A video taken at the Santa Monica Metro station shows two Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies holding an unhoused woman on the ground and tying her feet together after she refused to leave the platform because she wasn’t wearing shoes.
The June 2023 encounter, captured on an iPhone, shows the 33-year-old woman arguing at the turnstiles with the deputies, who block her path to the nearby trains.
One of the deputies gives her an ultimatum. “Get your shoes and you can come back,” he said. “If you keep resisting, you’re going to be arrested.”
The woman continues to scream: “I just want to ride the train!”
After a brief standoff, she charges the deputies and struggles to run by them. They grab her arms and she falls to the ground. The deputies pin her down, exposing her buttocks in the process. Metro Transit security officers approach the scene and help hold her down as a deputy ties her legs together. The two deputies speak calmly, as the woman yells profanities and racist slurs and thrashes on the ground.
The video ends as one of the deputies holds the woman down and the other stands by, speaking into his radio. A Metro security officer stands over her, and the woman lies face-down on the pavement.
The run-in, which occurred around 10 a.m. on June 27, shows an extreme case of the realities Metro passengers and law enforcement face every day throughout the transit system, with more unhoused passengers riding trains and buses and pushing the limits of available services.
“It seems that tragically this woman was suffering from a mental health crisis, something that is not uncommon on our Metro trains,” County Supervisor and Metro Board Member Janice Hahn said in a statement. “I think we need more mental health workers on our trains and buses and I hope this is something that could help someone like her in the future.”
Annenberg Media’s Beacon Project contacted 13 Metro board members for this story. Hahn, a former member of Congress, is the only one who agreed to comment on the video. She has studied the public agency’s handling of the unhoused population. She recently visited Philadelphia and said its transit agency could be a model for Los Angeles. She said that she found the Hub of Hope, a center inside a subway concourse that provides resources like showers and social services, to be an effective and humane way to address the needs of unhoused individuals as well as transit riders. She said she hopes to instill some of the organization’s ideals in Los Angeles.
Metro often runs into difficulties meeting the needs of unhoused riders and other passengers who frequent the trains and buses. The Torrance Transportation Committee voted to conduct more research into whether to move forward with plans to expand the C-line to the city. Councilmember Aurelio Mattucci said having the end of the line in Torrance would lead to more unhoused people on the rails, which would increase crime in the city, as reported by the Daily Breeze.
The Metro Board of Directors is set to vote in early 2024 on the route. There have been efforts to build community support for the line. L.A. County Supervisor Holly Mitchell hosted a community walk on December 16 to build awareness and engagement for the project.
Many Metro Board members did not respond to the Beacon Project when seeking comment on this story. L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, who is on the Metro Board of Directors and oversees Santa Monica, did not respond to requests for comment. Board Member Fernando Dutra said he “will not be able to provide an opinion” because it is an active investigation. Representatives for Board Member Kathryn Barger and Board Member Hilda Solis declined to comment. Board Member Paul Krekorian did not respond. Board Member Ara Najarian said, “I will not be making any comments about the incident reflected in the video you sent.” A representative for Board Member Katy Yaroslavsy said, “because this occurred in Santa Monica, which is outside of our jurisdiction, we won’t be offering a comment from our office.”
The video was captured by USC journalism Professor Alan Mittelstaedt, who took his high school summer class on a reporting trip to Santa Monica.
One of the high school students, Star Correa, said it looked like deputies overreacted. “I feel like they don’t care about our safety any more,” she said.
“I think it was definitely excessive. I don’t think there’s a world in which grabbing an unhoused woman who’s probably dealing with mental issues and putting her on the ground is a good situation,” another student Olivia Gorman said.
Although not easily accessible on its website, nor posted around the train stations, Metro’s Code of Conduct requires that passengers wear shoes while on a Metro platform or train.
Metro spokesman Dave Sotero called it “battery on a police officer.” He added, “we try to avoid use of force incidents whenever possible but they’re not always unavoidable.” He went on to say that the unhoused woman was not arrested at the scene.
The woman was taken to a psychiatric unit, according to Luis Alba of the transit services bureau. Sheriff’s officials refused to provide any more information about her and rejected five written requests for information filed under the California Public Records Act. It is unknown whether the woman was charged with any crime or even basic details such as her identity or age.
For three months, the sheriff’s department gave various reasons for refusing to provide more information, such as her name. They included that the department was experiencing technical difficulties, that they couldn’t find the records, and that the Santa Monica Police Department might have them. All this despite Sotero, Metro’s representative, saying to a reporter that he had the report on his desk.
Ernie Arce, who works in the sheriff’s department’s public records office, said he could not provide information because it is an “ongoing investigation.”
“There’s possibly HIPAA-related issues,” Arce said, referring to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 which provides patient privacy. “If there’s anything medically related, like a mental health crisis issue, if there was an intervention related to that sort of situation– then we can’t release it.”
Media lawyer and director of the First Amendment Coalition David Loy said HIPAA only applies to healthcare providers and would not be a valid reason for a law enforcement agency to withhold information.
“Police departments or sheriff’s departments aren’t covered by HIPAA at all,” Loy said. “I think that’s a category error.” He did say, however, that if the incident had not resulted in an arrest, the agency could withhold records, including the woman’s name.
Ramon Girgis, an operations deputy with the transit division, spoke about the leg restraint device used in the video called the “hobble.” He says it is standard and is used “if someone is kicking or being assaultive with their legs.”
The woman’s encounter occurred at a time when the use of excessive force was being scrutinized by the public. The sheriff’s department came under scrutiny in March 2022 when it attempted to cover-up an incident of excessive force in which a deputy knelt on the head of a handcuffed inmate for three minutes, as reported by the LA Times.
During the summer, an incident in Lancaster prompted an investigation when body-cam footage showed a deputy tackling a woman as she filmed a man being handcuffed on June 24.
“Currently, the FBI is reviewing all documents and other materials pertaining to this incident,” Deputy David Yoo wrote in a statement emailed to The Beacon Project.
Last year, LA Metro’s Board of Directors voted to renew its contract with the Long Beach Police Department and the sheriff’s department, a contract that would last up to three years. Metro is also considering the creation of its own police force, detailed in this motion from June. A report is expected to be presented to the board this month. Metro has contracted with the Los Angeles Police Department, the Long Beach Police Department and the Sheriff’s Department since 2017 to enforce Metro rules and address crime. Proponents say the new police force would save the department more than $38 million, according to the LA Times.
Metro is working to improve its relationship with the homeless population by partnering with various teams deployed on the rail and busway. Currently 25 teams work with the agency, with about three to five multidisciplinary staff working with each group, according to Craig Joyce, the deputy executive officer of homeless initiatives at Metro. PATH, a nonprofit dedicated to ending homelessness, is contracted by Metro to help individuals find permanent housing, provide mental and medical health care, offer employment training, along with other services.
Sotero says Metro operates on a “multi-layered plan,” that includes Metro ambassadors, sheriff’s deputies, police officers and outreach programs like PATH. He says there are also mental health evaluation teams “in the works” with plans to have teams ride the Metro system and offer assistance.
“We have mental health evaluation teams,” Sotero said. “We’re working with our partners to get those mental health teams on the system. It’s gonna be another layer of the safety plan.”
In a statement to the Beacon Project, PATH spokesperson Tyler Renner outlined the group’s staffing situation.
“PATH’s Metro Outreach team employs approximately 35 staff members. They are not stationed at a particular location, as they ride the Metro to connect with individuals who are experiencing homelessness. The shifts range from 3 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., with various groupings of team members working together. Our teams work alongside a range of other providers to offer connections to services across the transit system.”
Prince Montez, a Metro ambassador stationed at the 7th Street Station, has a personal relationship with PATH. The ambassador, who uses they/them pronouns, stands by the turnstiles a couple days a week with a pack of naloxone, a drug used to reverse opioid overdoses, strapped to their hip. They were unhoused before being assisted by PATH and securing a job with Metro.
“You know, I’m actually a felon so I know what it’s like to work at becoming a better person. I feel bad for the mentally ill people, but at the same time, there is ample opportunity to get off the streets,” said Montez, looking around the station at nearly a dozen unhoused individuals.
They said they believe that PATH could be doing a lot more, calling it a “preschool version” of what could be done to assist the homeless in Metro systems.
The encounter with the woman at the Santa Monica station occurred just a few days before the city released its annual report which revealed a 10% increase in homelessness in the city of Los Angeles. The Homeless Initiative reports that lack of affordable housing is one of the leading causes of homelessness in L.A. County. L.A. Mayor Karen Bass has allocated $1.3 billion to addressing homelessness this year.
“People with houses have a house to hide mental illness, to hide hygiene issues,” Montez added, “But unhoused people have to put it all on front street.”
Editor’s note: This story was reported by the Beacon Project, a student journalism initiative supported by the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. It is independent of the university’s administration.
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that the LA Metro’s Board of Directors voted to renew its contract with the Long Beach Police Department and the sheriff’s department in 2024. The vote to renew the contract occurred in 2023. This was corrected on January 22, 2024.