Deputy charged with assaulting inmates
A San Mateo County sheriff’s deputy is facing criminal charges after he punched two jail inmates in the head and shoved another prisoner head-first into a closed elevator door last year, prosecutors said.
Deputy Blake Lycett, 42, was charged Thursday with three counts of misdemeanor assault by a public official for the incidents, which took place last August at the county’s main jail in Redwood City, the Maguire Correctional Facility.
Lycett is on paid leave from the sheriff’s office, where he has worked for the past six years, Sheriff Carlos Bolanos said. He previously worked for the Daly City Police Department.
Lycett will stay on paid leave while the sheriff’s office completes its disciplinary process.
“I will not tolerate inappropriate or any excessive use of force by my personnel upon our incarcerated population,” Bolanos said.
Other deputies were present during each of the alleged assaults, according to prosecutors. But Bolanos said concerns about Lycett’s conduct only came to light more than a week after the first incident, when one of the inmates he is accused of assaulting filed a complaint with the sheriff’s office.
Bolanos said he did not know of any deputies who complained about Lycett’s actions. He said his office’s internal review of the case will look into whether those deputies failed to report misconduct.
“I expect that if my personnel witness inappropriate conduct on behalf of another member of the sheriff’s office that they report it,” he said.
The sheriff’s office referred the case to prosecutors after receiving the inmate’s complaint, Bolanos said, then began a broader review covering “each and every use of force that Deputy Lycett may have been involved in” during the several months he worked at the jail. That review turned up the other two incidents for which Lycett was charged.
The first alleged assault happened as deputies booked a man into the jail on Aug. 18, San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said. He said the man resisted at one point during the fingerprinting process, and Lycett and other deputies pulled him to the ground.
Then, Wagstaffe said, Lycett “climbed on top of him and punched him once in the back and twice in the head.”
The next incident happened the same day, but involved a different inmate who had been put into a holding cell after he was uncooperative while being booked, according to Wagstaffe. As deputies entered the cell later to retrieve the man, Wagstaffe said, Lycett “threw him into the corner and then struck him … multiple times in the head and face.”
The man filed a complaint about Lycett’s conduct 10 days later, after he had been released from the jail, according to the sheriff’s office.
In the meantime, on Aug. 22, authorities said Lycett was dealing with another inmate who refused orders to go back to his housing unit. Lycett pulled the man to the ground, Wagstaffe said, and got him “under control” with the help of other deputies, then pushed the man’s head into the door of a nearby elevator.
Wagstaffe said that reports Lycett submitted to document his use of force in the three incidents did not match video recordings from jail surveillance cameras.
Prosecutors examined the actions of all deputies in the videos and decided to charge only Lycett, Wagstaffe said.
“There is no other conduct by the officers that is under our investigation,” Wagstaffe said, adding that Lycett “is the only one who used excessive force here.”
Wagstaffe said the reason for the nearly sixmonth gap between the first alleged assault and the criminal charges that were filed Thursday was the time needed for the sheriff’s office to review Lycett’s use of force reports and for the district attorney’s office to conduct its criminal investigation.
Wagstaffe said prosecutors charged Lycett with misdemeanor assault, rather than a felony, in part because he did not use a weapon and because the injuries the victims suffered included bruises and a bloody nose but were not more serious.
An attorney appeared on Lycett’s behalf at an initial arraignment hearing Friday morning. Lycett has not entered a plea on the charges, and is next due in court March 15.