The city of Fontana has agreed to pay nearly $900,000 to settle a federal lawsuit filed by a man who said police pressured him to falsely confess to a murder that never happened.
During a 17-hour interrogation in August 2018, Fontana police officers questioned Thomas Perez Jr. about the disappearance of his father, whom Perez had reported missing. Officers claimed Perez murdered his father, and when Perez denied the accusation, officers tried to convince him he had forgotten the crime, according to a federal lawsuit, court records and video of the interrogation .
Throughout Perez’s lengthy interrogation, agents used various tactics aimed at getting him to confess. They brought his dog into the interrogation room, told him the dog had stepped in blood and would be sent to be euthanized. They led Perez to a dirty lot and asked him to walk around looking for his father’s body. They told him that his father’s body was in the morgue.
“You murdered your father,” one of the police officers said, according to video of the interrogation. “Dad died because of you.”
The officers told Perez he would get “closure” if he told them what happened. Perez repeatedly told them he didn’t know.
“Stop lying to yourself,” the officers told Perez.
Perez, who was distressed, visibly sleep-deprived and later said he had been denied medication for depression and other mental illnesses, sobbed during the interview. At one point, he pulled out his hair and tore his shirt. When the officers left the room, he tied his shoelaces around his neck in an attempt to hang himself, recordings and videos show.
After 16 hours, Perez told police he got into an altercation with his father and stabbed him.
But a major problem with this confession quickly emerged: Perez’s father was alive and unharmed. He had left the home he shared with his son and spent the night at a friend’s house near Union Station, according to court records. Later, he waited to board a flight at Los Angeles International Airport to visit his daughter in Northern California. When police learned that Perez’s father was safe, they initially hid the information and placed Perez in psychiatric custody.
“In my 40 years of prosecuting police, I have never seen this level of deliberate cruelty by police,” said Perez’s attorney, Jerry L. Steering. “After what I saw on the video of what they did to him, I now know that the police can get (anyone) to confess to the murder of Abe Lincoln.”
Fontana police were initially suspicious of Pérez after seeing that his house was in disarray, as if a “struggle” had taken place. Perez’s father’s phone was left inside the house and police said they found “visible bloodstains.” A police dog had detected the scent of a dead body, according to court records.
After the ordeal, Perez filed a federal lawsuit against the city of Fontana, which also named officers David Janusz, Jeremy Hale, Ronald Koval, Robert Miller and Joanna Piña as defendants. The Fontana Police Department did not respond to The Times’ request for comment on the $898,000 settlement or the officers’ status within the department.
U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee found that “a reasonable juror could conclude that the detectives inflicted unconstitutional psychological torture on Perez,” according to a court order last June.
“He testified that the officers kept him from sleeping and deprived him of his medication,” Gee said. “There is no legitimate government interest that would justify treating Perez in this manner while he was in medical distress. »
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