Sheriff Robert Luna has vowed to overhaul the nation’s largest sheriff’s department since taking charge in December.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The FBI has opened criminal investigations into violent encounters involving Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies, including one in which a deputy punched a woman in the face as she held her baby.

Federal authorities visited the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department headquarters to take documents related to the probes, according to an email obtained by the newspaper, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday.In this image taken from police body camera provided by Los Angeles Sheriff’s office on June 24, 2023, a Sheriff’s deputies arrested a couple in a grocery store parking lot in Lancaster, Calif. (Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office via AP)

Department officials confirmed the visit and told the newspaper they planned to cooperate with investigators.

The second case being scrutinized by the FBI involves a deputy who threw a woman to the ground by her neck last month in a grocery store parking lot after she started recording an arrest with her cellphone.

In addition to the federal investigations, the California Department of Justice has agreed to review the case of 18-year-old Andres Guardado, who was shot in the back three years ago by a sheriff’s deputy in the city of Gardena, south of Los Angeles, the email said.

An FBI spokesperson would not confirm that agents were conducting a criminal investigation into either incident.

The internal county email obtained by the newspaper said that “federal criminal investigations have been opened concerning the recent incidents” in Palmdale and Lancaster, north of Los Angeles.

The Palmdale case involved a July 2022 traffic stop but did not become public until this week, when Sheriff Robert Luna called a news conference to release body camera footage and announce that the deputy involved had been relieved of duty.

The eight-minute video was taken during the traffic stop after Palmdale deputies spotted a vehicle being driven at night without any headlights. When they pulled it over, the deputies smelled alcohol and saw four women inside, three of them with babies in their arms rather than in car seats, authorities said.

The deputies began to arrest the women on suspicion of felony child endangerment, and used force on two of the women when they resisted giving up their babies. The bulk of the video shows a tense conversation between a group of deputies and one woman who clutches her baby while sitting cross-legged on the ground. The deputies are heard saying that the woman was riding in a car driven by someone without a valid license, and that her baby was not in a car seat.

Source: FBI opens criminal investigations into violent Los Angeles County deputy encounters