Ex-deputy charged with punching Manatee jail inmate. He’s third jailer charged this year
A former deputy with the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office has been charged with misdemeanor battery against an inmate at the Manatee County jail.
Luis Angel Valentin II is the third deputy this year to be charged with using excessive force or beating inmates at the jail.
Valentin, 34, was served a criminal summons last week ordering him to appear in court on Nov. 20.
Early on Aug. 4, Valentin took an inmate out of his cell in the disciplinary pod in the jail because he was causing a disruption by banging loudly and yelling.
When Valentin escorted the inmate in handcuffs to one of the fenced-in exercise yards and tried to close the gate, the inmate put his hands in the opening and they had a brief tug of war with the door before Valentin pushed it open, stepped into the yard and punched the inmate in the face.
Surveillance video footage that captured the altercation was released by the sheriff’s office after Valentin’s resignation and an internal affairs review.
A call to Valentin’s defense attorney has not yet been returned for comment.
Valentin, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, was hired as control room operator at the jail in December 2015. He was later assigned to a squad with other deputies once he was accepted into the corrections academy.
Prior to the incident, Valentin had never been disciplined by the sheriff’s office and his performance evaluations had only positive comments.
When he was initially questioned by internal affairs investigators about punching the inmate, Valentin claimed that he had hit the inmate with his forearm in reaction to the inmate spitting in his face. But Valentin ultimately admitted that the inmate had not actually spit on him.
“Deputy Valentin does not react as though he was spat upon; he neither jerks his head nor wipes his face,” one investigator wrote in the capias request, citing a review of the surveillance video.
Valentin and the two other deputies charged this year, Tyler LeMond and Daniel Bower were never arrested. They each could have been charged with a more serious charge of battery on a detained person, a 3rd-degree felony, for which they could have faced up to five years in prison, if convicted.
In August, LeMond took a plea deal for the misdemeanor battery charge for kneeing, punching and stomping an inmate in March. He was sentenced to 12 months of probation.
LeMond was granted early termination of his probation on Oct. 18 by Manatee County Judge Heather Doyle after he completed all the conditions of his probation, according to the court order. Those conditions included that he complete 20 days in an offender work program and six weeks of anger management, pay a $25 fine plus court costs and have no contact with the victim.
Judge Doyle, who was appointed to the bench in July by the governor, was the chief assistant state attorney at the time formal charges were filed against LeMond.
The case against Bower, whose misdemeanor battery charge stems from allegations that he kicked an inmate in the face on April 20 after he was already in handcuffs, is still pending.
