A Compton youth advocate and program director was wrongfully detained last week by L.A. County Sheriff’s deputies who claimed he was a suspect in a burglary.
The man was brought out of his home, which also serves as a youth academy, wearing no underwear and only a T-shirt and not allowed to dress before being marched outside and put in the back of a police car.
The youth leader says his dignity was taken when he was unexpectedly accused of breaking into and robbing his own home.
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The sheriff’s department now has asked its Compton station to launch an investigation into the incident.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said the deputies were responding to an alarm call.
According to Derrick Cooper’s account, he doesn’t have an alarm and never made a call to report a burglary. When the incident happened, he was asleep in his bedroom when the deputies allegedly reached their hands through his mail slot and unlocked his door.
“I did not call for the sheriff or the police to come here. There was no need for them to come here,” Cooper told KTLA. “I felt so humiliated and violated. I’ve never felt that way in my life.”
The founder of the Compton-based LA City Wildcats Young Academy said he woke up around 4 a.m. on Tuesday, April 18, to a “flashlight” and “guns” in his face but did not resist arrest — and obeyed every order the authorities asked him to follow, despite not knowing why he was being taken in.
Nervous about being detained, he asked the deputies, “Please don’t shoot me.”
Cooper told ABC 7 News he asked if he would be able to place his pants on but said, “They told me no,” marching him to their car in a T-shirt and handcuffs.
“Right then I became helpless because my dignity was stolen from me,” he…
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