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An ex-Los Angeles sheriff’s deputy who testified against former colleagues who were subsequently convicted of beating a handcuffed visitor at the Men’s Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles was sentenced Monday to six months of home detention.

Pantamitr Zunggeemoge — who was also ordered to pay a $1,000 fine — pleaded guilty in 2015 to misdemeanor counts of conspiracy and deprivation of rights in connection with the 2011 assault on Gabriel Carrillo.

In recommending the probationary sentence, federal prosecutors noted that Zunggeemoge was the first deputy to cooperate with investigators in a wide- ranging jails probe by admitting “direct and substantial” involvement in the assault and agreeing to testify about what he knew.

Zunggeemoge testified that the force used by himself and three other Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies on Carrillo — who was also pepper-sprayed while handcuffed and held down — was “excessive.”

He also told jurors that afterward, the deputies “huddled” to figure out a way to justify the violence in order to complete a “probable cause declaration,” a document used to explain an official use of force.

Zunggeemoge said he falsified the report to state that Carrillo — a then-27-year-old forklift operator from Bellflower who had come to the lockup with his girlfriend to visit a jailed relative — had started a fight with deputies who were trying to book him for the misdemeanor offense of possessing a cell phone inside the jail’s Visiting Center.

In fact, the ex-deputy told jurors, Carrillo was “handcuffed, so there was no fighting or resistance on Mr. Carrillo’s part. He posed no threat to any of us.”

Based on the false report, Carrillo was charged in state court with assaulting the deputies. The charges were dropped shortly before his trial was to have begun and the county later paid him $1.2 million to settle a civil lawsuit.

As part of his plea deal with federal prosecutors, Zunggeemoge agreed to resign from the sheriff’s department and never seek employment in law enforcement.

Zunggeemoge’s former colleagues at the Visiting Center were sentenced to federal prison terms ranging from six to eight years. A fourth defendant pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentencing and a fifth was acquitted of two federal charges while a third charge is pending.

— City News Service

Lying sheriff’s deputy gets 6 months home detention in violent jail beating: He was key witness against other deputies was last modified: by

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