Sheriff's Department sued - Agency denies using excessive force in home search of Latino Family
A Riverside man has accused the San Bernardino Sheriff's Department of excessive force, including pointing guns at children, while serving a search warrant at the man's house in March. "They came into my house ... for no reason,' Oscar Chavez said Thursday. "They screamed and pointed guns at the children, my family.' San Bernardino Sheriff Gary Penrod called the accusations "bizarre.' The search warrant was conducted in a professional manner, Penrod said. "When we do a search warrant, the officers go in armed with their guns out,' he said. "I didn't get involved in it that much, but from everything I've heard, everything was above board.' Chavez's lawyer, Mark Blankenship of Riverside, filed a lawsuit against the Sheriff's Department, Yucaipa businessman James W. Braswell and Deputy Sheriff Harry Hatch in U.S. District Court on Monday. Deputies, including Hatch, searched Chavez's house in Riverside and two businesses in San Bernardino County on March 31 in an attempt to find information about four cars the Department of Motor Vehicles said are missing. "They came in, they broke things. The children are sick because of it,' Chavez said. Chavez and his brother Armando operated the Rancho Los Amigos auto dealership on Valley Boulevard in Bloomington for Braswell, who owns the dealership, the search warrant said. Braswell notified the DMV that the auto dealership was missing four reports of sales and said Oscar and Armando Chavez embezzled up to $800,000 in cash and vehicles from him.Steven Figueroa, president of the Mexican-American Political Association, filed another complaint against the Sheriff's Department on Chavez's behalf with the U.S. Attorney's Office. It includes 18 pages of the children's handwritten descriptions of the morning of March 29. Five-year-old Stephanie Banuelos, visiting the United States from Mexico, described how the "policias' woke her up and made her stand in the street in her pajamas. "I was very cold and afraid,' she wrote in Spanish, the only language she speaks. She said she was forced to go to the bathroom with the door open and was prohibited from speaking Spanish. [more]