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 into falsely confessing to a murder that never happened.
During a 17-hour interrogation in August 2018, Fontana Police Department officers questioned Thomas Perez Jr. about the disappearance of his father, whom Perez had reported missing. The agents alleged that Perez had murdered his father, and when Perez denied the allegation, the agents tried to convince him that he had forgotten about the crime, according to a federal lawsuit, court records and a video of the interrogation.
Throughout their lengthy interrogation of Perez, officers used a variety of tactics intended to entice him to confess. They took his dog to the interrogation room and told him that he had walked in blood and that they would send him to be euthanized. They took Pérez to a dirt lot and asked him to walk in search of his father's body. They told him that his father's body was in a morgue.
“You killed your dad,” one of the officers said, according to the interrogation video. “Dad is dead because of you.”
The officers told Perez he would have “closure” if he told them what happened. Perez repeatedly told them that he didn't know.
“Stop lying to yourself,” the officers told Perez.
Perez, who was distraught, visibly sleep-deprived and later testified that he had been denied medication for depression and other mental disorders, sobbed during the interview. At one point he tore out his hair and opened his shirt. When officers left the room, he tied his shoelaces around his neck in an attempt to hang himself, records and videos show.
After 4 p.m., Pérez told the police that he had had an altercation with his father and had stabbed him.
But a major problem soon arose with that confession: Perez's father was alive and safe. He 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 catch 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 withheld the information and placed Perez in a psychiatric confinement.
“In my 40 years of suing police, I have never seen that 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 him. [anyone] confess to having killed Abe Lincoln.”
Fontana police initially suspected Perez after observing that his home was in disarray, as if a “fight” had occurred. Perez's father's phone was left inside the house and police said they found “visible blood stains.” A police dog had picked up the scent of a dead body, court records show.
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 determined that “a reasonable jury could conclude that the detectives inflicted unconstitutional psychological torture on Perez,” according to a court order from last June.
“He testified that the officers prevented him from sleeping and deprived him of his medication,” Gee said. “There is no legitimate government interest that justifies treating Perez in this manner while he was in medical distress.”
