By Sam Stanton
The Sacramento Bee
SACRAMENTO — A Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy in Sacramento this week for ceremonies honoring fallen law enforcement officers ended up meeting some of his local colleagues early Monday after he allegedly drank too much, climbed into a parked car on R Street and ended up in an altercation with the vehicle owner and his friends, Sacramento police said Tuesday.
The deputy, whose name was not released, apparently had been drinking on the R Street corridor near 14th Street when he got into a vehicle parked there by a man who was delivering tamales to an area restaurant.
The vehicle owner saw the man sitting in his car, then saw that the individual was wearing a pistol. He and others pulled the man from the car and disarmed him, said Officer Matt McPhail, a Sacramento police spokesman.
“They removed him from the vehicle forcefully and took his weapon from him,” McPhail said.
The officer left the immediate area but was detained a short time later by Sacramento police, McPhail said.
Once officers determined the individual was a deputy, they reached one of his supervisors in town for the police officer memorial ceremonies and turned him and his weapon over to his boss, McPhail said. Officers did not administer field sobriety tests, McPhail said.
“It doesn’t appear that a crime occurred in any way or we certainly would have arrested him for that,” McPhail said, adding that it is not uncommon for people stopped on suspicion of public intoxication to be handed over to acquaintances or family.
“We contact people very frequently, I would say all the time, several times a day downtown, who are intoxicated,” McPhail said. “Typically, our last resort is booking them or incarcerating them in some way.”
McPhail added that “the conduct here is not something we would like to see, this is not in line with the standards that we have set for ourselves as a profession. It’s unfortunate this would happen.”
Los Angeles sheriff’s Capt. Christopher Reed said his department was notified of the incident Monday by Sacramento police but had not yet received a police report and had few details.
Reed said he did not believe the deputy and his supervisor had returned to the Los Angeles area yet but that the incident would be reviewed to determine what action to take.
Other officers visiting for the memorial displayed behavior more in keeping with their mission. On Sunday night, officers with the Santa Maria Police Department chased down and detained a man who they allegedly had spotted assaulting another man at 10th and K streets. Richard Purves was booked into the Sacramento County jail on suspicion of battery.
Copyright 2016 The Sacramento Bee