A former Monroe Police officer was sentenced to more than six years in federal prison for assaulting a person he had arrested, and his efforts to cover it up.
Jared Preston Desadier, 44, was sentenced Wednesday to 78 months in prison, followed by 2 years of supervised release, a release from the U.S. Attorney's Office states.
He pleaded guilty to one count of a two-count indictment back in July. He was indicted in October 2021, accused of one count deprivation of civil rights under color of law and one count tampering with a witness by misleading conduct. He pleaded guilty to the civil rights charge, records show.
The factual basis for his guilty plea says that Desadier was working as a patrol officer the night of April 21, 2020 when an alarm went off. Officers found the victim in the area, and questioned him. He showed them his plastic toy gun, and while they were searching him for other contraband they found drug paraphernalia, the document states.
The victim ran away, but officers caught up with him, and one pulled out his taser. That officer told the victim that if he didn't lay on the ground he would be tased, so the victim immediately lay down on the ground, the document states. That officer went to cuff the victim, but then Desadier "sprinted" toward the man, asking the other officer if his body cam was "hot." The officer said his body cam was off, even though it was not.
Desadier ran up to the victim and kicked him in the face, injuring the man, the document states. When the victim told Desadier's supervisors what had happened, Desadier lied and said he hadn't touched the victim; he blamed the victim's injuries on a fall, the indictment alleges.
The case was investigated by the FBI and prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian C. Flanagan and Trial Attorney Thomas Johnson of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
“The defendant’s decision to callously abuse an arrestee when he thought he wasn’t being watched is an affront to the principles of honesty and integrity that our society expects from law enforcement,” said Assistant Attorney General Clarke for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “This sentence makes clear that the Department of Justice will aggressively investigate and prosecute any officer who believes that the Constitution only applies when the cameras are on.”
“All Americans expect law enforcement officers to continuously abide by the law,” said U.S. Attorney Brandon B. Brown. “The bedrock of officer and citizen engagement is for the officer to, without exception, act professionally with a goal of deescalating tense situations. Here, this defendant instead decided to criminally escalate the situation by unnecessarily battering the victim. Prosecuting offenses such as these not only benefit society, but also law enforcement because bad police officers who cast a black eye on the profession are eradicated from the law enforcement community. This office will continue to prosecute these types of crimes with a goal of increasing the public’s trust in law enforcement.”
