Thursday, January 15, 2009

4th deputy leaves amid O.C. jail probe

Sheriff's Special Officer Phillip Le was on duty at Theo Lacy Jail when an inmate was beaten to death in 2006. Le testified that inmates would receive special privileges for keeping others in line.
By Tami Abdollah
January 14, 2009
A fourth Orange County Sheriff's Department employee named in a grand jury investigation into the 2006 beating death of an inmate at the county's largest jail has left the department, a sheriff's official said Tuesday.

Sheriff's Special Officer Phillip Le, who was on duty at the Theo Lacy Jail in Orange when inmate John Derek Chamberlain was beaten to death, was placed on administrative leave April 7, the day the grand jury transcript was released.

Le's last day at the department was Dec. 5, said sheriff's spokesman John McDonald. Le had been with the department since August 2005. McDonald declined to say whether Le had resigned or was fired because of a state law that restricts the release of peace officer disciplinary records.

The grand jury found that on Oct. 5, 2006, while one of the jail's ranking guards, Kevin Taylor, exchanged personal text messages and watched the television show "Cops," Chamberlain, a 41-year-old computer technician from Mission Viejo, was stomped and beaten to death nearby.

Chamberlain was in custody on suspicion of possessing child pornography when he was attacked by a group of inmates. Inmates mistakenly believed that he had been charged with child molestation. Le was alerted to Chamberlain's injuries when an inmate waved outside the glass-walled guard station.

Le refused to testify before the grand jury until he was granted immunity. According to the transcript, Le told the grand jury that deputies would work with inmate "shot-callers" who would help keep other inmates in line with beatings -- called "taxations" -- and would receive special privileges such as sack lunches and new clothes in return. He said it was common for deputies to watch movies, use their personal laptops and read newspapers and books while on duty.

Le also told the grand jury that he did not keep an accurate log on the day Chamberlain was killed and that he had made a "command decision" to record over the first seven to 10 minutes of videotape he used to document the scene after guards discovered Chamberlain had been beaten.

Deputy Sonja Moreno, Sheriff's Investigator Jose Armas and Deputy Monica Bagalayos were the first three to leave the department in the wake of the investigation. Taylor and Jason Chapluk, another deputy assigned to Chamberlain's module, remain on paid administrative leave.

tami.abdollah@latimes.com



http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-ocdeputy14-2009jan14,0,5049916.story

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