Joseph Perez

On July 27, 2020, during a mental health episode, 22-year-old Joseph Perez was accosted by Los Angeles Sheriff’s deputies, allegedly on suspicion of breaking into a car. In the ensuing seven-on-one assault, the deputies punched Joseph in the face, head and torso, requiring more than 30 stitches and staples to his face and head. The deputies “put him face first on the ground and began to climb on his back,” says Jamon Hicks, Perez’s lawyer and member of the Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission. “At all times during this encounter… [Perez] believed that he was going to die.”

For surviving the assault, Perez was charged with resisting arrest and assaulting deputies. He spent roughly two years in L.A. County Jail. As a result of the beating by deputies, he suffered a traumatic brain injury and now has trouble carrying on a conversation and suffers from impaired executive functioning. At the time of the beating, Joseph had already been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, depression and psychosis. Instead of receiving the mental health services he desperately needs, he has been in and out of prison ever since the beating.

Vanessa Perez, his mother, has suffered a six-year ordeal fighting for her son. Dignity and Power Now, a prisoner support group, has attempted to intercede on Joseph’s and his mother’s behalf to get him medicine he needs and the prison denies. Fifty people, including Vanessa, CentroCSO, Dignity and Power Now, San Gabriel Valley activists and OPA supporters, protested at the City of Industry sheriff’s station to demand justice for Joseph on December 13, 2025. Vanessa is an OPA endorser.

As happens when cops rampage or kill, they’re investigated by their own! The secretive nature of such investigations means that over six years later, in the midst of a civil rights suit filed by Vanessa, the full story remains hidden. Over a dozen pages of the department’s use-of-force report are blacked out. The Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission has subpoenaed the complete use-of-force report of Joseph’s beating, including bodycam footage, witness interviews and text messages related to the case. However, LASD refuses to comply, and the Commission has now filed suit.

Enough! We say: Open All Police Archives about the Beating of Joseph Perez Now!