LA County settles lawsuit from mentally ill man beaten by deputy for almost $3M

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday agreed to settle a lawsuit with a mentally disabled man for $2.75 million after he was beaten in 2014 by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies, according to the Los Angeles Times.

In July 2014, Barry Montgomery, who has schizophrenia, was approached by deputies from the department’s Compton station and asked if he was smoking marijuana. Montgomery responded to the deputies with profanity and shouted the name of a gang, according to a country report. 

The deputies then asked if Montgomery had anything illegal in his possession. When he did not respond, they attempted to detain Montgomery. He did not comply with deputy commands and said, “I’m going to kill both of you with my deuce-deuce (a street term used to describe a .22 caliber for a firearm)!” the report added. 

Montgomery then tried to punch a deputy, and the deputies beat him, causing a broken nose and rib fractures in addition to other injuries. 

After the incident, the deputies found Montgomery had less than an ounce of marijuana on him and no weapons.

The report also noted that Montgomery’s mother later told them that her son had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and Tourette syndrome when he was 14.

During a preliminary hearing for the case, two deputies gave “conflicting statements” about what kind of force they had used on Montgomery, per the report.

The sheriff’s department, however, investigated the deputies’ actions and said that their behavior was within the department’s use of force policy, the report said.

Though prosecutors charged Montgomery with two felonies, those charges were eventually dropped because he was found incompetent to stand trial, the Times reported.

The Hill has reached out to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department for comment.