Transparency reveals how lawman’s lies affected cases

Records: Ex-deputy had 6 beers, crashed truck, misled CHP in 2015

Anthony Lagarda arrived at the Blue Lake Casino just after 10 p.m. on June 7, 2015. He drank six beers, climbed into his truck and started home around 1 a.m.

But on his way, Lagarda, a Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office deputy, crashed into a tree on North Bank Road. He then walked almost five miles to his house. Within an hour, two California Highway Patrol (CHP) officers knocked on his door and asked him if he knew where his truck was.

Lagarda had been a cop for eight years. He knew the one thing law enforcement officers can’t compromise is their integrity. It’s everything. Lying is fatal, even off-duty. But in his three-word answer, Lagarda killed his career.

“In the driveway,” he said. Lagarda claimed his truck vanished in the hour since he got home. At 3:52 a.m., he signed a stolen vehicle report under the threat of perjury. As a deputy sheriff, Lagarda knew what putting his signature on that report meant.

Less than three months later, he was no longer a deputy.

Newly available records detail Lagarda’s dishonesty. On Jan. 1 landmark transparency bill Senate Bill 1421 gave Californians access to police misconduct files relating to dishonesty and violence after 40 years of secrecy. When Lagarda lied in 2015, the

public wasn’t informed — until now.

When the CHP officers knocked, Lagarda emerged wearing a maroon bathrobe. He’d been home over an hour, he said, asleep. Lagarda smelled like alcohol, officers reported. Lagarda’s “speech was slurred,” according to a supplemental arrest report. He held the door frame to remain upright and refused a field sobriety test.

When officers led Lagarda to his driveway, he feigned surprise his truck wasn’t there.

“I have no logical explanation why I did what I did,” Lagarda later told investigators.

The next afternoon, Lagarda called his supervisor, Lt. Kevin Miller and lied again. He told Miller someone stole and totaled his truck the night before. He said he’d been at the casino. “I assumed the Blue Lake Casino,” Miller said in an incident report. “He frequents that casino.”

When Miller heard CHP’s version of events, “I quickly realized,” Miller said, “Lagarda’s recollection of events, as told to me, was very different from CHP’s.”

Miller’s account depicts a man coming to terms with a life-changing mistake.

The following day, Lagarda called Miller wanting to talk in person.

“He appeared stressed and emotional,” Miller said.

Lagarda broke down. He described drinking at the casino, feeling alright to drive, and swerving off the road to avoid a deer.

It is unclear whether Lagarda was fired or resigned. The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office cannot speak on personnel matters, spokesperson Samantha Karges said.

Among the patterns SB 1421 is revealing is a common practice of officers facing potential termination for serious missteps and resigning before the process can be completed. Had Lagarda been fired, the sheriff’s office would be legally required under the new law to have those records on Lagarada.

Instead, because Lagarda lied, the Humboldt District Attorney’s Office released records of its prosecution of Lagarda, including reports by the CHP and the sheriff’s office.

Lagarda eventually pled guilty to “falsely reporting a crime and reckless driving while under the influence of alcohol.” Humboldt County District Attorney, Maggie Fleming, wrote in an email that those charges “reflected his conduct.”

Because of officers’ role in society, “they need to be held to a higher standard,” Glen Smith, litigation director of the First Amendment Coalition, said. Before SB 1421, “there was a lack of transparency,” he said.

The powers given to police are an oft-cited reason for oversight. “We have a right to know how police use and abuse those powers,” Kathleen Guneratne, senior staff attorney for the ACLU of Northern California, said in an email. “How do we know whether or not misconduct is being handled properly if we never hear about it?”

When officers lie, all their past testimony can become untrustworthy, and under the 1963 landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brady vs. Maryland criminal defendants are entitled to use it to impeach their testimony.

Records show Lagarada was an arresting officer 11 times in 2014. His conduct “rendered him unsuitable as a witness,” Fleming said. “And we had cases that depended on his testimony.”

Each case was reviewed and closed, Fleming said. But it was not clear how many resulted in lesser or dismissed charges. Fleming said her office does not track the outcome of prosecutions and has no way of determining which cases were affected without pulling each case again.

The Humboldt County Public Defender, Marek Reavis, declined to comment.

Before SB 1421, prosecutors relied on Brady, which requires the prosecution to disclose material helpful to the defense, to track untrustworthy officers, Kyle Barry, senior legal counsel at the Justice Collaborative, said. While prosecutors still rely on Brady, they now have SB 1421 to ensure the integrity of convictions, Barry said.

“Prosecutors have a constitutional obligation to identify officers with a history of dishonesty and other misconduct and they should be the first ones filing records requests under 1421,” Barry said.

This story was produced as part of the California Reporting Project, a collaboration of 40 newsrooms across the state to obtain and report on police misconduct and serious use-of-force records unsealed in 2019.