Mary O’Callaghan, the Los Angeles Police Department officer convicted in the 2012 assault of Alesia Thomas who died while being arrested by police, walked out of a Los Angeles County jail this weekend after serving about eight months of her 36-month sentence. Talk about a sweet deal.
O’Callaghan was found guilty on the charge of assault under color of authority on June 5, 2015. She was sentenced to 36 months—three years—in state prison, but the judge immediately suspended 20 months of O’Callaghan’s sentence, leaving only 16 months. In California, persons convicted of non-violent felonies are awarded one day’s credit for every day served behind bars. Shannon Presby, the assistant district attorney who prosecuted O’Callaghan, called the practice “good time-work time credit,” and he also thinks that jail overcrowding played into the equation.
O’Callaghan’s time, like all others, was calculated from the moment she went into custody (at the conclusion of her trial) on June 5. Her sentencing to 36 months in prison did not occur until July 23, more than one month later, but those days she had been chillin’ in the L.A. County Jail were part of her sentence’s overall calculation. Hence, we get roughly 233 days in prison—close to eight months, or one-half of 16 months.
You go, girl.
Officers went to Alesia Thomas’ home in July 2012 to investigate charges of child endangerment. Her two small children had been left at a police precinct with a note for their grandmother. After questioning Thomas, the police officers on the scene made the decision to arrest her and a struggle ensued. Once police brought Thomas out of her apartment and to the police vehicle O’Callaghan, an 18-year veteran with the department, assisted in placing Thomas into the back of the car. She assisted by kicking Thomas several times in the crotch area with her boot, and shoving her by the throat. The incident was caught on the squad car’s dash camera. You can view that dash camera footage, where Thomas can be heard saying “I can’t breathe” several times, here.
Thomas’ family was awarded a $2.5 million dollar settlement by the L.A. City Council in October 2015. The Los Angeles County District Attorney made the decision to file the charge of ”assaulting an arrestee under color of authority” against O’Callaghan instead of an “involuntary manslaughter charge, citing insufficient evidence to prove that the conduct caused Thomas’ death.”