After a long six-year battle, a California man has received hundreds of thousands in a settlement from police after being coerced into confessing to killing his father who was later found alive and well.
In August 2018, Thomas Perez Jr. reported his father missing after he failed to return home with the family dog. During the investigation, police became suspicious due to various circumstances, including a disarrayed home and Perez's unusual behavior.
Police quickly believed foul play might be involved and brought Perez in for questioning. At the station, Perez was interrogated for 17 hours, during which officers allegedly used coercive tactics, including showing him the family dog and implying she had witnessed a murder, CNN reported.
"It did happen. It did happen. You killed him, and he's dead," Detective Kyle Guthrie told Perez. "You know you killed him ... You're not being honest with yourself. How can you sit there, how can you sit there and say you don't know what happened, and your dog is sitting there looking at you, knowing that you killed your dad? Look at your dog. She knows, because she was walking through all the blood."
Under pressure, Perez ultimately confessed to killing his father, though this confession was given before he was informed that his father had been found alive and unharmed.
The interrogation reportedly left Perez traumatized, leading him to attempt self-harm during the questioning.
"Perez's mental state, among other factors, made him a vulnerable individual," US District Judge Dolly Gee, assigned to review Perez's civil case, wrote. "He was sleep deprived, mentally ill, and, significantly, undergoing symptoms of withdrawal from his psychiatric medications. He was berated, worn down, and pressured into a false confession after 17 hours of questioning. (The officers) did this with full awareness of his compromised mental and physical state and need for his medications."
After years of legal action, the city agreed to settle with Perez for $898,000, according to KTLA. Despite the settlement, the police department has remained defensive over its approach, citing officers had sufficient grounds to suspect a crime had occurred.
On November 7, Fontana Police Chief Michael Dorsey wrote a statement on X defending the officers involved.
"Were we perfect in how we handled the situation? Nobody ever is," Dorsey wrote. "In situations like these, it is acceptable and perfectly legal to use different tactics and techniques, such as ruses, to elicit information from people suspected of potential criminal activity. That was done in this case in order to gain resolution."
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