A former police officer was sentenced to a year in prison on Friday for beating a man with a baton at the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs Medical Center in 2022.
Juan Anthony Carrillo, 46, arrived to assist another police officer who had detained a 34-year-old man, referred to in court records only as R.V., at about 4 a.m. at the medical center in January 2022. The man, who prosecutors describe as being unhoused, was walking on medical center property holding a clear glass pipe that the officer suspected was drug paraphernalia, according to a sentencing memo filed in federal court.
Carrillo, of Alhambra, struck the man with his department issued 22-inch baton 45 times in about 41 seconds while the man screamed in pain. The beating left him with cuts on both legs and a broken bone in his foot, prosecutors said.
“Most, if not all, of the baton strikes were delivered while the other officer was on top of the victim, who was unarmed,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a news release. Carrillo was 60 pounds heavier than the man and continued to strike him even when he was completely still, prosecutors wrote in the memo.
After the attack, Carrillo’s “baton no longer retracted, even after he repeatedly banged the baton into the concrete pavement in an attempt to collapse it,” prosecutors wrote in the memo.
“Officers owe a special duty and have a special obligation to keep the trust of the citizens they police,” Judge Wesley L. Hsu, who handed down the sentence, said at the hearing Friday.
Carrillo pleaded guilty in July to depriving a person’s rights under the color of law, a misdemeanor, as part of a plea deal with prosecutors.
Prosecutors allege in the indictment that Carrillo also made false claims on his report to justify the use of force, saying the victim was violently kicking his legs and refusing to show his hands, while not mentioning how many times he’d struck the man.
“We deeply appreciate the difficult jobs faced every day by law enforcement officers, the vast majority of whom act with professionalism and integrity,” U.S District Attorney Martin Estrada said when Carrillo was indicted last year. “But when an officer acts in a manner that violates the civil rights of another person, we will respond to uphold the rule of law and maintain public trust in our system of justice.”