Officers Won’t Be Charged in Beating

Two Torrance police officers who were videotaped last year as they choked and beat a 20-year-old man will not be charged with a crime, the district attorney’s office announced Friday.

Officers Ross Bartlett and James Lynch were cleared because there was not enough evidence to prove that they used excessive force when they arrested Thomas Tice of Torrance at a rowdy party last May, said Assistant Dist. Atty. Curt Livesay.

A videotape taken by a party-goer showed Lynch holding Tice in a chokehold while Bartlett hit him eight times with a night stick.

Livesay said it is up to the Torrance Police Department to decide whether the officers’ tactics, including the use of a chokehold, followed proper departmental procedures.

The announcement by the district attorney’s office concluded a seven-month investigation that began when Tice and five of his friends filed a federal civil rights lawsuit charging the Torrance Police Department with brutality. The lawsuit at the federal level is still pending.

Tice and his five friends pleaded no contest last year to charges of disturbing the peace.