Frederick Jefferson found dead in cell, Sheriff’s Dept. rules suicide

Frederick Jefferson, the homeless U.S. Navy veteran whose beating by San Diego Police sparked a viral campaign to protest police brutality, died in custody. He was 39.

Jefferson was reportedly found dead in his cell at the George F. Bailey Detention Center by San Diego County Sheriff’s deputies Sept. 1 at 2:17 a.m., just hours after he was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in prison for punching an officer in Logan Heights earlier this year. A Sheriff’s statement said Jefferson killed himself. It also said Jefferson was alone and there was no evidence of foul play.

Jefferson’s death concluded a seven-month ordeal that began Feb. 3 when he was confronted by SDPD officers for jaywalking across Logan Avenue as police escorted a group of white nationalists away from Chicano Park where they staged a protest against the park’s murals. Police had sealed off the park with a chain of about 40 motorcycles and scores of officers.

Jaywalking turns violent

He was walking in the street when officers Matthew Ruggiero and Justin Tennebaum passed him in their police cruiser. Police body cameras and video taken by witnesses across the street recorded Ruggiero shouting, “Sidewalk, bro!” Jefferson replied, “There’s nowhere to go.”  

Jefferson said during the trial he was told Chicano Park was hosting a parade and he thought the street was closed off due to the barricade at intersection of Logan Avenue and Cesar Chavez Parkway. He walked south as the cruiser passed him. Ruggiero and Tennebaum backed the car up and engaged Jefferson again.  When he refused to leave the street, they exited the car and confronted Jefferson.

“No dude, walk in the sidewalk,” Tennebaum said. “There’s cars coming down here. You’re gonna get a ticket or go to jail.”

“Stop,” Ruggiero repeatedly said. 

Jefferson lifted his arm motioning to the crowded sidewalk and asked the officers where he was supposed to go. He was walking away from the officers when they grabbed his arms. Jefferson spun out of their grasp and backed away.

Ruggiero unsuccessfully tried to grab Jefferson again as Jefferson pushed his hands away and continued to back away. Ruggiero then swung his baton at Jefferson’s waist. Jefferson counterpunched, grazing Ruggiero’s face.  Ruggiero hit Jefferson again and Jefferson threw a punch that missed. Then Ruggiero swung for Jefferson’s head and a Jefferson counterpunch caught Ruggiero squarely in the jaw. Ruggiero said in court that his jaw was wired shut afterwards and he had metal plates surgically placed in his face. 

Officers on the motorcycle barricade ran over to take down Jefferson. He was pinned to the sidewalk by five officers who were sitting on his arms, back and legs. Moments after he was incapacitated, Jefferson was beaten, tasered and pepper sprayed in the face with riot grade spray by SDPD officers. Witnesses on the sidewalk can be heard in the videos screaming for police to stop and begging them not to kill Jefferson.

Civilian video showed Jefferson was seriously harmed in the scuffle, though SDPD spokesperson Lt. Scott Wahl told reporters later that day he was not injured.  Jefferson did not receive medical attention from Bailey personnel for nearly a month, according to his public defender Jimmy Rodriguez. Jefferson said he requested medical attention five times for injuries to his rib area and lacerations before Rodriguez intervened.

‘Black slime needs to be eradicated’

Ruggiero was outspoken on social media about his dislike of civilians who video police confrontations.

“Law enforcement has spent the last twenty-five-plus years being unfairly criticized because of the growing proliferation of out-of-context videos taken by the public,” he wrote. “Those videos viewed out of context have led to a false belief that police use-of-force policies are broken, calling for mandatory body cameras to keep us in line; but when body camera footage shows that it’s the citizen acting like a child/animal/jerk instead of the cop, we shouldn’t release the video?”

Ruggiero also made numerous posts critical of the Black Lives Matter movement.

“I’m tired of hearing people call these black activists,” he wrote on Facebook. “They’re not black activists, this is black slime and it needs to be eradicated from the American society and culture.”

Ruggiero also posted flags representing Blue Lives Matter, a conservative pro-police counter-movement to Black Lives Matter. After the district attorney was questioned about posts by a journalist from The Sun. Ruggiero deleted them and changed his handle from “Matthew Ruggiero” to “Tango N’ Cash.”

Evidence excluded from trial

Jefferson and Rodriguez were never allowed to show Ruggiero’s Facebook posts to the jury. Trial judge Leo Valentine Jr. excluded them from testimony, along with several witness statements. He said Blue Lives Matter material could not be used as evidence of discrimination since Ruggiero is an officer and following a movement that defends his safety is allowed.

Rodriguez said the decision severely damaged Jefferson’s self-defense case. 

Misinformation given to officers at a briefing the morning of the altercetion was also withheld from the jury. Tennebaum mischaracterized the rally in the preliminary exam, calling it “an immigration protest.” He described the white nationalists as “pro-government” and said he and Ruggiero were concerned about Jefferson because he was wearing a red shirt. At the briefing, he said, officers were told members of “Antifa” (anti-fascist) wore red shirts.

Antifa activists usually wear all black.

Tennebaum said SDPD officers were told Chicano Park demonstrators were predominantly Antifa, which was untrue.

White nationalist leader Roger Ogden’s role in the so-called “Patriot’s Picnic” was also kept from the jury. Border Patriots, an alt-right organization, teamed up with Ogden with the stated purpose of “removing” Chicano Park’s iconic murals and “reclaiming the park for real Americans.”

“Chicano Park is racist against whites and excludes Americans,” read Ogden’s blog “Patriot Fire”.

The Feb. 3 gathering was the second time in five months white nationalists summoned demonstrators to Chicano Park. More than 1,000 counter protestors repelled them in September.
Ogden appeared at each of Jefferson’s court hearings leading up to the trial, as well as the first days of the trial. He presented himself as a member of the news media and posted frequent blogs about the trial. Ogden does not work for any professional news media organization.

Ogden repeatedly violated court restrictions of interacting with potential jury members during the selection process. He was removed during the first week of trial after passing the judge a note claiming the jury was “corrupt.” He also sent out a series of emails illegally identifying a juror. Ogden claimed the juror was sympathetic to Chicano causes and should be removed from the panel.

“I have tried to write this in a way that the Judge won’t have me arrested,” he wrote in a mass email to his followers. “A leftist, Chicano political operative and activist was allowed to be seated on the jury. This person works for a certain progressive Democratic senator as a field agent. He said that he also works frequently with a far-left activist in San Diego named Mark Lane, who is expected to be a witness in the trial.”

The juror disagreed. During jury selection, said the Senator worked with Lane and he would not recognize Lane if he saw him on the street.

‘Following the law’ 

District Attorney Michael Reilly argued throughout the trial the Jefferson case was about “following the law.” Reilly said Ruggiero and officers acted within the bounds of the law and Jefferson did not.  

“Jefferson wanted to play by his own rules and continued to step outside the law,” Reilly said. “(Ruggiero and Tennebaum) can’t just walk away. They have to take him into custody.”  

Reilly questioned each officer about “the Force Matrix,” a scale developed by law enforcement designed to guide police officers response to resistance. “Force plus one” is the action officers take when trying to subdue a person being detained, Reilly said.  Ruggiero and Tennebaum both said separately during the trial that Jefferson resisted by backing away and officers have the legal right to use touch or impact weapons. Ruggiero said detaining a person is not meant to be a “boxing match.”

“We’re not trained to fight fair,” he said. “We’re taught to win. We don’t lose fights. We can be killed if we do.”

Self-Defense Argument

At Jefferson’s preliminary hearing, San Diego Superior Court Judge Sharon Majors-Lewis criticized Ruggiero and Tennebaum for provoking the fight and said Jefferson had a case for self-defense.

“The Court cannot believe that this escalated to this level,” she said.

Majors-Lewis said she would have dismissed the case outright had the officer not been “badly injured.” She also scoffed at the officers’ assertion that Jefferson was “signaling aggressive intent” by pulling up his shorts before he was struck by officers.

Rodriguez said Jefferson acted in self-defense and the officers provoked a brutal fight over a harmless case of jaywalking. He told jurors their job was to determine whether excessive force was used, and urged them to pay attention to the initial contact officers had with Jefferson. Rodriguez said Jefferson responded out of fear, not anger.

“This is about courage to defend yourself,” he said. “Courage to stand up to abusive police, courage to come to court and tell your story.”

Jefferson said he told Ruggiero and Tennebaum he did not understand what they were trying to say when they shouted “Sidewalk, bro!” and did not comprehend that they wanted him to walk on the other side of the street. They ignored his questions, he said, and began to assault him for no reason.

“I didn’t feel like they were going to help me,” Jefferson said in court. “I feel like I was getting jumped on and I don’t understand why you’re doing this when I just got finished asking for directions pretty much.”

Ruggiero disagreed.

He said he and Tennebaum were not trying to hurt Jefferson. Their goal was to end the fight quickly and he insisted he did not aim for Jefferson’s head, which would have been against SDPD policy.

After he was punched by Jefferson, blood poured from Ruggiero’s nose and mouth. Even so, he joined the group of officers after they took Jefferson down. Jefferson said Ruggiero’s blood was dripping into his eyes, nose and mouth making it hard to breathe and causing him to feel like he was suffocating.

“(Ruggiero) came back over and got on top of me, and just sat there like a mad man,” Jefferson said. “He was just sitting on me, bleeding on my eyes and everything. At that point I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t see. That worried me.”

Jefferson said he struggled out of panic after being pinned down by five officers. Civilian video shows one of the officers twisting Jefferson’s head to face an officer out of frame, who shot pepper spray into his open eyes.

Officers were carrying a higher grade of pepper spray on the day of the Patriot Picnic, according to SDPD Defensive Tactics Coordinator Michael Rhoten. MK-12 pepper spray is typically used for crowd control, he testified, while officers normally carry less powerful MK-4 on their belts.

Rhoten also said it is protocol for officers who pepper spray a person to initiate medical attention. Jefferson received none.

Former El Cajon Police Chief Jack Smith said numerous SDPD and California law enforcement policies and procedures were violated that day. He said the officers escalated the situation by not giving clear commands, by grabbing Jefferson without warning and not attempting to deescalate the situation without resorting to violence.

“Officers are trained to do their job right,” Smith said. “We can come up with all kinds of excuses as to why they don’t. But the fact of this case is that they used improper tactics that the results show for themselves. They didn’t use proper tactics and they lost control and excessive force was used.”

Conviction, sentencing and rape charges

Jefferson was convicted by a jury of seven men and five women, none were black. Consensus among jury members after the trial was Jefferson broke the law and police were within their rights to detain him in the manner they did. Jefferson was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in state prison.

Before he was led away, however, prosecutors announced that Jefferson’s DNA was a match in a 2008 rape case in Baltimore. San Diego prosecutors agreed to extradite Jefferson to stand trial for the rape of a then-18-year-old woman.

Jefferson was found dead 17 hours later. The sheriff’s official statement said they have not been able to locate any Jefferson’s family. Medical examiners said they could not provide information about the disposition of Jefferson’s remains until after the conclusion of an active investigation.