Jeremiah Manuyag Flores, 45, will never wear a badge again at any level of government. The permanent bar accompanies a 57-month federal prison sentence handed down Tuesday in San Diego, closing a case that required two juries to resolve. Inquirer.net has identified the former deputy as a Filipino-American.
An earlier San Diego panel deadlocked. The second, seated for a weeklong trial in December 2025, needed roughly two hours to convict the La Jolla resident of deprivation of rights under color of law and falsification of records in a federal investigation.
The man Flores injured, identified in court records only by the initials J.P., was 57 years old. His legs were shackled and his hands cross-chained at his waist when the deputy pushed him from behind inside a holding cell. He hit the wall head-first, sustaining a head wound and a fractured spinal column that required surgery and left him hospitalized for months. Prosecutors said Flores neither summoned medical aid nor alerted a supervisor, both mandatory under the department’s use-of-force policy. Another deputy discovered J.P. more than two hours later, lying beside a pool of his own blood.
Assistant US Attorney Seth Askins pressed for a substantial term.
“The power disparity between the defendant who was in complete control and [J.P.] who couldn’t do anything to protect himself was as wide as the ocean,” Askins argued. “The defendant’s only job was to walk with him. There was no escalation here. There was no resistance here. The defendant didn’t have to use any force at all. All he had to do was to keep walking.”
US District Judge Linda Lopez fixed on a surveillance still that captured Flores grinning as he left the cell. She said he passed up chance after chance to help over the next two hours, and told a fellow deputy that “nothing happened.”
“I don’t know how many years it’s going to be before I get that photo out of my mind. Your conduct was egregious,” Lopez said.
Ordered to write an inmate status report afterward, Flores filled it with falsehoods, among them the flat assertion that “no force was used.”
The San Diego County Sheriff’s Office fired him on June 9, 2026, following an internal administrative investigation.
“His actions do not reflect the values of our organization,” the agency said in a statement. “Our agency does not tolerate the use of excessive force or lying by deputies. Any Sheriff’s employee who violates the law or policy will be held accountable.”
Flores has been free on bond and must surrender to federal custody by Aug. 18, 2026.
