A police cover-up of excessive force at Napa State Hospital sent a patient to jail for seven months.
The hospital mainly houses people who have been charged with crimes but are found not guilty by reason of insanity or deemed mentally incompetent to stand trial.
On March 23, 2017, Jose Alvarez, a 64-year-old patient with bipolar disorder who was having a bad reaction to a change in his medication, was slammed against a concrete wall by a police officer.
The officer who tackled Alvarez and pushed him into the wall was Michael Hauscarriague, who happens to be the son of Napa State Hospital Police Chief Dominique Hauscarriague.
Three other officers were involved in the cover-up, which thankfully came to light because of California’s police transparency law and the California Reporting Project.