A settlement has been reached in a civil rights lawsuit against Los Angeles County, its former chief probation officer and various deputy probation officers alleging excessive force against a teenage detainee at a juvenile camp in Malibu, according to court papers obtained Wednesday.
Among the defendants in the suit filed by then-17-year-old Beckham Cardona is ex-Probation Officer Oscar Cross, who was criminally charged and pleaded no contest last year to one misdemeanor count of assault.
According to the complaint for unspecified damages filed in August 2023 in Los Angeles federal court, Cross and other officers at Camp Kilpatrick “improperly and unjustly detained, assaulted and asphyxiated” Cardona after he asked for more food.
The plaintiff’s attorneys alleged the officers “wrongfully restrained Cardona and then pinned him down at several points of his body, bending his body in half, causing extreme pain” and cut off his air supply when Cross and other officers allegedly “placed excessive weight on Cardona’s throat and/or chest.”
The Oct. 23, 2020, attack was caught on video and published by The Los Angeles Times in February 2023.
A joint motion of settlement filed in federal court by L.A. County stated that the parties participated in mediation last month and “reached a conditional settlement to resolve this case in its entirety.”
U.S. District Judge Michelle Williams Court ordered on Jan. 9 that the action be dismissed without prejudice, meaning the claims could be filed again later.
Details of the settlement were not disclosed. The agreement is subject to approval by the county Board of Supervisors.
Supervisor Lindsey Horvath told reporters when the video was released that she was “horrified to learn about and to witness through the video a clear and disturbing use of excessive force that occurred in my district,” and said she was “further disturbed when little was done by our prior chief probation officer to hold the perpetrator responsible for this heinous act.”