A former San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s deputy faces up to 30 years in prison after a federal grand jury indicted him on charges related to a 2018 incident in which he allegedly dragged a SLO County jail inmate by her hair and then lied about it in official reports.
Josh Fischer, 40, of Grover Beach, was indicted on one count of deprivation of rights and one count of falsification of records and will be arraigned in federal court in downtown Los Angeles in the coming weeks, according to a U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) press release issued on Dec. 14.
Fischer, a senior correctional deputy in SLO County between 2017 and 2018, is accused of using unreasonable force against a jail inmate who had “removed her shirt, exited her cell, and then returned to her cell” on Nov. 18, 2018.
When she was back in her cell, Fischer allegedly “grabbed the victim from behind by her hair while she was still topless and dragged her on the ground into another cell,” according to the DOJ.
“Fischer then falsified a SLO County sheriff’s incident report,” the DOJ continued, “by including false statements that the victim had thrown her shirt on the ground after removing it outside her cell, that she yelled and flailed her arms while reentering her cell, and that Fischer ‘was in fear for the safety of the other female arrestee in the cell.'”
In actuality, per the DOJ, the inmate was not flailing her arms or throwing her shirt, but had them “by her side and then near her bare chest when Fischer assaulted her.”
Fischer, who was investigated by the FBI ahead of the grand jury indictment, faces a maximum sentence of 10 years for the deprivation of rights charge and 20 years for the falsification of records charge, if convicted.
Tony Cipolla, a spokesperson for the SLO County Sheriff’s Office, told New Times that the department “immediately” launched an investigation into Fischer’s misconduct after the November 2018 incident.
“As a result of that investigation, Senior Correctional Deputy Fischer was terminated from the Sheriff’s Office in March 2019,” Cipolla said. “The Sheriff’s Office cannot comment any further on the matter because it’s an ongoing criminal investigation.”
Fischer’s alleged abuse came after the high-profile death of schizophrenic jail inmate Andrew Holland, who died in custody after spending 46 hours strapped to a restraint chair in 2017. That incident led to a $5 million settlement with the Holland family and sparked a federal investigation into the SLO County jail.
According to Cipolla, the Sheriff’s Office is still negotiating with the DOJ’s civil rights division on a resolution to the DOJ’s allegations that the jail had systematic civil rights abuses between 2016 and 2019. Δ
This article appears in Dec 15-25, 2022.