Wednesday, July 29, 2026
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Court of Appeal:
Officer’s Mistakes in Police Report Did Not Warrant Firing
Panel Agrees With Judge That Erroneous Statements Are Often Made in Belief They Are True
By a MetNews Staff Writer
The Court of Appeal for this district has upheld an order by the Los Angeles Superior Court that a man who was fired as Long Beach police for filing a report and a probable cause declaration that were false be reinstated, with the justices agreeing with Judge Michael Valencia that making mistakes in reciting events does not necessarily connote lying.
Justice Michelle C. Kim of Div. One authored the unpublished opinion, filed Monday.
Prevailing was Dedier Reyes, who had been a field training officer. On Feb. 15, 2018, he erred in identifying Orlando Fonseca-Vargas, one of two gang members as the one who carried into a taqueria a satchel that was found to contain a firearm and methamphetamine.
Reyes’s error became evident when the department, six days later, reviewed the restaurant’s surveillance tape.
Initial Exoneration
The Long Beach Police Department, then headed by Robert Luna (now Los Angeles County sheriff) and the District Attorney’s Office, then under Jackie Lacey, found no wrongdoing on Reyes’s part. However, in December 2021, as part of then-District Attorney George Gascón’s crackdown on law enforcement officers, a prosecution of Reyes was commenced on charges of perjury, filing a false police report, and falsifying a public record.
Reyes, as well as the officer he supervised, were acquitted.
In April 2022, Reyes’s employment was terminated. However, the city’s Civil Service Commission in 2024 ordered the reinstatement of Reyes, finding he should merely have been suspended based on a failure to supervise a rookie officer in connection with the arrest of the two suspects.
Valencia denied a writ of mandamus sought by the city to overturn the Civil Service Commission’s decision. He observed: “[I]f there is one thing that has changed my view of evidence in the last 22 years on the bench, it is this notion: that people often honestly misremember what happened.” The judge said that the evidence “compels the finding that any inconsistencies between Reyes’ report” and facts derived from a “subsequent Internal Affairs investigation were mere inconsistencies, not intentionally false statements.” The city appealed, arguing: “Here, substantial evidence does not support the trial court’s order because Reyes engaged in dishonest conduct. Police officers that have committed acts of dishonesty are held to a high standard because they are inherently in a position of public trust.”
The city added that “the record unequivocally supports the conclusion that Reyes engaged in multiple acts of dishonesty by falsifying his police report, probable cause declaration, and through his failure to adequately investigate the arrest” of two gang members.
Kim’s Opinion
In her opinion affirming the judgment, Kim said:
“The City does not dispute that, as the parties agreed below, the charges that Reyes falsified his police report and probable cause declaration required a finding that he knowingly entered false information. Reyes testified that he did not report inaccurate information knowingly, but instead honestly reported his mistaken recollection at the time.”
He also testified that he “had no ax to grind” with respect to either arrestee.
Kim said that Valencia “implicitly credited Reyes’s testimony that he had no motive to lie and that he instead made honest mistakes,” saying that the judge “was entitled to credit that testimony.”
Video Mentioned
She noted that Reyes’s report mentioned that the officer he was supervising, David Salcedo, had requested from the taqueria’s manager a copy of the surveillance tape. The justice said:
“That information would suggest to future readers that they could obtain surveillance video—the same video that could (and did) reveal Reyes’s misidentification of Fonseca-Vargas as the suspect who possessed the satchel and the falsity of his implication that he saw the satchel’s placement in the crate. The trial court could reasonably conclude that Reyes would not knowingly falsify his report while simultaneously reporting information that risked exposing the falsehoods.”
The case is City of Long Beach v. Long Beach Civil Service Commission, B350812.
The Long Beach City Council last Oct. 21 agreed to pay $550,000 to settle a federal civil rights lawsuit brought by a man who was shot by Reyes in 2010. The man, Miguel Vargas, was convicted of an assault on a police officer and sentenced to 39 years in prison but was resentenced in 2022 and ordered freed.
A 2019 lawsuit against the city by a man who alleged excessive force by Reyes in handcuffing him resulted in a $499,800 settlement.
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