A violent arrest by L.A. County deputies was caught on video. Now the man is seeking justice — and the video.
“I feel so bad,” said Carlos Meza, who was detained for riding a scooter near a busy street for about one minute before police pulled him over for riding a bicycle.
Meza said he was detained by deputies while he cycled along a busy sidewalk near an apartment complex in Los Angeles in July 2014. The 27-year-old told NBC News he was riding the scooter to his wife’s workplace with his two young children in the back of his car. A few minutes after he was arrested, he said, he was put in the back of a sheriff’s car and charged with reckless riding.
“I was totally shocked by the event,” recalled Meza, who became a L.A. County resident in 2015. L.A. County officials said the incident was captured on video and reviewed by state law enforcement officials.
“We are looking at the video to determine whether we can get a clear picture of what exactly happened,” said L.A. County Sheriff Alex Villanueva on Monday. “We know some of our deputies broke the law.”
Meza’s attorneys have called on Los Angeles County officials to release the footage of the incident, which came to light earlier this month, in hopes that his story could “finally be heard.”
He’s calling the arrest “unnecessary” and “unconstitutional.”
“This is a guy who is out to make sure that people can be who they are without fear of arrest,” Meza said. “This doesn’t seem right to me.”
Meza said he began riding a scooter to work nearly five years ago to combat obesity and diabetes in his community in Pasadena, California. He said he used the scooter to take his young boys to and from school and to the parks with his wife, who is an elementary school teacher.
According to his LinkedIn page, Meza also earned a