By Priana Aquino and Savannah Dewberry
LOS ANGELES, CA – Former Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy, Kevin Honea, 33, was charged with perjury this week for an incident that occurred on May 24, 2019.
During a patrol in Gardena, Honea was among a group of deputies that discovered a car linked to a recent robbery. Police searched the vehicle and three men were arrested at the time.
When originally testifying against two of the men on trial for weapons charges, Honea told the court that he had found a stolen handgun in the front seat.
In court transcripts obtained by The Los Angeles Times, Honea claimed the handgun was sitting on the floor of the passenger seat, “like where your foot would be” he said.
Honea affirmed that he personally recovered the firearm when asked by Deputy Public Defender Alison Hudak, but video footage from May 2019 shows that another deputy found the weapon in the trunk of the vehicle.
This false testimony resulted in the Los Angeles District Attorney dropping the case and opening the possibility of filing criminal charges against Honea for the false report.
However, no criminal investigation was ever opened, and Honea received a 10 day suspension. Over two years since the May 2019 incident, Honea pleaded not guilty to the charge.
“Lying under oath damages the credibility of law enforcement and creates doubt and mistrust by the public,” Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón said. “The scales of justice must always remain balanced in a court of law.”
An internal investigation concluded that Honea had not meant to mislead anyone, and that his false statements were attributed to “sloppiness.”
This case exemplifies a growing concern of opponents of the LA County Sheriff’s Office.
According to the Los Angeles Times, “the department has investigated fewer allegations of dishonesty, and the number of times deputies have been found guilty of misconduct has dropped.”
Another case exemplifying police perjury specifically in the LA County Sheriff’s Office occurred in 2019, the same year that Honea allegedly lied under oath.
An unnamed deputy was accused of severely choking his wife, and instructed her to not cooperate with the department’s investigation. Despite lying to investigators about his actions, the investigation was dropped, he was suspended for 45 days, and allowed to keep his job.
Often when officers are found with misconduct, they are reassigned to a new position, sometimes in a new unit. However, this may only worsen police behavior, according to studies.
In a 2019 study published in Nature Human Behavior, researchers found that switching an officer with a history of misconduct to a new group increased the likelihood of that group being accused of bad behavior.
The study followed four years of records from the London Metropolitan Police service, with data from 35,000 individual officers from 2011 to 2014.
The study said that for every 10 percent increase in the proportion of a police force, like adding a misbehaving officer to a group of 10, the chances of another officer being accused of misconduct in the next three months rose by eight percent.
Police perjury is a problem that has apparently plagued the American court system for a long time. In a 2018 article by The New York Times, New York City police officer Pedro Serrano called the practice “testiLYing.
“You take the truth and stretch it out a little bit,” said Serrano. That stretched truth often leads to disastrous consequences.
In the 2019 annual report by the National Registry of Exonerations, perjury or false accusations were the largest factor in overturned convictions of that year. Of 143 exonerations, 70 percent had perjury present, with 76 percent of the homicide exonerations containing police perjury.
Police misconduct had these defendants lose months to years of their lives.
The LA deputy public defender, Hudak, said that as a result of Honea’s false testimony, her client had to spend four months in jail.
“His dishonesty was rewarded every time someone in authority accepted his representations as true,” she said.
She added, “The fact that this evidence was presented to the sheriff and district attorney and that Deputy Honea is still working in a position of trust reinforces his bad behavior. There should never be any room in any police agency for a peace officer who lies.”
Savannah Dewberry is a student at the University of San Francisco. She is pursuing a Media Studies major with a minor in Journalism. Savannah Dewberry is an East Bay native and currently lives in San Francisco.
Priana Aquino is an incoming 4th year at the University of San Francisco, majoring in Business and minoring in Legal Studies. Upon graduation, she hopes to attend law school and continue her work in uplifting and advocating for communities of color.
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