Jacobs Changes Hospitals; Expansion of Study Asked

San Diego patrolman Donovan J. Jacobs, wounded March 31 with his own revolver at a traffic stop in which another police officer was killed, was transferred Wednesday afternoon from Mercy Hospital to Grossmont Hospital, where he will begin physical therapy.

A Mercy Hospital spokesman said Jacobs, 28, has partial paralysis of his left hand and arm.

Police Department spokesman Bill Robinson said he didn’t know how long Jacobs would undergo treatment or when he would return to duty.

Jacobs was shot in the neck after he stopped a pickup truck with several black occupants in Encanto. Patrolman Thomas E. Riggs and a civilian ride-along, Sara Pina-Ruiz, were following close behind in another patrol car and also stopped. A scuffle ensued between Jacobs and the truck’s driver, Sagon Penn, 23, during which Penn allegedly seized the .38-caliber revolver in Jacobs’ holster and began firing.

Riggs died after being shot in the chest. Pina-Ruiz, who suffered three superficial gunshot wounds, is recovering at home.

Penn remains jailed in lieu of $250,000 bail.

After the incident, the Police Department announced it would form an all-officer task force to examine police safety in San Diego, where 10 officers have died in the line of duty since 1977.

On Wednesday, the Rev. Robert Ard, president of San Diego’s Black Leadership Council, asked that civilians be included on the task force. Ard told a City Council committee that, since the shootings, “there appears to be a deterioration in the good relations that have existed between the working police persons and the black community.”

“We do not believe our officers are killing themselves, and therefore the department’s self-study and self-evaluation does little to address the whole problem,” Ard said. “The perception the department has of itself may not be the same as the perception of the department held by the community. We believe an ‘all-police’ study would lack the credibility of one in which police and civilians worked together for the commonality of good.”