,

the non-objective, you know, plaintiff's lawyers. They broke themselves into what they called lettuce

eaters and meat eaters.

What does that mean?

So the lettuce eaters were like what we would consider good cops that just aren't going to beat

the hell out of you for no reason. They're going to, you know, may hopefully treat you with some sort

of respect. And then the meat eaters, I'm sure you can imagine where I'm going from here, didn't do that.

I mean, they were the ones that were really aggressive, were, you know, using force on people

when it wasn't even necessary. And I mean, and it turns into this, it was, it was like something out

of Game of Thrones, uh, the meat eaters. So they were essentially two gangs in the police department.

Two separate gangs within the police department. And the meat eaters were trying to take over the

department. This sounds crazy, but this, these are in 302 reports from police officers. So these are

police officers telling this to the FBI during an FBI investigation. And there's a statute that makes

it a crime to lie to the FBI during these 302 process, during this 302 process. So, um, you know, this isn't

just me, this isn't my interpretation of this. So that means like the police, this particular police

agency is, if you're part of the meat eaters, you have to be brutal and violent then, right? You've just,

yeah, you got to smash skulls, um, to, to become a meat eater. I mean, again, this is from the 302s,

to become a meat eater. You have to be on patrol with a meat eater who can say that they, they saw

you get out of the car, beat the hell out of someone, just some random person for no reason,

and then get back in the car and go about your way. That's how you became a meat eater.

So they have a gang initiation process.

Yes.

Do they have monikers or tattoos as well?

It's funny. You should say that. Um, they didn't exactly have

gang tattoos, but there were some tattoos that we discovered in these 302s that were pretty troubling.

One of them being, one of the officers was, uh, Rafael Perez's partner at LAPD.

You guys may remember him from Rampart.

Yeah. And like training day, all that, you know, one of the worst cops in LA history.

Um, so he was fired from LAPD and this agency said, come on over. We got an opening and this guy had

tattooed on his leg, the names and dates of people that he killed while on duty. I mean, you know,

there are moments in a cop's career where it's necessary to shoot and kill someone, but you would

hope that that would kind of be a sense of pride. It wouldn't be a trophy that you would walk around

with on your leg. And how many names do you know? I don't remember, but it was more than a couple.

What else did you discover from the 302s? The 302s.

What about with respect to the sergeant? So the sergeant, so, well, the whole investigation itself

was based upon, um, an incident in which he had pulled a woman over for DUI. And as he was taking

her back to the station, she was just vomiting uncontrollably in the back of his car and he was

getting pretty upset about it. And you know, he's yelling at her to stop vomiting and you know,

she continues vomiting, just standard DUI. I mean, he's upset about all the evidence she's leaving

for him. Exactly. Help support his DUI case. So they get to the station and he puts her in a cell

and she just continues vomiting and he's yelling at her to stop vomiting and she doesn't stop vomiting.

Keep in mind, he's one of the, you know, quote leaders of the meat eaters. So he gets a couple of

the meat eaters and they're going to go teach her a lesson. Um, and they all circled around her.

In the cell as she's laying there and the sergeant pulled out a taser, you know, taste, taster,

put 50,000 volts of electricity through her body. And then they passed around the taser taking turns,

lighten her up. Um, and so that was the case that he was being prosecuted by the feds

for, uh, using excessive force. How does her case go to the feds?

So there was a female officer who was in the station who was a quote lettuce eater

who witnessed this. And she went to the FBI and, um, you know, told the FBI what she saw,

which as I'm sure you can imagine is very rare in police departments to have a fellow officer,

you know, go to law enforcement to report some sort of misconduct by a fellow law enforcement

officer. But I think that conduct was just too much for any reasonably sane person to, uh,

let's slide. So the sergeant has everybody sort of, uh, torture this, this girl with the tasing,

right? Yeah. I mean, then, and we got more stuff on him. Um, he had previously gone into a house.

Um, I don't remember from the 302s what the circumstances were, but he ended up getting spooked.

He saw his own reflection in the mirror and got spooked and pulled out his gun and fired around.

So he tried to shoot himself. So, so he realized that he had messed up and the bullet went not,

it went through that house and into the house of the next door neighbor, but he didn't know that.

So he went into the bathroom of the house and was using toothpaste to cover up the bullet holes

within the house. And he ended up getting busted for that. Um, he, other officers that testified in

the 302s that inside the jail, that if you were like inside the jail, like screaming that you're hungry,

I don't belong in here, you know, stuff like pretty much everyone does that he would go in there and

routinely have inmates take off their pants and he would pepper spray them in the genitals. I mean,

this is crazy. These guys were like real deal, sadistic, bad people. They sound worse than Rampart.

Hey, it's your buddy Dave from Another Not Guilty. And boy, do I love hearing about not-guilties.

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So then, next in your process, then what, you start doing depositions in your case?

Right. So, I mean, like I said, we've got this treasure trove of information that you don't

typically get. I mean, if we didn't have this, we would take the reports, any sort of recordings we may

or may not get, you know, kind of figure out what information we have and use that to see if we can,

you know, get any sort of discrepancies in their deposition testimony. But here we have this insane

information outside of the facts of our case that we start exploring. We start taking deposition after

deposition based on the information we have in the 302s. And surprising to us, they're all confirming it.

So who do you depose then? So we depose the officers who are being interviewed by the FBI.

And, you know, one, I mean, I didn't even get to this part. The worst of the worst. There was a

lieutenant at this department who was a lettuce eater. And these bad meat eaters that we've been

talking about, they were all sergeants underneath this lettuce eater. And he was making their life,

quote, difficult by making them actually follow the law and not allowing them to just beat the

hell out of people indiscriminately. But they wanted him out. And this is why I said they did like this,

like Game of Thrones, you know, coup de... What's that? What's the term? Coup de croix?

So they, this lieutenant had been involved in a investigation into a traffic accident that another

officer had been involved in. And it came to light that the lieutenant, you know, went out of his way

to make it so that this officer didn't get in trouble for this accident. I believe it was a

DUI where someone was injured. And the lieutenant went out of his way to make sure that the report

was written in a way where there was not going to be anything, you know, incriminating against this

officer. But that later came to light and this, this lieutenant was getting investigated for it.

So even the, the, the plant eater or what we call it, lettuce, lettuce, even the lettuce eater was,

had to do somewhat questionable tactics to protect the meat. Right. These are the good guys. Right.

The sergeants who are the meat eaters seize this opportunity to get this lieutenant out. And what

they did was there was a young woman in town. She was 15 years old. And there was a lot of

information that 302s that suggested that she was having a sexual relationship with one of the

sergeants who was a meat eater. She had his name tattooed on him. Uh, the FBI had her blouse that had

a sample of his biological matter on it. Um, but they also knew that there was another officer who had

had a thing for her. And so they made it. So hold on. So this sergeant, uh, model whiskey, this whole

situation with the blouse, the whole thing, the matter on it, biological matter, biological matter,

sperm, whatever it was. Um, so is this sergeant, one of the sergeants in your case, or one of the

people who responded in your case, he was not one of the sergeants in our case, but it's important to

keep in mind that one of the things we're suing for is we're suing the city directly for having an

environment that promotes the use of force, promotes being untruthful, promotes falsely arresting people.

The monell claim. The monell claim. Yes, absolutely. The monell lisa claim of claims.

I haven't heard that one, but I like it, you know,

right. It's like, this is the claim. That's a hard one to prove. I mean, extremely hard one to prove.

You can prove a cop beat somebody up unlawfully in one incident, but to say that it's the culture within

there are judges that will want to see like a policy document saying you may use excessive force

against people. Um, but this was a case where we actually had actual evidence of a custom practice

and policy of using excessive force against people. If you prove the monell claim, do you get like

special damages that are different from other types of claims or? So the law we sue under is 42 USC 1983,

because the constitution by itself does not provide a remedy. It's, it just says, here are your rights,

but it's, it's silent on, okay, well, what happens if these rights are violated? Um,

in Congress enacted 42 USC 1983, which was the vehicle for providing a remedy. It says, if a person acting

under the color of state law violates a constitutional right, you may bring a civil lawsuit for damages.

They then enacted 42 USC 1988, which says, if you prove a case under 42 USC 1983,

you can have your attorney's fees, meaning the attorney gets to add up all the hours they worked on the

case, multiply it by their hourly rate, and you get that on top of whatever the, the jury awards your

client, which if you go all the way through trial could be hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars,

if not over a million dollars, depending on how long the case has been around.

Um, and that's why I often tell criminal defense lawyers, Hey, you know, if you get a case where

there's been a constitutional violation, don't assume that it can't be a civil case just because the

person wasn't shot, killed, tased, you know, any sort of constitutional violation can result in,

in a successful, um, civil case that's worth your while.

We here at the law offices of Greg Peacock will fight any constitutional claim,

any, any violation of constitution, no matter how big, no small.

No, really though.

I've got cases where they just, they go into a house without a search warrant.

It's unlawful search.

No one's hurt.

No one, you know, no one's physically hurt.

Um, no one's tased, beaten, arrested, but there's a violation of the fourth amendment.

And the reason Congress enacted this law was because they wanted to protect these rights,

these, these fourth amendment rights where, you know, if someone just comes into your house

and a law enforcement officer in your house without a warrant or any other legal justification

and looks around, um, what are your damages?

I mean, I don't know.

I mean, it's not, it's not something that a personal injury lawyer is, is going to take.

Um, so they wanted to encourage lawyers to pursue these cases to protect the constitutional

rights.

Um, because without it, it would really wouldn't be worth worthwhile, but get, but getting back

to the, um, this, this young woman, like I said, she had the sergeant's name tattooed on

the FBI has her blouse with his biological matter on it, a lot, him, and along with the chief

of this department chief, they purchased surveillance equipment.

They rent out a trailer and they tell her that they will give her something.

I never really found out what it was, but they offered her something in exchange for

text messaging this officer, inviting her over to the house, her house or over to the trailer.

I'm sorry.

The trailer.

And they promised her as soon as he touches you, we're going to come in guns a blazing and

put it into it.

So she agrees to it.

She sends him a text message.

Hey, come on over.

And he does.

And they've got video surveillance, audio surveillance, and they're across the street.

And, you know, he's kissing her, fondling her, um, doing a lot of things a grown man should

not be doing to a 15 year old girl.

And they do nothing about it.

They do not come in guns a blazing.

Wait, why did they try to set him up?

Because they took that tape and blackmailed him.

And they said that we will bury this if you testify against that lettuce eating lieutenant for covering

up that traffic accident, which he did.

And that lieutenant was let go.

And then that's the coot, the coot, what's the term?

I can't remember.

Coot-de-coot, coot-de-toot, coot-de-toot, coot-de-toot.

I don't, I don't remember that.

That was the take.

That was the Game of Thrones takeover.

So the lead, the meat eaters now have control.

So how, how are your clients doing at this point?

Yeah, the clients are really great people.

I mean, they're, you know, they went through this.

It's obviously traumatic.

And they said something, you know, if I didn't hear it over and over and over again from my

clients, I don't know if I would believe it.

But so many times my clients say that, you know, after an incident like this, that they'll

be driving along somewhere, see a police officer and suffer some sort of, you know, episode,

whether it be like an anxiety attack or just start crying or something.

You know, they went through that.

So, you know, they, they were, they were really shooken up by this.

The depositions.

Was that the, was that the only discovery tool you used in this case?

Once you get the case filed and they file their answer, then you then just, you then start

the discovery process.

Okay.

And typically you will send out what's called written discovery.

And it's a luxury we have in civil cases that I can't believe you guys don't have in criminal

cases where we get to send what's called a request for admission.

Right.

We can say, admit this, admit that.

So we do that and, and we take the depositions of all the people who were interviewed in the 302s.

And we're going into this a little skeptical.

All the different officers.

All the different officers.

Because, you know, as I'm sure you can imagine, you take depositions of cops, they get very creative.

They figure out ways to weasel out of what they said in their report.

They figure out ways to explain things that are on audio or video.

But to our surprise, we sat down with all these cops and asked them to confirm what they said in the 302s.

And one after the other, they're like, yep, that's what happened.

That's what happened.

I'm like, okay, so you, you arranged for a 15 year old girl to hook up with an officer on

surveillance to use as, you know, to blackmail a fellow officer.

Yeah, that's what happened.

Okay, you're like the dog that caught the rat.

Like, you just kind of sit there.

Well, what do I do now?

They have a lawyer with them, right?

They had a lawyer there.

Yeah.

Don't they plead the Fifth Amendment on that?

Well, these were guys.

So keep in mind, we're getting this information from people who were providing this to the FBI.

So they're cooperating witnesses.

Yeah.

So these were either people who witnessed some of these events, were informed of some of these events.

The people who were actually participating in these bad acts were all pleading the Fifth.

And then what about the, with respect to the incident, where you asked the officer about like what they saw that day with respect to your lawsuit?

So we took the deposition of the sergeant who rolled up and had the mom and the chokehold and pepper sprayed and took the, you know, the one who took the dad down.

And he took the Fifth on everything.

Um, you know, we, we actually sat in the deposition room and what's that like to have a cop take the Fifth.

That sounds like a dream right there.

I was going to say, as a plaintiff's lawyer, you're very excited.

Yeah.

We were very excited about that, um, because we're, the narrative of the case is now ours.

He's not going to be able to explain his BS story of this paper throwing.

Um, so, you know, we, we asked him, we went through all the questions we were planning on asking him and just had him repeat over and over and over again that he's invoking his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent.

Um, and we took the depositions of the other officers who were there, who participated in the force and who pepper sprayed and arrested this family and their whole justification for arresting the family and using force was seeing that this sergeant was using force on them.

So the moment that caused all this, according to the sergeant, the paper throwing, he was the sole source of this information.

And if he's not going to testify, it's just our client saying this cop jumped him for no reason.

Did you ask them whether they were lettuce eaters or meat eaters?

Oh, we got all into that.

Yeah.

How many of them admitted to being meat eaters?

I don't remember how many of them admitted to being meat eaters.

The lettuce eaters were much more vocal, as you could probably expect.

Um...

Do they say it like, oh, I'm just a lettuce eater?

Or do they...

Yeah, they say, well, I was a lettuce eater.

If you're a meat eater, you're a meat eater.

If you're a lettuce eater, you're kind of just a lettuce eater.

There was actually a cop that went back and forth.

It was kind of funny to hear these depositions.

Okay, yes.

John started out as a meat eater.

But then, you know, as time went on, he became a lettuce eater.

But then, after these sergeants took over, we kind of felt like he was becoming a meat eater again.

I mean, it was something out of, like, eighth grade.

John was a meat eater.

Then he started dating Lisa.

Right.

And now he's a lettuce eater.

It was that ridiculous.

It sounds like the story of my life right now.

And then also your clients were deposed.

Who was your client?

Is it the whole family?

So we represented the entire family because all of this force and arrest and interviewing took place out on the driveway.

And what's very common in these cases is they rough you up and you suffer some sort of injury and then they take you to the hospital and they say, you know, we need to search the house because we may find evidence of this person being under some sort of medication that the hospital needs to know about to help them.

So we need to go inside.

So we need to go inside and look around to see if we can get any of that.

And that's what they did.

So they go into the house.

So they get a search warrant or they got permission from the family?

No, they just go on and we're doing this for the benefits.

It's for their own welfare.

It's a welfare check.

Yeah, we're doing it to save these people that we just brutalized.

That we just beat up.

Yeah.

I broke your arm, but I need to go see if you're allergic to aspirin.

Exactly.

So, you know, they didn't really find anything too incriminating or incriminating it at all, actually.

But, I mean, I've had cases where they say, oh, the bedroom was very messy and we found Marilyn Manson posters on the wall.

You know, they're just looking for anything they can to kind of throw some dirt on you.

I mean, that's what the purpose of this was.

So we named every occupant of that house as a plaintiff.

So how did your clients testify in the deposition?

They did great.

I mean, they were honestly great people.

I mean, I've got a lot of clients who probably wouldn't be invited over to a family barbecue, but these people were.

I mean, they were a great family.

They were great people.

The younger son in particular was a charmer.

I mean, when he testified at a trial, I mean, everybody loved him.

You haven't mentioned him before.

What was his role?

He was just there and, you know, saw these cops do what they did to his father and his mother.

At the time, I believe he was 14, 15 years old.

And, you know, I find that those are very powerful claims that juries, you know, relate to and really provide some serious damages for when there's a child who sees their mother or father, you know, manhandled and physically abused by the police officers.

And what that says is that if you witness a close family member be subjected to something that would cause a person, a reasonable person to suffer some sort of emotional distress, that you yourself can bring a claim for that, even though you weren't the one who was beaten.

And that's what we did for him, along with the unlawful entry into the house.

How far away was he from the entire incident?

Because it's hard for me, who've seen the police be so brutal, especially to young black teenagers, that I can't believe that he didn't get caught up in the melee.

He just kind of stood back in the background.

I mean, you know, he was just there kind of taking it all in.

I mean, he's a really great kid.

Like I said, the jury really liked him.

I really do think that he was one of the reasons why the trial was going so well for us is hearing him talk about seeing his father being thrown down to the ground, seeing all these men just, you know, you know, people view their father as the protector of the house.

And this is my dad, and to see him lose control of the situation, not necessarily by his own fault, but other men taking control of him and then doing what they did to his mother, you know, it was really emotional testimony from him.

He was a really important part of our case.

And then do you know what judge you're going to be in front of for trial?

We knew what judge we were going to be in front of.

And there were a number, I mean, as I'm sure you can imagine with a case like this, each side had a number of motions in liminey that were really going to determine how this case ended up.

What were some of the motions in liminey?

Well, as I'm sure you can imagine, defense wanted all of this extrinsic evidence out.

The tattoos of dead people, the organized statutory rape, the kicking people in the balls to death, all of that out.

And what the judge did was bifurcate that.

So the judge said, okay, in the first phase of the trial, it's just going to be the plaintiff's claims against these officers, just related to the facts of that incident alone.

And if the jury finds in favor of the plaintiff, then we'll move on to phase two of the trial, which will be against the city.

And then you can bring up all of this insane evidence that we had from the 302s.

Did you feel like that hampered your case at all?

Well, we were then able to convince the judge that a lot of this crossed over, that a lot of this evidence against the sergeant on these other issues, you know, went towards, you know, his motive and intent to assault and falsely arrest our clients.

And so he said, okay, I will allow the evidence of the circle tasing to come in.

So the circle tasing came in in the first phase of the trial.

But that was the only evidence he was going to allow from the 302s.

So meat eaters, letters eaters, none of that stuff came in.

None of that came in.

So then after 402s, what, you ready to start trial then?

We're ready to start trial.

All right.

And, you know, in civil cases, you really don't get much of a jury selection process.

The judge asks the same general questions they do in the beginning of a criminal trial.

You know, what do you do for a living?

Education, ever been arrested, all that kind of stuff.

And then the lawyers get very little time to then go up and question the veneer.

And since in civil cases, you're given such a short amount of time, the idea is to really just identify people who are going to side with the cops no matter what you say.

So then time for opening statements then?

Time for opening statements.

And we just put our story out there at a nice PowerPoint presentation.

I mean, the burden's on you.

The burden is absolutely on us.

But again, we have our story and it can't really be rebutted.

And, you know, their attorney did his opening statement.

And immediately we knew what their defense was going to be because, you know, he came out and immediately he just he had a little bit of a southern twang.

Right.

You know, it's obviously a little endearing.

But he's like, I feel really sorry for all of you folks.

So I'm really sorry for all of you folks because you're going to have to determine who did what to whom.

So their whole their whole thing was, OK, this was chaos.

Maybe some people were doing bad things.

But when it comes time for you to get that verdict form, you've got to figure out which cop did what to which plaintiff.

So they were just going to try to create all this confusion where, OK, maybe there's bad stuff that happened.

But like, oh, man, I don't even I don't know who who pushed her, who pepper sprayed, who got mad because they said stuff, who actually went into the house who didn't.

There's they're saying that they're suing the wrong cops, maybe that well, they may even do something.

But you just we don't know which ones we get.

This is the group of guys, but we don't know, OK, which one taste her or taste him pepper sprayed her.

OK, this guy went into the house, but didn't throw dad down the ground.

He's like, basically, it's good.

There's a lot of wrongdoing here and it's going to be really tough to unwind all this.

It's a horrible defense.

I don't know what else they could have done.

Did you like breathe a sigh of relief after that opening statement?

We were kind of looking at each other, we can deal with this.

So who do you put up first?

We put up our dad and our father up there first and he he talked about, you know, the fact he got into the lawsuit.

He got into the first stop.

He got into, you know, the fact that his daughter is injured.

I mean, he he told our story.

How's he hold up on cross?

You know, they're trying to get him to say that he was combative.

They're trying to get him.

Oh, you took an aggressive stance.

You know, I love it when they do the whole aggressive stance.

Right.

Because, you know, in depositions, I'll try to get them to to reenact that.

You know, it was like the fighting Irish.

It was like Duke's up.

How was it there?

But they were trying to get him to say anything that would help them, you know, anything that would justify taking him down the ground.

And the jury just wasn't wasn't buying it.

We weren't.

It was he.

Like I said, he was a really great guy.

And I think that everyone in the room knew that everybody in the room believed him.

What about like getting like behind the scenes stuff going on, like between you and like opposing counsel?

Or like.

Yeah.

What was unique to this case, which I've never experienced before, is that, you know, someone from this insurance company was like taking us out to lunch every day at trial trying to settle this thing.

So, you know, we're ordering whatever we can order and you want to offer us how much?

No, no.

But, you know, I'll have another diet, Dr. Pepper.

Yeah.

So, yeah, they were doing that every day at lunch.

Are you like I'll order the steak?

Wait, wait.

Does that come out of the settlement?

Because I'll just have.

OK, I'll just have a salad with water.

Well, on one of the days, one of the jurors, like some some family issue happened.

So the judge just decided we're not going to have trial today.

And but he said all the parties and the attorneys need to be here.

And the judge himself, he says he ordered the pizzas and I don't know if he actually paid for him, but he actually walked into our room with a stack of pizzas and two liters of sodas.

And he says, all right, nobody's leaving today until you guys settle this case.

And so on this day off from trial, he brought in a mediator that went back and forth.

You know, the judge claims he bought the pizzas and we went back and forth and still didn't settle this case.

So there was no hidden messages?

Like, were the pizzas mainly meat dominated or were they lettuce dominated?

You know, what were the what kind of pizzas?

Was there a symbol in there or what?

I didn't pick up on it.

If the judge was trying to send me a lot of pork in the pizza, you know, I'll try to remember that.

OK, so then the trial resumes, I guess.

Everybody else.

I mean, the mother testifies, the daughter, the son.

OK, so then that's time for the defense case.

What they're doing is just what they're doing is just trying to set the stage of a chaotic, violent scenario that they're trying to contain.

You know, trying to paint a picture in the juror's mind that these brave officers who are putting their life on the line are in at this house.

It's chaotic.

It's chaotic.

The plaintiffs are acting violently.

They're resisting arrest.

And these officers are just doing whatever they can to contain that.

It's essentially in their case.

And what are they saying is the reason for the arrest?

Well, he's resisting, they're resisting this sergeant's arrest.

So these officers that they're putting up are witnessing my client, you know, the father and the mother and what they perceive as resisting the arrest of the sergeant.

And so they're then jumping in to aid the sergeant in the arrest of these people.

But they don't see what started at all, apparently.

So they say.

And what about the MDT with the little messaging, the text messaging?

How does that play?

That was amazing.

So that's the cop who originally showed up.

Right.

He was the first on scene.

So, like I said, before his deposition, we had when he showed up, when he left and when he was there, we had the times, but we didn't have the MDT, which is their chat log.

We got that after his deposition.

And so we're like, oh, my God, we're just going to smoke this guy with this testimony.

And he just denied the whole thing.

He's like, no, I didn't say that on the, he's like, I didn't do that before I got there.

And, like, we're showing the times of when you arrived and here's the MDT of when it was input.

And he just straight up, flat out denied.

Nice.

I like that.

Donald Trump that.

Fake MDT.

Fake news.

Fake MDT.

And that works, apparently.

So he just denied it in front of the jury.

He just denied it in front of the jury.

Because he really was not prepared for that.

Because, like I said, we didn't.

When these guys prepare for trial, they look at what their deposition testimony is.

And they kind of figure that's going to be limited to that.

So we were actually pretty excited about bringing that testimony out.

But what we, I forgot what we did get to bring in.

During our case, we were able to call the woman officer who called the FBI to report the sergeant doing the circle taste.

And that was a very, that was a very difficult process, not only for us, but for her.

Because during our trial in downtown L.A. in the federal courthouse, this sergeant was being prosecuted.

His criminal trial was going on.

And so we were kind of in this tug of war with the U.S. attorney's office as to who was going to get her to testify about the circle tasing.

And she was terrified.

I mean, after she called the FBI to report this sergeant, that entire police department, mainly the meat eaters, made her life miserable.

They would start chirping rat every time she would walk into the station.

They would routinely offer her cheese, like she thinks she's a rat.

They would send her on dangerous calls, like shots fired, and not send any sort of backup.

They took out all the ammunition from her shotgun and extra ammunition out of her car.

They really psychologically tormented this woman.

And she was terrified to testify.

She was legitimately terrified to testify.

The U.S. attorney's office had to essentially detain her to ensure that she would be available to testify in their case.

How did you get her to testify in your case?

Well, we had a subpoena, and the judge was, you know, saying that he's going to order her to be at the trial to testify.

And so we had our private investigator pick her up to drive her to the courthouse just to ensure that she'd be there.

And she was so terrified of these people that while he's driving her there, she jumped out of the car and refused to go to the court.

So she didn't testify until the next day.

In your trial?

In our trial.

So how did they get her back?

It was just to explain to her that there's a court order.

We basically explained to her it's not an option.

So she testified to that.

I mean, and that was killer.

And you can tell that she was shook.

I mean, she looked scared.

You could tell that she was obviously very bothered by what she saw.

That was, again, very compelling evidence for us.

Did she testify to the torment she suffered after?

She did not.

The judge was only going to allow her to testify about what she observed during the circle days.

Now, what, we're on for closing arguments now?

So we're ready for closing arguments.

We're ready to roll.

We're ready to do it.

We're ready to give this to the jury.

And we have one more lunch, and we have one more lunch, and they offer a number that satisfied our clients.

So right before we did closing arguments, we informed the judge that we had reached a settlement.

Did it hurt you to settle the case when you were that close?

You know, these cases are so, you really don't know what to expect.

You know, you really don't know what to expect.

It's not like a personal injury case where you can say, here's the medical damages.

Here's what the future damages are going to be.

You know, we often refer to the damages in these cases as dignity damages.

And there can be a jury that says, you know, we're giving you $50,000 and think they're doing you a favor.

They think that's, you know, that they're doing justice.

You can have a jury with the same case that wants to give you $20 million.

So you really don't know what to expect in these cases.

Well, it's like you can get punched in the face by someone on the street.

They can, like, knock some teeth out.

There's some dental damages, and you're punched by someone on the street.

Just a random guy.

And that's a lawsuit.

But if a police officer does that conduct to you, there's an extra level of damage there.

I think there's an extra level of indignity because you can't do anything about it.

I mean, if you're at Subway and the guy behind the counter punches you in the face, you've got options.

You can punch him back, which you probably shouldn't do.

You could call the police.

You can call his boss and get him in trouble.

You've got a number of options to maintain your dignity.

If a police officer punches you in the face, there's nothing you can do.

If you call the cops, they're going to side with him.

In fact, before you even do that, you're probably in handcuffs because they're accusing you of assaulting them.

So I always say that we're suing to restore your dignity because when the government really doesn't get larger than when it's beating you over the head with a baton.

How are your clients doing now?

They're well, we spoke with them not that long ago, actually.

But, you know, they were pleased with how things ended.

Obviously, money doesn't fix these types of things.

It's just, you know, the system we have to restore some sort of loss that you've suffered.

But, you know, overall, they're doing well.

What happened to their criminal cases?

Funny you should ask.

So the mom and the husband were arrested and prosecuted for 148.

And the husband was prosecuted for 243 on a police officer with this throwing of the piece of paper.

And they pushed it all the way to trial.

And the district attorney's office subpoenaed all of the officers to show up to trial.

And they never showed up.

And the DA testified, you know, represented to the court, that she had been in constant or trying to be in constant contact with the department,

was calling, leaving messages.

And no one was getting back to her.

And it was very clear that none of these officers were going to appear at trial.

And, of course, none of them did.

So the judge dismissed it.

Yeah, I'll just kind of a side note.

But whatever, I mean, with the 302s and the, do you know, like, whatever happened to anybody involved in that?

Like, what happened to the 15-year-old girl that was, did she have a lawsuit or anything like that?

The 15-year-old statutory rape conspiracy case?

Yeah, that's actually a pretty troubling side story.

She did sue, and her suing brought that whole story to light.

And so the officer that did, you know, that did touch her and do all that stuff, he ended up getting prosecuted and convicted.

But what was really troubling is that the city attorney contacted her outside the presence of her lawyer,

convinced her to fire the lawyer, and then offered her, you know, what we would probably consider a nominal amount of cash

to settle the case, which she accepted, which is pretty troubling behavior by the attorney.

So what happened to the woman who testified against the police officers, the lettuce eater who testified about the circle tase?

Pretty tragic ending.

She was, I mean, mentally crushed.

She was emotionally crushed by this.

She went out on leave for stress.

And not long after our trial, she was found near the front door of her house, dead, with a bullet in her head.

The coroner's office ruled it a suicide.

She certainly was suffering a lot of mental anguish.

But, you know, this agency was so violent, so rogue, that I think anything's possible.

And the district attorney that, was there a district attorney investigating the officers?

The investigator that prior to this, there was like some de-investigators investigating this whole agency prior to the feds, right?

Yeah, I don't really know a whole lot about the facts of that.

I just know that there was a district attorney investigator who was investigating some of this prior to the feds, who was also found with a bullet in his head.

So, I don't know.

I don't want to sound too conspiracy theorist.

There's no such thing as coincidence.

Right.

But the conduct of this department was troubling enough where anything is possible.

One of the questions people ask me all the time is, are you afraid of any sort of retaliation from police officers?

And generally, no.

I mean, I get asked that so often that maybe it should be yes.

But during this trial was really the only time where I was like, these guys are real deal psychopaths.

I don't know what else to say other than psychopaths.

Where I, at times, was a little concerned.

Did you take any precautions?

No.

Probably should have, but didn't.

So, Greg, we're here at the end.

And usually we ask our guests why they became public defenders or criminal defense attorneys.

But how did you get into the police misconduct civil rights cases?

Why is that something that you pursued a career in?

Well, during law school, I worked at an eviction mill firm as a law clerk.

And every single day I would wake up and prepare complaints to evict people from their homes.

And it was a miserable existence.

You know, we had people knock, pounding on the front doors, crying, you know, that we were kicking them out of their homes, making them homeless.

And I was like, this is not how I want to wake up every morning and live the rest of my life.

And so I'm constantly looking on Craigslist for jobs.

And sure enough, I see a posting for someone looking for a law clerk who does police misconduct.

And it was Jerry Steering, who I owe a lot to, who's taught me everything that I know about police misconduct.

That's who I used to law clerk for, Jerry Steering.

David Moore also worked for Jerry Steering, big ups to Jerry Steering.

And I worked for him all through law school.

Like I said, the experience he gave me was priceless.

I mean, like I said, I wouldn't be here doing what I'm doing without his guidance.

So I worked for him for all through law school.

And then I passed the bar and continued doing it.

And I just, it's fun.

It's rewarding.

You know, you can make more money doing other things.

But it's, I don't know, it's a way that I'm, it's something that I'm proud to do and enjoy waking up every morning doing.

Nothing better than getting rid of some bad cops.

Yeah, I know.

All right.

Well, Greg, thanks for being on the show.

Thank you, Greg.

Hey, thank you guys.

I'm a big fan of the show.

I've listened to just about every single episode.

So this is, this has been a thrill for me.

Yeah.

Is there anything you want to say to the, to our listeners or?

Um.

What do you want to tell us public defenders about these 148s?

I just want more criminal defense lawyers to know that, you know, there can be a civil case with, with cases that don't involve shootings, beatings, and tasings.

Anytime there's a constitutional violation, that could be a federal lawsuit.

So give me a call.

I've got a, I've got a website.

Do you want to plug your number right now?

Is there like a hotline?

Yeah, the hotline.

1-800.

949-292-7478.

You can get me at GregoryPeacockESQ at Gmail.

GregPeacockLofs.com.

It's a work in progress, but it's there.

Okay.

But yeah, so many, so many, so many criminal defense lawyers don't realize the civil cases that come their way that they just do nothing about.

All right, well, thanks for being on the show today, Greg.

Thank you, Greg.

Thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of Another Not Guilty.

And guess what?

We have another Not Guilty story coming your way next week because we public defenders fight injustice every single day in the American criminal system.