Cops defend use of ‘psychological torture’ during interrogation for a murder that never happened

California police have defended their use of “psychological torture” during a 17-hour interrogation in which they got a son to confess to killing his father – even though his father was still alive.

Officers in Fontana used legal trickery to get Thomas Perez Jr. to make the false confession in August 2018. They claimed to have recovered the body of his missing father, which they said was in the morgue, and said their family dog ​​was “depressed” by what it had witnessed and would have to be euthanized.

They also persuaded Perez to have photographs taken of him to document any non-existent injuries he may have sustained during a fight with his father, while giving him suggestions on how he might have killed the elder Perez. reports the Los Angeles Times.

Ultimately, Perez said in a 2022 statement that he “began to absorb the false belief they created, and I accept it as a truth.” I simply allowed the beliefs of others to dominate me.”

He subsequently confessed to killing his father as police had suggested, causing him to attempt suicide, although his father would be found alive just a few hours later as he prepared to board a plane at Los Angeles International Airport of an airplane.

The ordeal began when Thomas Perez Sr. went missing on August 7, 2018, while taking an evening walk to pick up the mail with the family dog.

The pet returned alone, with no trace of his father, who locals affectionately called Papa Tom, according to the LA Times.

At first, the younger Perez thought his father might have met a lady, but when there was still no word from him the next day, he called Fontana police to report that his then 71-year-old father was missing.

The dispatch officer who took the call later told her supervisor that the call had made her suspicious and said Perez seemed distracted and not overly concerned about his father’s well-being — prompting officers to come to the home he shared with his father to personally to talk to him.

Responding officers said they then noticed some signs of foul play, with Police Chief Michael Dorsey explaining in a recent social media post that the senior Perez’s cellphone, wallet and keys were still in the home.

He said the house was in disarray, especially the father’s bedroom, and claimed Perez told officers he had removed his father’s mattress and some clothing and cleaned the room with bleach.

When a neighbor subsequently described Perez as mentally unstable and described his other alleged activities, police obtained a search warrant when they brought him in for questioning.

They brought in a cadaver dog that officers said had sniffed out human remains in the father’s bedroom — but the dog was not an official police dog and instead belonged to a volunteer with the sheriff’s department, the LA Times reports.

Officers also used a liquid called Bluestar, which is designed to absorb blood stains.

However, it has been known to give false positive results on dietary fiber and minerals found in household items, such as paint. Coincidentally, the Perez’s home was under construction at the time.

Yet the police claimed that Bluestar had definitively found large amounts of blood in the house.

That evidence was never confirmed by a laboratory and no officer would later testify that he had seen blood.

When officers first suggested Perez might have killed his father, he reacted with disbelief.

‘I’m shocked. I’m angry. I can’t understand it. I’m with you [a] at a loss for words,” he shared in his 2022 statement.

Still, officers continued to try to force Perez to confess, taking him to locations around the city where he could have killed his father.

They then took him back to the station when he failed to lead police to his father’s body, ignoring his pleas to be taken to a local hospital as he began to feel ill.

After a while, Perez said he “started to lose it.”

“I could have held my own, and you know, go back to them and whatever,” he said in his statement, according to the LA Times.

“But now they assure me that my father is dead and I don’t remember it, and because of my medication I threw it away. And they tried to help me and they already recovered a body,” he explained of his decision to confess.

He then tried to hang himself from the interrogation room desk with his shoelace, according to a civil suit he would later file.

Just a few hours later, officers would find the senior Perez at LAX. He then told police that he had indeed gone to visit a friend without telling his son, and that he was on his way to visit his daughter.

Still, police recommended that the son be committed to a psychiatric facility, and he claimed in court documents that police told hospital staff not to receive phone calls, keeping him unaware that his father and dog were alive .

He has done so ever since told CNN The venture left him so traumatized that he was unable to work or answer the phone for a while.

“I got to the point where I was afraid to even go get the mail anymore,” he said. ‘I was afraid to come out. I said, ‘I don’t know who could be there.'”

California Judge Dolly Gee ultimately ruled in June 2023 that the evidence in the case would convince the jury that the interrogation amounted to “unconstitutional psychological torture.”

She alleged that officers showed Perez was “sleep-deprived, mentally ill and, significantly, with withdrawal symptoms from his psychiatric medications.”

“Their tactics indisputably led to Perez’s subjective confusion and disorientation, to the point where he falsely confessed to killing his father and attempted suicide,” the judge wrote at the time.

In May, the police agreed to a $900,000 settlement with Perez, calling it a “business decision recommended by a federal court arbitrator to save the city even more time, effort and costs.”

The settlement did not include any admission of misconduct on the part of the police, noticedsaying, ‘If Mr. Perez had asked for an admission of wrongdoing, the case would never have been settled.’

And on Thursday, Police Chief Dorsey defended the department’s actions in a social media post.

“At that time we were urgently searching for a missing man and there was good reason to suspect that some harm might have happened to him,” he said. posted on X.

‘Unfortunately, these types of situations can often result in a murder investigation. We are so grateful that this was not one of them,” he said, telling the community that he was speaking out publicly about what happened in the interest of “transparency, accountability, honesty and maintaining the trust of the community.”

Dorsey further explained why police believed there was evidence the senior Perez had been murdered, noting that at one point during the lengthy interrogation, Perez was taken to a local golf course, where he stared at a pond and allegedly asked, ” Don’. Are there bodies floating?’

Dorsey also argued that a federal judge overseeing the trial stated that a reasonable juror would have concluded there was sufficient evidence to suggest a crime had been committed.

As such, Dorsey said, it is “acceptable and completely legal to use various tactics and techniques, such as subterfuge, to elicit information from people suspected of possible criminal activity.”

“Were we perfect in the way we handled the situation? No one ever is,” the police chief wrote.

“We are sorry for what the son has been through and we are grateful to hear that he and his father have been reunited and that their relationship has improved.”

Attorney Jerry Steering, who represented Perez in his lawsuit, told the Orange County Register he found that post “insolent.”

“I think they should be ashamed,” he said of the police officers involved. “I don’t think they have a moral compass.”