Local News in Brief : Judge Upset About Sheriff Investigators

A Superior Court judge said he has complained to Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block that internal affairs investigators acted improperly in their probe of a deputy charged with use of excessive force.

Judge Edward Ross dropped criminal felony charges Monday against Deputy Kevin Lloyd. On Tuesday, he sent a follow-up letter. The judge said the action of the investigators appeared to be “illegal and malicious,” and he accused them of suppressing evidence from the defense attorney to “cover up” inaccurate information.

Lloyd had been suspended after a lengthy Sheriff’s Department investigation into allegations that in 1987 he hit and punched a handcuffed man in Hawaiian Gardens in an attempt to force the man to tell him where a criminal suspect was.

The judge’s decision to drop the charges followed a complaint by the deputy’s attorney that tape recordings of three witnesses had been withheld. Richard Hirsch, Lloyd’s attorney, said the tapes were “intentionally suppressed” and the sheriff’s investigators had asserted in writing that the recordings did not exist.

“I felt there had been an illegal and malicious suppression of evidence . . . and there was a deliberate misrepresentation in the reports,” Ross said. “And this was a cover-up through th1696625525mere delay in furnishing the tapes that led to the dismissal.”