Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies arrested three teenagers at gunpoint last week after bystanders called 911 to report that the teens were attacked by a man with a knife, a lawyer for one of the teen’s families said Monday.
“I just can not believe that the only way to handle this was to approach it with guns,” said civil rights lawyer Robert Brown, who specializes in police crime cases.
Sheriff Alex Villanueva said in a videotape statement that he ‘is concerned about the tactics applied’ and that the incident is being investigated.
The teens, two of them Black, were sitting with their skateboards Friday at a bus stop along Soledad Canyon Road in Santa Clarita when a man approached and asked if they had broken anything, Brown said. When they told the man to leave them alone, he pulled out a knife and began stabbing it at her, asking the teens to lift their skateboards like shields, Brown said.
Several people called 911 to report the incident, but when deputies arrived, they treated the teens as criminals, Brown said.
Brown represents the family of Tammi Collins, whose 16-year-old son was one of the detainees. Collins posted an 11-minute video of the exciting meeting on Instagram on Saturday. More than 90,000 people had watched it since Monday afternoon.
Warning: the video below contains banning.
In the video, at least three deputies of the sheriff can be seen next to the bus stop with their guns drawn and pointing to the three toes. They instruct each toe to run backwards; one is made to kneel on the ground. All three teens are handcuffed and put in squadrons.
“All this time, your relatives have been telling you that the teens are in fact the victim,” Brown said. “And the deputies don’t seem to be that responsive.”
As a small crowd gathers on the sidewalk, multiple people can be heard shouting, “It was the other man,” and tell deputies that the suspect was fleeing the street. A woman who identifies herself as the manager of a nearby Buffalo Wild Wings can be heard calling 911 to report that the toes were chased through the restaurant’s parking lot by a man with a knife.
“I told your sergeant who the problem was and what happened,” she told deputies. “For you guys to act this way is ridiculous.”
She asks at another point, “Do you understand what this looks like?”
In response, deputies may be heard saying they are actually holding their toes in response to another call, one reporting that someone is being attacked with a skateboard, which they say is considered a deadly weapon.
“A call for service was received regarding a criminal attack, and deputies are continuing the suspicions that they were involved,” Villanueva said Monday. “The case is currently being investigated.”
It was not clear whether the man who allegedly lay on his toes with a knife was also trapped.
The teens were held in the squad cars for about 30 minutes and then released at no charge, Brown said. He is investigating the incident into a possible lawsuit, but said no decision has been made. He said the teenagers and their families were deeply shocked, especially by what could have happened.
“I just thank God we have no tragic or fatal outcome here,” Brown said. ‘If in what was a very emotionally charged situation, where you had these gentlemen who had just been attacked by someone with a knife, if they would have panicked or one of the officers would have panicked, this discussion would have been a lot can take different turns. ”
Collins and her son picked up the pieces still in the aftermath of the meeting and were not available for comment.
“This is something my son and his friends will never forget,” Collins wrote on Instagram. ‘I’m still wondering[ing] how will i ever help my son to recover from this traumatic experience. ”
