[ad_1]
The testimony is part of a federal civil lawsuit filed by Bryant’s widow, Vanessa Bryant, alleging Los Angeles County invaded her privacy and caused her emotional distress by failing to fully contain the distribution of the photos.
Tuesday’s testimony blew a big hole in the county’s defense that photos of the scene were accurate by helping first responders plan the response at the command post.
Capt. Matthew Vander Hork, who leads the sheriff’s station that responded to the 2020 crash, said on the stand that the only people who should be taking pictures at aviation crash sites are the National Transportation Safety Board and the coroner.
“(The agents’) role is… to protect the place, right?” asked Bryant’s attorney, Lewis Lee.
“Yes,” Vander Hork agreed.
Lee asked if the agents should let federal investigators do their job, and Vander Hork agreed.
However, one of Vander Hork’s representatives testified that they were asked by the command post’s superintendent to take the photographs. Those photos, which included images of human remains, were then shared between representatives of both the sheriff’s and fire departments, prompting a federal lawsuit for invasion of privacy.
Christopher Chester, whose wife and daughter died in the crash, is a co-plaintiff. He and Bryant said they live in fear that the photos will reappear online.
Vander Hork agreed with Lee that the non-public photographs would lead to a “loss of public trust”. He agreed that county policy, which allows deputies to take pictures of body parts, only applies to traffic accidents and crime scenes, not aviation accidents. Photos of the crash scene were also not needed to identify the helicopter, he said.
In their questioning, the defense attorneys raised doubts about whether Vander Hork’s statements fully applied to the situation on the day of the accident.
“Did you know that the first thing the NTB asked for the next day was photos?” asked Jason Tokoro, a lawyer representing the district.
“No, I don’t know that,” Vander Hork replied.
“If anyone found out, he wouldn’t be punished.”
Vander Hork’s testimony was used by the plaintiffs’ attorneys to attack the county’s handling of the photos when it was revealed that they were shared among deputies, one of whom later showed some of the photos to a bartender he considered a friend.
Instead of opening a full investigation and preserving evidence, the Sheriff’s Office, which monitors public information, ordered all relevant deputies to report to their site and make sure the photos were deleted, the attorneys said.
“If nobody knew, they wouldn’t have been disciplined,” Vander Hork was quoted as saying. If the media finds out, they will be fired.
Vander Hork said he had immediate reservations about the order to delete the photos, saying the instructions were “out of the norm and out of the chain of command.”
“We don’t want to be on the hook for destroying evidence in a federal investigation,” Vander Hork said he told Superior. They also told the court they were concerned the orders would violate the state peace officer’s bill of rights and jeopardize an investigation.
“I was told the sheriff … has full authority,” he continued. “I reiterated that I was not comfortable with these directions… He told me this was the way to go.”
In the year In March 2020, Sheriff Alex Villanueva said all photos had been deleted and eight sheriff’s deputies were facing administrative action. CNN has reached out to Villanueva for comment.
The defense threatened the release of the photographs, saying an extended investigation would involve lawyers and union representatives.
Tokoro asked if those involved in the investigation “have copies of the photos”, to which Vander Hork replied “I guess so”.
Photos of lawyers arguing at the bar
Earlier Tuesday, Bryant’s attorneys split with Los Angeles County defense attorneys over what a sheriff’s deputy had on his phone to show a bartender and laugh.
In the year During cross-examination of Deputy Joey Cruz, who received the photos from a training officer when he worked the crash in 2020, defense attorneys played surveillance video of Cruz’s phone and showed him scrolling through his Instagram feed instead of examining photos of the crash.
“Does this improve your memory if you’re looking at your social media?” asked defense attorney Meera Hashmal.
“Yeah,” Cruz replied.
But the plaintiff’s attorneys asked for the video to be expanded on another point.
When questioned by plaintiff Craig Lavoie, Cruz agreed that he stopped scrolling through Instagram and switched to another function on the phone, which Lavoie said were photos of Bryant’s crash scene. Lavoie observed the bartender’s reaction and asked Cruz to explain, “making hand gestures to his neck and hitting his neck.”
“I can’t explain the action,” Cruz replied. He said the moment he was seen smiling in the video was during a night spent with a bartender he considered a good friend.
In another part of the video, Cruz said he showed the bartender photos of the crash scene, which he said was the only time he specifically showed photos that night.
After being suspended without pay for two days, Cruz was ordered to undergo three days of mandatory training for violating the Sheriff’s Department’s confidentiality policies.
Showing the bartender “was a lack of judgment on my part and inconsistent with my training,” Cruz said in court.
“If I could go back … I would have done everything differently regarding the photos,” Cruz said, explaining that part of the reason he went through the process was the stress he felt working the scene of the accident two days earlier.
But plaintiffs’ attorneys questioned Cruz’s level of stress, saying he never sought county resources to deal with stress or mentioned the sharing of the photos in his report detailing the sharing of the photos.
“I’ve never experienced such a shock … I was wrong … I had bad judgment,” Cruz said.
Jerome Jackson, an attorney representing co-plaintiff Chester, said, “One of the reasons for your remorse is that you deeply hurt my client?
“Yeah,” Cruz replied.
“And you know it really hurt Mrs. Bryant,” Jackson said.
“Yeah,” Cruz said.
The court heard graphic photos shared while playing ‘Call of Duty’
Deputy Michael Russell said Tuesday that he found the photos from Cruz while off-duty in the station’s office, and later told officers he was “excited” to see them and learn from them.
The day after receiving the photos, Russell was playing the video game “Call of Duty” with another deputy when he agreed to text the photos.
Asked if this was a normal exchange for him, Russell said, “It was a lot less stressful than I’ve had before.”
As crowds flocked to the venue after hearing Bryant was on the helicopter, Russell’s job was to make sure only authorized people entered the venue.
Russell — who has never been suspended, demoted or placed on probation — violated policies by receiving and sending photos of the crash scene, according to an internal investigation.
Russell told the court that when he sent the photos to the other deputy, he was not concerned that doing so was against department policy. “I made a big mistake,” he said.
“If I could go back to that day when I asked (Cruz) for those photos, I would never do it again,” Russell said. “It was very embarrassing for me.”
[ad_2]
Source link
