Videos show confrontation between Gabbi Lemos and Sonoma County sheriff’s deputy

The Sonoma County Sheriff's Office released body camera videos Thursday that show most of a confrontation between deputies and a Petaluma teen and her family that is the focus of a police brutality lawsuit.

The videos show the family of 18-year-old Gabbi Lemos arguing with a deputy, as well as the moment sheriff's officials say Lemos interfered with an investigation. They show glimpses of the arrest of the teen, who was forced to the ground, handcuffed and placed in a sheriff's patrol car.

Prosecutors and attorneys for the family each said the videos support their divergent accounts of what happened June 13 on the Lemos family's Liberty Road property.

The videos, along with a recording of a phone call Lemos made to her mother from jail, were made public earlier Thursday during a legal hearing. They were taken from body cameras worn by deputies who responded to what one deputy believed to be a possible domestic disturbance.

In the first video, Deputy Marcus Holton, who had reported to dispatchers that he heard yelling and was investigating a possible disturbance, opens the passenger door of a truck to talk with Lemos' sister, Karli LaBruzzi. At that point, Lemos steps up to Holton - placing herself up against him and between the deputy and the open car door - and declares he shouldn't have opened the door.

“Officer, what are you doing? You're not allowed to do that, you're not allowed to go in the car,” Lemos says.

The Sheriff's Office, which previously denied The Press Democrat's request to view the footage, put the videos online and on social media.

Prosecutors presented the evidence to Judge Gary Medvigy on Thursday morning in an unusual move that suddenly made public recordings and other material that would normally only be released during the course of a jury trial.

District Attorney Jill Ravitch said the goal is to overcome the allegation of vindictive prosecution lodged by Lemos' lawyer, Isaak Schwaiger.

Schwaiger said prosecutors charged Lemos with misdemeanor resisting arrest because she filed a police brutality lawsuit in U.S. District Court in San Francisco. A resisting arrest conviction would prevent Lemos from pursuing her federal lawsuit.

“The allegation is that we've done something to harm Ms. Lemos after she filed the civil case - that is simply not true,” Ravitch said. “What's true is we took another look at a pending case that was submitted for our review and we decided that the case should be filed.”

Schwaiger said the videos show two things: that force was used and there was no legal justification for it.

The deputy did not have a reasonable suspicion a crime had occurred when he opened the truck door and Lemos was within her rights to try to stop him, said Schwaiger, who has had his own copies of the videos for some time.

“It is not a crime to interfere with an officer who is unlawfully performing his duties,” the attorney said. “Once he's breaking the law, there is nothing wrong with her standing up and saying, ‘You can't do that.' It is perfectly justified.”

Instead of leaving, Holton shoved Lemos by the neck and later tackled her when she tried to walk back into her own house, Schwaiger said.

“He comes up behind her, grabs her by the head and throws her down,” the attorney said. “That shows excessive force.”

Sheriff's Capt. Clint Shubel said that Holton, in his report, said he heard yelling when he drove up behind an idling truck and trailer in the road outside the Lemos property. Holton reported he heard yelling and then saw a man - later determined to be LaBruzzi's boyfriend - quickly walking down the driveway toward the truck with women behind him screaming.

Shubel said law enforcement is under added obligation to persevere to find the truth when investigating possible domestic violence.

The recordings that begin just after 11 p.m. on the darkened rural lane northwest of Petaluma do not offer a clear picture of the moment Holton arrested Lemos as she walked away from him. Holton pushed her to the ground on her family's gravel driveway. Another deputy's camera shows her mother and two sisters running toward Holton, and another camera angle shows a deputy pulling the mother away from Holton.

The Sheriff's Office also requested resisting arrest charges against the other women, but prosecutors did not charge them.

The recordings show Lemos; her mother, Michelle Lemos and her two sisters opposed Holton's presence from the start. They repeatedly tell Holton there was nothing to investigate and that he had no right to open the car door.

The women appear unrelenting and loud and they do not respond to Holton or other deputies when asked to calm down. The women demand a female deputy be called. Holton and other deputies repeatedly respond to this request by telling them there is no female deputy available and that they are not required to be a specific gender.

“I think Marcus was professional and showed great restraint,” Shubel said. “All the deputies tried to de-escalate the situation. They (the Lemos family) were not people you could reason with.”

Shubel and two other sheriff's officials reviewed the footage with The Press Democrat on Thursday. And, separately, so did Lemos' attorney Schwaiger.

Capt. Mark Essick said Holton was acting within the law and policy when he opened the vehicle door to speak with LaBruzzi, which he said is backed up by U.S. Supreme Court rulings. Essick also said that the California penal code says people have the duty to refrain from resisting arrest and that the civil court is the avenue for addressing improper arrest.

“If we were to walk away every time someone confronted us, there would be a lot of walking away,” Shubel said. “I don't believe that's what the community wants from us.”

Prosecutors and the Sheriff's Office also raised the specter of racism with the Lemos family by releasing a recording of a phone call Lemos placed to her mother from jail. During the call, Lemos uses a racial slur and they both use derogatory language when talking about Holton, who is black.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Bill Brockley said they gave the jail recording to the judge, which made it a public record, because they show “motive and intent on why they didn't follow the directives of the police officer.”

He declined to explain further, saying he wouldn't comment on the evidence.

Schwaiger called Lemos' choice of words in a private conversation with her mother “unfortunate,” but said it is not relevant to her arrest. He said Lemos is not a racist and accused prosecutors of conducting a smear campaign to try to weaken her civil case.

“If that's the justification for what happened beforehand, they have a problem,” Schwaiger said. “Basically, the sheriff is saying ‘she called me a name to her mother on the phone and that somehow justifies actions we took hours earlier when we smashed her face on the ground.'?”

Schwaiger maintains the only reason Lemos was charged was because she is suing the county. He repeated calls for a chance to question prosecutors about the decision-making process.

“It sure as hell looks rotten to me,” he said.

The newly public evidence derailed what was expected to occur in court Thursday.

Medvigy was expected to rule on whether two deputy district attorneys could be called to testify about the timing of their decision to file charges against Lemos.

Lemos claims that prosecutors' decision to charge her on Nov. 13 - the day after she filed her federal lawsuit - amounts to vindictive prosecution, and an attempt to undermine her lawsuit. Prosecutors had previously rejected the misdemeanor case for filing on Sept. 11.

Medvigy criticized the District Attorney's Office for a lack of transparency and raised questions about the timing and whether anything other than the federal lawsuit changed between September and November.

Ravitch, in an interview Thursday, said the Sheriff's Office urged prosecutors to reconsider the case, which prompted a review after the Sept. 11 hearing. Ravitch said that they also received additional video footage during that timeframe.

Ravitch said that the judge's strong words and calls for transparency made her decide to release the evidence in the case.

Deputy District Attorney Chris Honigsberg gave the judge a trove of evidence, including unredacted versions of emails previously blacked out, copies of footage from body-worn cameras, recordings of the jail phone call from Lemos to her mother, photographs of her injuries taken at the hospital and the police reports.

“We're putting everything out there ethically that we can to respond to what we see as a baseless motion,” Ravitch said.

In his courtroom, Medvigy said the unexpected move by prosecutors made the lengthy decision he'd prepared on the issue “now irrelevant with this new evidence.”

Schwaiger argued that introducing evidence in this manner violated rules about procedure that give defendants the first opportunity to make their arguments when claiming vindictive prosecution.

Medvigy said he would review the evidence and also research the proper procedure for this type of case to address Schwaiger's concerns. The case returns to court Thursday.

Staff Writer Paul Payne contributed to this report. You can reach Staff Writer Julie Johnson at 521-5220 or julie.johnson@press democrat.com. On Twitter @jjpressdem.