Tuesday’s testimony blew a big hole in the county’s defense that the scene photos were valid because they helped first responders at a command post plan their response. Capt. Matthew Vander Hork, who leads the sheriff’s station that responded to the 2020 crash, said on the witness stand that the only people who should be taking pictures of a plane crash scene are the National Transportation Safety Board and the medical examiner. “The only role they (MPs) have is to secure the stage, right?” asked Bryant’s attorney Louis Lee. “Yes,” Vander Hork agreed. Lee asked if the deputies should then let federal investigators do their job, and Vander Hork agreed. However, one of Vander Horck’s own deputies testified that he was asked by a supervisor at the command post that day to take the photos. Those photos, which included images of human remains, were then shared among other deputies in both the sheriff’s and fire departments, leading to the federal invasion of privacy lawsuit. Christopher Chester, whose wife and daughter also died in the crash, is a co-plaintiff. Both he and Bryant claim they live in fear of the photos resurfacing online. Vander Horck agreed with Li that unofficial photos cause a “loss of public trust”. He also agreed that county policies allowing deputies to photograph dead bodies only apply to traffic accidents and crime scenes, not plane crashes. Photographs of the crash scene were also not required to identify the helicopter, he said. In their cross-examination, defense lawyers cast doubt on whether Vander Horck’s statements fully applied to the situation on the day of the crash. “You know when the NTSB showed up the next day the first thing they asked for was pictures?” asked attorney Jason Tokoro, representing the county. “No, I’m not aware of that,” Vander Hork replied.

“If nobody found out, they wouldn’t be punished”

Vander Horck’s testimony was also used by plaintiffs’ attorneys to attack the county’s handling of the photos after it was revealed they had been shared between deputies, one of whom later showed some of the photos to a bartender he considered a friend.
Attorneys claimed that instead of launching a full investigation and preserving the evidence, the Sheriff’s Information Bureau, which handles public information, ordered all the deputies involved to report to their station and ensure the photos were deleted. “If no one found out, they wouldn’t be disciplined,” Vander Hork said he was told. “If the media found out, they would be fired.” Vander Horck said he had immediate reservations with the order to delete the photos, saying the instructions were “totally out of line and out of the chain of command.” “We don’t want to be on the hook for destroying evidence in a federal investigation,” Vander Horck said he told his superior. He also told the court he was concerned the orders would violate the state peace officer’s bill of rights and potentially jeopardize an investigation. “I was told the sheriff … has full authority,” he continued. “I reiterated that I was uncomfortable with these instructions … he told me this was the way we were going to go.” In March 2020, Sheriff Alex Villanueva said all the photos had been deleted and that the eight sheriff’s deputies were facing administrative action. CNN has reached out to Villanueva for comment. The defense argued that a more protracted investigation would involve lawyers and union representatives, increasing the risk of the photos being leaked. Tokoro asked if those involved in an investigation would “have copies of the photos,” to which Vander Horck replied, “I guess.”

Lawyers discuss photographs shown at bar

Earlier Tuesday, Bryant’s attorneys disagreed with Los Angeles County defense attorneys about exactly what was on a sheriff’s deputy’s phone when he picked it up to show a bartender and laughed. On cross-examination of Deputy Joey Cruz, who received the photos from his training officer while working the crash in 2020, defense attorneys zoomed in on Cruz’s phone surveillance video to show him scrolling through an Instagram feed instead of to examine photographs of the conflict. “Does this confirm your memory that you were looking at social media?” defense attorney Mira Hashmall asked. “Yes,” Cruz replied. But the plaintiff’s lawyers asked that the video be enlarged to another point. When questioned by plaintiff attorney Craig Lavoie, Cruz agreed that it appeared he had stopped scrolling through Instagram and switched to another function on the phone, which Lavoie claimed were photos of Bryant’s crash site. Lavoie then noted the bartender’s reaction of “gesturing to his torso and slapping his neck” and asked Cruz to explain. “I can’t explain his actions,” Cruz replied. He also denied laughing in photos from the crash site, saying the moments he was seen smiling in the video were part of an evening spent decompressing at the bar with a bartender he considered a good friend. Cruz said he showed the bartender photos of the crash site elsewhere in the video, claiming that was the only time he specifically showed the photos that night. Cruz was suspended without pay for two days and ordered to take three days of mandatory training for violating sheriff’s department confidentiality policies. Showing the bartender was “a lack of judgment on my part and inconsistent with my training,” Cruz told the court. “If I could go back … I would do everything differently about the photos,” Cruz said, noting that his lapse in judgment came as part of the stress he felt working at the crash scene two days earlier. But the plaintiff’s attorneys disputed Cruz’s level of stress, noting that he never sought county resources to deal with stress or referred to it in a report he filed detailing the sharing of the photos.
“I’ve never been through anything as overwhelming as this … I made a mistake … I had bad judgment,” Cruz said. Jerome Jackson, an attorney representing co-defendant Chester, asked: “One of the reasons you feel remorse is that you hurt my client deeply? “Yes,” Cruz replied. “And you know it hurt Mrs. Bryant deeply,” Jackson stated. “Yes,” Cruz said.

Court hears graphic photos shared while playing ‘Call of Duty’

Deputy Michael Russell testified Tuesday that he took photos of Cruz while he was off duty in the station’s writing room, later telling officials he was “curious” to see them and learn from them. The day after the photos were taken, Russell was playing the video game “Call of Duty” with another deputy at a different station when he agreed to text the photos. Asked if this was just a casual exchange for him, Russell said: “The one I dealt with the other day is more stress-relieving.” Russell’s job that day was to make sure only authorized personnel got to the venue as crowds flocked to the scene after news broke that Bryant was on board the helicopter. Russell — who was never suspended, demoted or placed on probation — was found by an internal investigation to have violated policies by taking and sending the photos from the crash scene. Russell told the court that when he sent the photos to the other deputy, it didn’t occur to him that doing so violated department policy. “I made a grave mistake,” he said. “If I could go back to that day when I asked (Cruz) for those pictures, I wouldn’t do it again,” Russell said. “It was very harsh of me.”