SHREVEPORT, La. (AP) — A former north Louisiana police officer has been sentenced to more than six years in prison for kicking a suspect in the face in 2020, the U.S. Justice Department said Wednesday.
Jared Preston Desadier, 44, was sentenced to 78 months detention by a federal judge in Shreveport. Court records show Desadier pleaded guilty in July to a single count of “deprivation of rights under color of law.”
He admitted to kicking a suspect in the face as the man was lying on the ground with his hands behind his back. The incident happened in April 2020, when Desadier worked for 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 erroneously thought a fellow officer's body-worn camera was off before he ran toward the victim and kicked him in the face, prosecutors said.
“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.”
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