LA sheriff’s deputies sent to prison for beating mentally ill inmate, covering it up

The entire story may have gone untold if Sather had not decided to confide in his uncle before he left. His uncle, Steven Sather, was a veteran sheriff’s detective who attempted to intervene on his nephew’s behalf. Joshua reached out to him shortly after the incident, and his uncle encouraged him to do the “right thing,” according to a district attorney’s memo obtained by the Times.

The next day, Steven was concerned that Joshua would resign and went to Twin Towers with his partner to try to talk Joshua into staying. However, when they arrived they were informed that Joshua had already resigned. Brunsting, present in the watch command office, had a heated exchange with Steven where he allegedly said, “If my nephew doesn’t decide to come back to the department, I’m gonna find you and put a bullet in your head.“

In turn, Brunsting reported Steven for threatening his life, but prosecutors declined to press charges against him.

The defendants claim that force was necessary when handling Jones and attempted to paint Sather as an unreliable, dishonest witness who “had his script, he told his story and made it as dramatic as he could,” Brunsting’s attorney, Richard Hirsch, said in closing arguments. Focused on inconsistencies, such as whether or not Jones was “scooting” on the floor during the assault, Hirsch claimed, “You’ve heard so many stories, you can’t tell which, if any, are true.”

However, it only took jurors 90 minutes to return a guilty verdict in May.

This isn’t Brunsting’s first run-in with excessive force. In 2009, he allegedly choked an inmate and then wrote a report in the name of a trainee deputy. Hirsch also argued that Brunsting had never received proper training in handling mentally ill employees in his tenure at the department.

Hirsch also presented a different side of Brunsting to the judge by offering 31 letters from family, friends and coworkers.

Branum’s attorney also tried to get the judge to focus on his merits, such as his time in the US Army when he allegedly ordered his crew to not fire on Iraqi civilians who had broken curfew.

This comes at a critical time for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. An FBI investigation into the jail system has reached the highest levels of the department, including department veterans and even former sheriff Lee Baca.

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