A federal monitoring report says Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy Eric Barraza used force against Jeffrey Fairchild while Fairchild was walking away from him inside Twin Towers Correctional Facility in September 2024. The monitors described the takedown as swift and violent, and said Fairchild hit a metal window frame face-first before falling to the concrete floor. Fairchild’s family alleges the force broke his neck; they say he became a quadriplegic and died seven months later. His family is suing the county, Barraza and unnamed sheriff’s personnel, alleging excessive force and wrongful death.
The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles in September 2025 and seeks unspecified damages, according to the Los Angeles Times. Fairchild had been arrested on September 12, 2024, for violating parole tied to a 2022 criminal threat conviction. He was being held at Twin Towers when the encounter with Barraza occurred.
Fairchild’s stepmother, Denise Fairchild, said her son had been handcuffed and was given a diabetes sugar test before the incident. She said a nurse could not complete a finger prick, and that Barraza then threw Fairchild against a wall, breaking his neck. The federal monitors’ account differs on the point of impact: they reported that Fairchild struck a metal window frame face-first before falling. The monitors found the force preventable and contrary to applicable safety standards.
Competing Accounts of What Happened
Barraza’s account, as described in a department report, differs from the monitors’ findings. He said Fairchild charged at him and that he applied downward pressure to guide Fairchild safely to the floor, describing his response as reasonable. The Sheriff’s Department found the force objectively reasonable. The department and Barraza’s attorneys have denied wrongdoing, according to the Times.
The department said it cited Barraza for failing to use de-escalation tactics before using force and disciplined a sergeant over failures in the post-incident assessment. The federal monitors reported that Barraza was not disciplined for the use of force itself and criticized the department for not addressing alleged factual misrepresentations in its investigation. The Sheriff’s Department has said it conducted an internal administrative investigation and took appropriate administrative action.
Fairchild died on April 21, 2025, at St. Mary Medical Center in Long Beach after suffering a heart attack. He would have turned 57 in December 2026. His family said he wrote poetry and socially conscious rap lyrics, participated in jailhouse ministry while incarcerated and had one daughter.
A Mother's Push for Accountability
Denise Fairchild said she hopes the lawsuit will lead to accountability for officers who harm inmates. Her husband, Halford Fairchild, said people responsible for violence against inmates should be punished, according to the Times.
Peter Eliasberg, chief counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, told the Times that the department approves uses of force that independent monitors find out of policy and does not discipline deputies for investigative statements inconsistent with clear video evidence. The ACLU of Southern California represented inmates in the 2012 Rosas v. Baca lawsuit, later renamed Rosas v. Luna, a class action over what the American Civil Liberties Union described as routine, excessive and unnecessary force in county jails. In 2015, inmates and the county reached an agreement requiring changes intended to reduce jail beatings, including force-prevention efforts before any use of force and a zero-tolerance policy for dishonesty in use-of-force reporting.
Earlier Monitoring of Jail Force
Federal monitors overseeing the Rosas agreement found in 2022 that guards in Los Angeles County jails routinely struck inmates on the head in violation of use-of-force policies. Surveillance videos later unsealed in the case, covering incidents between October 2019 and July 2022, showed deputies overpowering restrained men, including punching, slamming a head into a wall and kneeling on an inmate's neck. Jail use-of-force incidents fell 17% in 2022 compared with 2021.
The Sheriff's Department has said it takes the Rosas monitors' findings seriously and will address concerns through accountability and corrective measures. The jail system has faced broader scrutiny in recent months: the Los Angeles County jail population climbed to roughly 13,500 inmates by October 2025, the highest level since May 2023, and about 49% of the population has been diagnosed with mental health issues, up from roughly 22% in 2015, according to the same Los Angeles Times reporting. The department began deploying body-worn cameras inside four facilities, including Twin Towers Correctional Facility, starting in October 2025.
The county reported 46 in-custody deaths in 2025, up from 32 in 2024, per the Times. A separate federal investigation into prisoner abuse and misconduct in the jail system previously led to convictions of several current and former sheriff's deputies for trying to obstruct that probe, according to Reuters.
What Oversight and County Records Show
The court-appointed Rosas monitoring panel was retained in May 2014 to develop a corrective action plan aimed at preventing excessive force in the downtown Los Angeles jail complex, according to its 14th report. Later monitoring documented policy violations and concerns about investigative reporting, including the 2022 findings and the records of incidents from October 2019 through July 2022 described above.
County figures offer snapshots from different periods: the Sheriff’s Department reported an average daily jail population of 12,738 in the first quarter of 2025, up from 12,408 in the first quarter of 2024, in its quarterly population report. Separately, the office of Supervisor Janice Hahn said 20 people died in county custody during the first 20 weeks of 2025, more than double the number in the same period the previous year. That period-specific figure is not an annual total and should not be directly compared with the full-year death counts cited above, according to Hahn’s office.
