Bryant’s case may focus on a second scandal
“The incident is not only irrelevant, but also highly inflammatory — touching on one of the most contentious issues in our society, accusations of excessive force by police officers.”
County attorneys said in the filing that they called Bryant’s lawyers after the Sheriff ’s Department’s handling of Johnson’s force incident, first reported by The Times, became national news and asked if they’d agree not to raise it at trial. Bryant’s lawyers refused, the filing said.
Skip Miller, an attorney representing the county, said in a statement his motion will prevent “the plaintiff from prejudicing the jury by introducing unproven allegations against a witness that have nothing to do with the case.”
Luis Li, an attorney representing Bryant, said Friday: “We look forward to responding in court.”
In both cases, the Sheriff’s Department sought to keep the alleged misconduct filing in Bryant’s case.
He testified that he hiked up to the crash site, where he searched for survivors and taped off the area from hikers. He said he then took 20 to 30 photos of the site, “documenting everything,” including serial numbers and victim remains.
He said he did not think he ever wrote a report on what he documented. Nor did he book the photos into evidence. He texted the photos to a deputy at the command post and AirDropped them to a fire official.
The photos spread from there.
When Johnson was questioned about whether he still had the phone with which he took the photos, he said he lost it the next year while in Las Vegas.
Soon after the photo sharing became public, Johnson was transferred to the Sheriff’s Department’s court services division.
About a year later, deputies were conducting routine searches of inmates at the San Fernando Courthouse before their court appearances when they told two inmates to be quiet.
As the pair continued talking and laughing, Johnson ordered one of them, Enzo Escalante, to stop and face the wall. Escalante, 24, was awaiting trial on charges including murder. Security video obtained by The Times shows Johnson walking closely behind Escalante through a hallway before ushering him toward a wall.
Escalante turned around and punched Johnson in the face multiple times. Johnson and other deputies then took Escalante to the ground, face-down.
After Escalante was handcuffed, Johnson kept his knee on the inmate’s head for three minutes.
Department officials had worried at the time about the negative publicity that could come from a deputy kneeling on a handcuffed man’s head, “given its nature and its similarities to widely publicized George Floyd use of force” images, according to an internal report by a commander critical of the cover-up.
The commander, Allen Castellano, wrote in the July 2021 report that sheriff ’s officials decided not to pursue criminal charges against Escalante, to avoid drawing attention to the incident. Sheriff ’s officials waited until January — almost a year after the incident — to take the case against the inmate to prosecutors.
Castellano and other high-ranking sheriff’s officials have accused Villanueva of orchestrating the cover-up and lying about it.