SAPD Unlawfully Withholds Records of Freddie Washington's In-Custody Death

CSO Orange County sues the City of Santa Ana and Santa Ana Police Department for violating SB 1421

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contacts:

David Pulido (Organizer, CSO OC), (916) 549-6487 - orangecountycso@gmail.com

Sean Garcia-Leys (Attorney, PJLC) - (323) 390-2412 - sean.garcialeys@gmail.com

Santa Ana, CA – July 22, 2026

On January 15th, 2025 six SAPD officers entered Freddie Washington’s hotel room and brutally arrested him. Washington, a black man, was sitting in a chair in a hotel where he had been staying for two weeks. He was not threatening officers. Despite this, police wrestled him from his chair, struck him in the head, threatened to tase him and strapped down his arms and legs. The next day, on January 16th, 2025, Mr. Washington fainted when Santa Ana Police Department officers were preparing to escort Washington to the OC Jail. Officers placed him on his side for medical attention but when Washington began waking up, they violently pinned him down with their hands and knees for over 2 minutes. SAPD officers then put Washington in a cell in a restraint chair and spit mask. There, Washington stopped breathing. Officers took him out of his cell for medical attention but Mr. Washington died. This all happened while in SAPD custody.

We know some of this story because the Community Service Organization (CSO) filed Public Records Act requests in October and November 2025. However, when SAPD produced only a tiny handful of records after more than six months of requests, the CSO and the Peace and Justice Law Center (PJLC) threatened a lawsuit. In response, the Santa Ana Police Department released more documents of their arrest of Mr. Washington but refused to release the documents regarding Mr. Washington’s death. They say they plan to continue to keep those records secret until the District Attorney’s office completes its administrative investigation. This is a direct violation of SB 1421, which allows law enforcement agencies to withhold documents for that reason for only 180 days. It has now been over 550 days.

The family of Freddie Washington, including his mother, Beatrice Hightower, and his sister, Moesha Hightower, cried tears of joy when they heard CSO was fighting for their loved one. For months they have grieved alone in South Carolina with no updates from SAPD. They described Washington as a family man, a country boy who loved to cook, travel and take care of his daughter, complicating the picture painted by SAPD’s incident reports.

According to David Pulido, organizer for CSO OC, “The brutality of Freddie Washington’s arrest and incarceration was completely uncalled for, and it was a clear example of racist police violence. We can only imagine what SAPD is still refusing to share.”

SAPD has failed to hold its officers accountable for cases of police brutality and killings for years. The officer who coordinated Washington’s arrest, Isaac Ibarra, killed unarmed Noe Rodriguez just one month earlier. Rodriguez was having a mental health crisis and holding a toy gun, but he was not threatening or harming anyone. Ibarra wrongfully claimed Rodriguez was waving a shotgun around and pointing it in their direction. Another officer, Jesse Hernandez, threatened to tase Washington when he was already pinned to the hotel room floor. In 2022, Hernandez was one of several officers who chased 72-year-old Miguel Chavez into a CVS parking lot, where Chavez was shot with 40 mm projectiles and mauled by a police dog. The justification was that Chavez had fled the scene of a car accident and was allegedly “armed”. Chavez was unarmed. He died two days later from his wounds.

Today, on July 22nd, the CSO, represented by the Peace and Justice Law Center, filed a lawsuit in Orange County Superior Court demanding the release of all records regarding SAPD’s arrest of Mr. Washington and his death in their custody. The CSO is also requesting that the court declares that SAPD’s policy of withholding documents for the duration of administrative investigations is unlawful and must be repealed in favor of a policy that adheres to SB 1421’s timeline.

Sean Garcia-Leys, Executive Director of the Peace and Justice Law Center and attorney of record on this lawsuit, says, “The law simply does not allow the Santa Ana Police Department to hide the facts from the public when people die in their custody. That is a serious thing to happen and the public deserves transparency, not excuses. We believe the court will see to that.”