California cop charged with assault for beating woman until she was brain damaged

Jacob Alan Hobson, 29, a police officer in Hemet, California, was charged with three counts of assault after severely beating a woman during an arrest in July which left her brain-damaged. Hobson was arrested at the Sheriff’s department, according to the Daily Bulletin, and his own police department has refused to release bodycam footage of the incident. Investigators “persuaded a Superior Court judge to seal from public view the sworn statement written to obtain an arrest warrant, a document that is typically a public record.”

The declaration was written before Hobson was arrested, and the investigator said “It is also expected that additional investigation is needed and will be completed. Additionally, it is expected that this case may generate heavy news coverage. If information contained in the above-listed documents is made public, it would compromise this investigation and make it difficult to continue.”

The Sheriff’s Department on Friday would not commit to asking the judge to unseal the declaration now that Hobson has been arrested.

Hobson is due to be arraigned at the Banning Justice Center on Monday. Court records do not list an attorney who could speak on behalf of Hobson, who was released from jail on Friday after posting $65,000 bail.

A strong suggestion of doing the bare minimum here to deal with Hobson’s woman-in-a-coma problem. Even the otherwise well-written news story at the Daily Bulletin has the mangled headline “Hemet police officer charged after woman suffers brain injury,” carefully avoiding the undisputed fact that the officer inflicted the injury.