Ventura – Nobody likes being incarcerated, even if they admit their guilt to a crime. Some people harbor so much resentment over having been jailed, whether guilty of charges or exonerated of them, they have real difficulty just “getting over it” to the point that they make the mistake of committing yet another crime by stretching the truth in a legal filing against the governmental entity responsible for supervising the conduct of both jail employees and inmates.
According to Ventura County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Det. Russell King, that may well have been the situation behind the June 19th arrest of Camarillo resident Ryan William West, 23. Pursuant to West’s April 2015 filing of a claim for damages of $900,000 against the County of Ventura alleging that he had been “unlawfully tased while serving jail time in 2014,” the VCSD Major Crimes Bureau initiated an investigation into the circumstances and events described by West in his filing.
West had been arrested on May 1 of 2014 on charges of burglary, attempted burglary, possession of burglar’s tools, and – the reason he may have been caught – being under the influence of a controlled substance.
West’s “jail document” filing described his being tased and identified specific jail personnel by name who were responsible. None of what West alleged in his complaint was found by the investigators to have actually occurred, and determined that it was in fact “fictitious and created in an attempt to obtain money from the County of Ventura.”
With that finding in hand, the Ventura County D.A. had West arrested and charged him with five felony accounts, including presentation of a fraudulent claim, perjury, forgery, false personation, and identity theft.
Records show that he has also been charged in two other incidents recently. On April 6 of this year he was arrested in Oxnard for disorderly conduct while lodging in a location without permission, and on May 5 by Ventura Police for shoplifting, trespassing, and violating probation.
Photo: Courtesy Ventura County Sheriff’s Department
