Since 1983, the Los Angeles Police Department and other law enforcement agencies have routinely invoked the Lyons Supreme Court ruling to defend themselves against accusations of systematic rights abuses.

On Oct. 6, 1976, Los Angeles police pulled over 24-year-old Adolph Lyons for a burnt-out taillight. Four white officers, guns drawn, ordered him out of the car.

Lyons, unarmed, did not resist. Nevertheless, an officer put him in a choke hold so tight that Lyons lost consciousness. He woke up on the ground, his underwear soiled, spitting blood and dirt. The police wrote him a traffic ticket and let him go.

But that wasn’t the end of the case.

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Fifty years later, California remains trapped in that same choke hold.

The city of Los Angeles, by defending the officers’ violence against Lyons in the U.S. Supreme Court decades ago, created a legal precedent that the Trump administration now uses to justify the attacks by federal agents on Californians who look like immigrants.

After the 1976 encounter, Lyons, who was Black and a military veteran, found a lawyer and investigated what happened. He soon realized how lucky he was to be alive. The Los Angeles Police Department used choke holds often, causing frequent injuries and sometimes worse. In an eight-year period during which they brutalized Lyons, Los Angeles police killed 16 people using choke holds, 12 of them Black,  according to court filings.

Lyons sued........

© San Francisco Chronicle