California city has agreed to pay $900,000 to a man who was subjected to a 17-hour police interrogation in which officers pressured him to falsely confess to murdering his father, who was alive.

During the 2018 interrogation of Thomas Perez Jr by police in Fontana, a city east of Los Angeles, officers suggested they would have Perez’s dog euthanized as a result of his actions, according to a complaint and footage of the encounter. A judge said the questioning appeared to be “unconstitutional psychological torture”, and the city agreed to settle Perez’s lawsuit for $898,000, his lawyer announced this week.

The extraordinary case of a coerced false confession has sparked widespread outrage, with footage showing Perez in extreme emotional and physical distress, including as officers brought his dog in and said the animal would need to be put down due to “depression” from witnessing a murder that had not actually occurred.

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    26 months ago

    It is not. If it was consensual it might be. If it’s real it’s not.

    Surpressing your empathy in face of dire news is your right. We all have to in order to psychologically survive these times.

    I think you shouldn’t act out that surpression as a funny joke in public. This adds to the brutalization of the public, wich we can’t really afford in these times, if we want them to become more human, more bearable