THE THIN BLUE LINE
A former Louisiana police officer was sentenced to over six years in prison after he kicked a suspect in the face who had already surrendered and had his hands behind his back, the Associated Press reports.
Jared Preston Desadier, 44, was sentenced to 78 months detention by a federal judge after he pled guilty to a single count of “deprivation of rights under color of law.” The incident took place in April 2020 when Desadier was employed by the Monroe Police Department.
Officers were responding to an alarm in downtown Monroe when they encountered the suspect, who fled after officers found he was carrying a fake plastic gun and drug paraphernalia. The suspect surrendered and obeyed orders to lie on the ground, flat on his stomach with his hands behind his back, according to a document filed with his plea documents.
Desadier ran towards the victim and then asked his fellow officer whether the officer’s body-worn camera was recording, and when he was mistakenly told that the cameras were off, he continued to run towards victim and kicked him in the face. – Western District of Louisiana DOJ
“The bedrock of officer and citizen engagement is for the officer to, without exception, act professionally with a goal of deescalating tense situations,” U.S. Attorney Brandon B. Brown of the Western District of Louisiana said in a news release. “Here, this defendant instead decided to criminally escalate the situation by unnecessarily battering the victim.”
