The sheriff’s deputy who has been identified as the officer who shot and killed 18-year-old Andrés Guardado outside an auto body shop in Los Angeles last week has so far refused to speak with investigators and has faced previous accusations of misconduct, including “making false statements in an investigation,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
The report said that the officer, Miguel Vega, faced the false statement accusation when he worked at a men’s jail in 2017. “Capt. John Burcher, Sheriff Alex Villanueva’s chief of staff, said investigators determined the false statements allegation to be unfounded,” the report said. But then Vega reportedly faced another three complaints after being transferred to Compton station the next year, where he’s continued to work until now.
“Burcher said that three complaints have been lodged against Vega while he was assigned to Compton station, including one for using unreasonable force that was determined to have been reasonable,” the report continued. “The two other complaints alleged that he was discourteous. In one, officials determined his conduct ‘could’ve been better,’ and the second remains pending.”
Guardado’s advocates have remained outraged over the lack of answers from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department over the young man’s death. There have been no adequate explanations from the department yet about why deputies spoke to him as he was outside the auto body shop where he worked as a security guard, why they chased him, or what exactly led to the deadly shooting.
Police have claimed Guardado "produced a handgun,” but his family said he wasn’t known to have one. Casting more doubt on police’s story is that Vega has faced further accusations in the past involving guns, including one allegation that he’d loaded the empty gun of a man he’d pulled over. “The man, who was in lawful possession of the weapon, said he was arrested on suspicion of carrying a loaded firearm in public, but the charges against him were dismissed, according to his attorney,” the report said.
Legislators, including Reps. Maxine Waters and Nanette Diaz Barragán of California, have called on the state’s attorney general, Xavier Becerra, to open an immediate investigation into the killing. They write: “Far too often, young Brown and Black men are caught up in a ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ scenario with police officers.” The LA Times reported that while the sheriff’s department did on Monday ask Becerra’s office to monitor its investigation, it “also blocked the public from learning the results of an autopsy the coroner was scheduled to perform on” Guardado.
According to the report, “L.A. County coroner’s spokeswoman Sarah Ardalani said the Sheriff’s Department put a ‘security hold’ on the case of Guardado, who was to be examined on Monday. She said the coroner’s office could not release the results of the autopsy—which would reveal how many times Guardado was struck by gunfire and where—until the hold was lifted.”
Waters and Diaz Barragán had said in their statement that Guardado was shot in the back. There are far too many questions that are remaining unanswered because the officers weren’t wearing body cams, which is yet another failing by police: “The deputies were not wearing body cameras because the Sheriff’s Department has not distributed them to the force,” the LA Times report continued.
“What happened to Andres was not only a tragedy, it was an outright crime,” Unión del Barrio member Ron Gochez told the LA Times. He’s one of the many outraged community members who has taken to the streets to demand justice for Guardado, George Floyd, and countless other Black and Latino Americans killed by police. “This is just one more of so many people who have been killed by the L.A. County sheriffs and the police [...] this is the unity between the Black and brown community saying we are tired of this.”