By Wheeler Cowperthwaite
Special to the SUN

An Española jail guard resigned after he allegedly beat a handcuffed man so severely, he required 26 stitches to his face, after he called the officer a “little girl” and said he likes to wear wigs.

Española Police officers documented Jacob Hill’s alleged March 3 attack on the handcuffed man, and interim police chief Cody Martinez, a lieutenant at the time, wrote in incident reports that the decision for criminal charges, if any, will be up to the First Judicial District Attorney’s Office.

While Adrian Deleon was handcuffed in a patrol car, Hill allegedly used a stun gun on him and brake-checked his vehicle, while Deleon had no seatbelt, then at the police station, elbowed him in the face, slammed his head against a jail cell wall five times before throwing him onto a concrete floor.

In a statement posted on social media on April 13, someone with the First Judicial District Attorney’s Office, nine days after KRQE published a story on the alleged beating, wrote that it is “aware” of the allegations and that the case has been set to New Mexico State Police for further investigation.

“The investigation remains ongoing, and our office has not yet received a complete case for review. If appropriate, charging decisions will be made after a full investigation case file has been submitted and evaluated,” according to the First Judicial District Attorney’s Office.

The victim was initially going to be arrested for disorderly conduct for refusing to leave the Española Hospital after being taken there earlier in the day because he was drunk, officers wrote in incident reports and memorandums. He was never charged.

Cody Martinez wrote that he ordered everyone involved to write memos stating what happened. Missing from those memos is one of two witness to the detention center beating, an unnamed jail guard, who does not appear, from documents provided in response to record requests, to have proactively disclosed the beating and never stepped in to stop it.

How it Started

Hill was called to the hospital to take Deleon to the detention center and he asked Cadet Daniel Aragon to go with him.

On Hill’s lapel camera, Deleon gets into the back of the patrol car. As Hill fumbles with Deleon’s jacket, Deleon says, “(expletive) you little girl, think you’re tough (expletive).” Hill then grabs his stun gun and aggressively says, “You want to say somethin’?” to Deleon, while holding the stun gun near Deleon’s chest.

The exchange went as follows:

Deleon: “The (expletive) you doin’?” as the stun gun comes into the frame, being pushed toward him.

Hill: “It’s a (expletive) Taser.”

Deleon: “Oh, you think I’m scared of that? You’re not scared of that?”

Hill: “I don’t give a (expletive) what you’re scared of.”

Deleon: “What, are you think you’re tough or what?”

Hill: “No. I’m not scared of you.”

While Aragon’s lapel camera footage was not included in a response to a public records request, Aragon wrote that he “observed Jacob pull out his taser and push it into Adrian’s chest.” It is unclear if this is the same instance, or a different one, that is captured on Hill’s lapel camera.

A new video begins in the patrol car. In that video, Hill visually and audibly brakes really hard.

“You want to say something again?” Hill says after slamming on the brakes, as he appears to have never put a seatbelt on Deleon.

“You don’t scare me,” Deleon says. “Brake check me again. (Expletive) little girl.”

The Jail Cell Beating

Once they get into the police station, Hill tells Deleon to sit on a bench, where his photo will be taken. An unidentified jail guard hands Hill a camera to take his mugshot. Hill yells at Deleon to look at the camera.

“You like that? You like that pig?” Deleon says after Hill takes the photo.

Hill then demands Deleon stand up and face the wall, which he does, as Hill conducts a pat-down, and as he does, Deleon says, “You already know that, quit acting like a little girl.”

“Keep saying (expletive) and I’ll check you into the (expletive) wall,” Hill says.

After taking items out of his pockets, Hill tells him to sit down and starts recording with the handheld camera, telling Deleon to state his name and date of birth. Deleon tells Hill, “His name is girlfriend.”

The two begin talking over each other, with Deleon repeatedly saying “girl,” and Hill telling him to state his name and date of birth.

“Likes to wear wigs,” Deleon says, which causes Hill to advance, nearly on top of Deleon and practically growl at him to state his name, which Hill gives, followed by “J. Hill likes to wear wigs.”

Hill then appears to jab Deleon in the face with his elbow before slamming his head into the wall five times, saying, “You want to (expletive).”

After slamming his head into the wall and elbowing him in the face, Hill throws the camera to the ground and yells, “State your name and date of birth mother (expletive)” to which Deleon replies, “I did.”

“No! State your name!” Hill screams, then grabs Deleon by the neck, forces him to a jail cell, where he throws him in and Deleon hits the concrete floor.

Two officers watched the incident: the cadet, Aragon and the unnamed jail guard, who had one hand on his hip and the other on a trash can he was leaning against, and as he appeared to casually watch the handcuffed man get beaten, then get marched past him.

In a memo, Aragon wrote that he was “unsure what to do during the situation and I was not recording on my body worn camera however the incident took place within view of the camera’s,” but he left the detention center after the beating after he saw Deleon lying on the floor of the cell, still handcuffed, saying “ow that hurt.”

“While driving away from the Española Detention center I received a phone call from Jacob Hill at 2311 hours,” he wrote. “Jacob stated ‘Do you think I’m going to get fired for this? I’m sorry I lost it in front of you.’ I then immediately called my Field Training Officer Francisco Lovato to report the incident.”

The unnamed jail guard appears to have made no notification to his fellow officers about the beating.

Lovato then went to the police station and saw Deleon sitting in the holding cell, covered in blood and bleeding from his lower mouth, a hematoma over his right eyebrow and blood all over the floor of the cell, he wrote in a memo.

“At this time, I was instructed by Sgt. (Anthony) Martinez to take pictures of Adrian before he had Transport Officer Arcenio Garcia take him back to the emergency room for evaluation of his injuries sustained from the altercation,” he wrote. “I also took photos of the holding cell, since there was blood on the floor.”

In the after photos, that hematoma is a giant lump above Deleon’s eyebrow. Deleon appears to be dazed.

The Resignation

Former police chief Mizel Garcia put Hill on paid administrative leave on March 5 and on March 11, Hill resigned.

Sgt. Anthony Martinez wrote in a memo that he talked to Hill about what happened when he arrived at the detention area, after Aragon made the notification to his field training officer.

“When asked what had occurred, Officer Hill informed me that ‘he lost his cool,’” Anthony Martinez wrote. “When I asked Officer Hill if Mr. Deleon was handcuffed or resisting, he said he was handcuffed but was not physically resistive. When I asked Officer Hill what triggered him, he informed me that Mr. Deleon was verbally humiliating him and calling him names like ‘little girl.’”

The day of the incident, Sgt. Leonard Martinez wrote in a memo that the surveillance system at the detention center is “so out dated we could not get them fixed by the Vendor.” When he tried to pull the footage from the incident, the first video had no audio.

“I attempted to redownload the video from the surveillance system, but it did not let me,” he wrote. “The system froze at 0% on record mode, it will not allow for any functions to be performed, including ejecting the DVD.”

He needed to reboot the system to get it working again, but that carried its own risk, he wrote.

“I’m worried that we will lose the video that I was-trying to download from the surveillance system,” Leonard Martinez wrote.

In response to a public records request, the surveillance footage provided was a handheld cellphone video of a monitor playing the surveillance footage.