A deputy from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department (previously at Boing Boing) shot off another sheriff's ankle tattoo during a camping trip in 2015, according to a lawsuit. The initial official record of the incident indicated that the deputy was drunk and accidentally fired his handgun. What really happened, according to recently released court records and lengthy investigation, is that Jonsen, the shooting victim, was held down by the gun-toting Waldron and a group of deputies. Jonsen had made a change to his sheriff's gang tattoo without approval from above. So, Waldron took initiative in first trying to remove it by burning it off, and later by shooting Jonsen. I looked at the inexplicably readily available picture of the crime's aftermath so you don't have to. It's gross. Waldron succeeded in removing a portion of the image, blurring the rest with gore and shattering two bones.
I'm reminded of stories of Russian inmates discovering that one of their rank had a tattoo falsely indicating that they'd been in prison for longer than they really had been. The inmates would in turn forcibly scrape the fraud's tattoo off with a stone. Criminal gangs and law enforcement gangs? In the US? Seems an unlikely comparison.
Isn't law enforcement supposed to combat gang activity? What happens when they form gangs themselves? Looks like you get behavior like this and a coverup in turn.
Waldron, close with scandalous former boss Alex Villanueva, has since received a promotion at Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.
LA Public Press writes about the whole affair, shattered bones n' all.
