2 Ex-Officers Plead Guilty in Beatings

Two former Adelanto police officers accused of trying to beat a confession out of one man and forcing another to lick his own blood off a booking room floor pleaded guilty Tuesday to federal civil rights violations.

“These two police officers who were sworn to uphold the law violated it in the most brutal of ways,” said Assistant U.S. Atty. Jonathan S. Shapiro, who prosecuted Thomas Boyd Chandler and Kenneth Eugene Gailey. “Rather than enforcing the law, they became a law unto themselves in total disregard to due process.”

Chandler, 40, and Gailey, 32, each entered two guilty pleas Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles in connection with the two excessive force cases.

Chandler, who also admitted obstructing justice, faces up to 46 months in prison. Gailey faces a maximum of 36 months, according to the plea agreements. Sentencing is set for Aug. 18.

Prosecutors said the two officers in May 1994 took turns beating a man they suspected of abusing his young daughter in an attempt to get him to confess. Joseph Valdes was beaten as he sat in an interview room at the police station in Adelanto, which is near Victorville in San Bernardino County.

Before beating Valdes, Chandler allegedly said: “Are you going to tell us what we want to hear?” When Valdes did not, the officers beat and kicked him and twisted his limbs, prosecutors said.

Shapiro said the officers pleaded guilty, in part, because the government discovered that there was an audio recording of the incident that officers did not know about at the time.

In the other incident, which occurred in October 1994, the officers were accused of beating a man in the police station who had been detained on drug-related allegations. The pair beat Henry Easley in retaliation for his spitting on a fellow police officer, prosecutors alleged.

Easley was hit so hard on the head that he started to bleed, prosecutors said. Chandler ordered Easley to lick his blood off the floor, according to the federal grand jury indictment, which was handed down in April.

According to court documents, Chandler then showed Easley a bullet and threatened to shoot him and leave his body in the desert if he reported the beating.

“This bullet has your name on it,” court documents quoted Chandler as saying.

The two officers initially were charged in state court with assaulting Easley, but the case was dismissed because of prosecutorial misconduct. The San Bernardino County district attorney’s office appealed the matter but will now drop the action because of the officers’ guilty pleas.

Chandler and Gailey were fired from the Adelanto Police Department, but later received $65,000 settlements from the city as a result of wrongful termination claims. The fines they face as part of the plea agreement are about the same amount, attorneys said.

After being fired from Adelanto, Gailey moved to Arkansas and worked as a police officer until the federal indictment was issued. Chandler has been working as a maintenance mechanic for a pipeline company, his attorney said.

“After reviewing the evidence, this was probably the best course of action for Chandler,” said his attorney, Charles A. Goldwasser.

Gailey’s attorney could not be reached for comment.