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Former All-Star Lenny Dykstra files lawsuit against Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office

Lenny Dykstra was part of the Mets team that rallied to beat the Red Sox in seven games in the 1986 World Series. (Getty Images)

Lenny Dykstra was part of the Mets team that rallied to beat the Red Sox in seven games of the 1986 World Series. (Getty Images)

Former All-Star Lenny Dykstra, who won a World Series ring with the New York Mets in 1986, filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office and Los Angeles County for "abusive violence" from several of the Sheriff's Department's employees.

The beating allegedly occurred in April 2012 in the county jail while Dykstra was serving time for grand theft auto and providing a false financial statement. According to the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office, Dykstra, now 51, leased three luxury vehicles by providing false information and claimed false credit by making up what was discovered to be a phony business. He would later be sentenced to another six months for bankruptcy fraud.

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He was ultimately released from jail in June 2013, but he claims his head was slammed against a wall and that he had several of his teeth knocked out and suffered a beating by the sheriff's employees until he was "barely breathing," according to an Associated Press report on Wednesday. That beating in April 2012 came in the same month as Dykstra's no contest plea to accusations that he exposed himself to women he had met through Craigslist, according to the report.

The lawsuit also alleges that officials at the jail made every attempt to keep Dykstra from speaking out about the beating. The lawsuit says the jail is "fueled by abusive violence, and manipulated by hopeless liars." The sheriff's office is not commenting, according to the report, but sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore had confirmed in December 2012 -- when Dykstra received another six months in jail for bankruptcy fraud -- that a fight had in fact broken out between Dykstra and several sheriff's deputies and that Dykstra was the aggressor and had to be restrained.

According to the report, a federal probe has recently produced 20 indictments of employees of the sheriff's office.

In 1993, Dykstra finished second in MVP voting, a season in which he hit .305/.420/.482 and scored a league-leading 143 runs.

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