Vindication for the Garcias

When they saw several Fullerton police officers grappling with a lone suspect in a disturbance at a gas station, Joyce and Jose Garcia did what they thought any responsible person should do. They reported what seemed to them to be an excessive use of force to the police. Apparently it did not occur to them that their well-intentioned action would lead to their being charged and convicted of filing a false police report, followed by a six-year fight for vindication.

They won their fight last Wednesday when, during the third week of their civil trial against the city of Fullerton and seven former and present police officers, the city offered and they accepted a $100,000 out-of-court settlement. The settlement offer was made when it seemed clear to the attorneys that the jury was paying more attention to the Garcias’ version of what happened than it was to the city’s, and was ready to award them much more than $100,000.

The Garcias claim that their misdemeanor criminal conviction, which had been overturned earlier, resulted from being misquoted by the police officer who took their report and from failure of the prosecution to disclose that there were other witnesses who could corroborate their story. The charges were dismissed when the California Supreme Court ruled in another case that people couldn’t be prosecuted for filing false reports about police brutality.

That was a wise ruling, and so was the out-of-court settlement, because, as the high court noted, police wield enormous power and people can easily be frightened out of making legitimate complaints.

It’s encouraging to see that Joyce and Jose Garcia, if they were frightened, weren’t intimidated into silence and into looking the other way. They suffered the humiliation of conviction on a misdemeanor charge, and say that their subsequent divorce was caused in part by their troubles over the brutality report. Still, they persevered. Joyce and Jose Garcia are stronger for it. So is our system that guarantees people the right to monitor and question government authority without being prosecuted for making the effort.