Fontana police threatened to kill Thomas Perez jnr’s dog if he did not falsely confess to killing father

Warning: Discusses suicide

Police officers in California threatened to euthanise a man’s dog if he did not confess to killing his father – who was alive.

In an interrogation in 2018, Thomas Perez jnr was told by officers that his dog would need to be put down due to “depression” from witnessing a murder that had not actually occurred.

After 17 hours of interrogation, Perez falsely confessed and tried to kill himself.

Thomas Perez jnr became visibly distressed during the long interrogation. Photo / Fontana Police

Footage of the coerced false confession has sparked outrage in the United States, and the city of Fontana has now agreed to pay Perez US$898,000 ($1.46m) after a judge ruled that the questioning appeared to be “unconstitutional psychological torture”.

The ordeal began on August 7, 2018 when Perez’s father left home with their dog to collect his post and the dog returned alone. The following day Perez called the police to report his father missing and was taken in for questioning.

Police claimed to find bloodstains in the house and said a police dog smelled the presence of a corpse.

During the interrogation where two officers accused Perez of murder, he started pulling at his hair, hitting himself and tearing off his shirt.

Perez also begged for medical attention and was reportedly told he did not need his psychiatric medication.

The judge noted that Perez was “sleep deprived, mentally ill, and, significantly, undergoing symptoms of withdrawal from his psychiatric medications”.

Perez lay on the floor and embraced the dog he believed police would kill. Photo / Fontana Police

After several hours, detectives falsely told Perez that his father’s body had been located with stab wounds, the complaint says. At this point, Perez falsely confessed and was left alone in the room, where he then tried to kill himself.

Jerry Steering, Perez’s lawyer said: “This case shows that if the police are skilled enough, and they grill you hard enough, they can get anybody to confess to anything”.

Perez was taken to a hospital on an involuntary psychiatric hold and read his rights for the first time.

Later that night, one of the detectives received a call that Perez’s father had been located and was alive.

Steering said that police did not inform his client that his father was alive. Instead, Perez was kept isolated in a psychiatric hold for three days, believing both his father and dog had been killed.

“Between mentally torturing a false confession out of Tom Perez, concealing from him that his father was alive and well, and confining him in the psych ward because they made him suicidal, in my 40 years of suing the police I have never seen that level of deliberate cruelty by the police,” Steering said.

The dog had been taken to a pound but was later rescued.

Fontana police have not issued a statement or said whether any officers faced disciplinary action.

- Additional reporting, NZ Herald