Under Fire : Attempted Arrest of Autistic Man Jolts Image-Conscious Irvine Police

The colors in the office of Irvine Police Chief Leo Peart are comfortable earth tones, “no gun-metal (gray) desks and civil-service green,” he says. His books include a worn copy of Norman Vincent Peale’s “The Power of Positive Thinking” and two paperback volumes of Leonard Nimoy’s love poetry. There’s a framed inspirational poster with an uplifting message about human potential above his desk, one of three in the department that Peart leases and periodically replaces to enhance staff morale.

By design, the atmosphere at the Irvine Police Department is meant to be low-key and upbeat--a reflection of the credo of this 10-year-old department and the personal style of the man who has run it from the start.

But these days in Irvine, where police often refer to the people in the community as “our clientele,” the atmosphere is anything but tranquil.

Feeling the Pressure

Image-conscious and proud of its “firm but fair,” soft-sell approach to enforcing the law, the Irvine Police Department is under fire because some of its officers allegedly used excessive force while trying to arrest an autistic 18-year-old, Guido Rodriguez.

Peart, a self-proclaimed student of Dale Carnegie’s gospel for making friends and influencing people, has been feeling the pressure. On a bookcase in his office is a “True Grit” trophy, named after one of John Wayne’s last movies. Irvine city managers for years have awarded the gold cowboy statue each week to a different city department head as a morale booster.

“True Grit. That’s when you’ve had a tough week,” Peart explained one recent morning. “And the past few weeks, well, they’ve been tough.”

Peart, referring to the Rodriguez case, said that there has “definitely been an impact” in the master-planned community of more than 80,000, where police officers sometimes perform such mundane duties as supervising the exchange of childrens’ custody between divorced parents and checking the homes of vacationing residents. Last year, they checked 5,500 homes; in that same period, they made only 71 arrests.

“It (the Rodriguez incident ) has probably generated more mail and phone calls than I can remember,” Peart said. “ . . . this is a very emotional, a very sensitive issue now in the community, and our department’s reputation has been questioned and the individual officers’ reputations have been questioned.”

On April 21, three Irvine police officers chased the screaming Guido Rodriguez to his home. According to police and witnesses, the officers erroneously suspected him of riding a stolen bicycle, and when Rodriguez reached the family’s house and resisted their attempts to restrain him, Sgt. Jim Lowder threw him to the ground in the equally erroneous belief that he was under the influence of the drug PCP.

According to Lowder, Rodriguez’s parents and some neighbors who said they witnessed the encounter, the sergeant was told repeatedly that the young man was mentally handicapped and could not understand the officer’s commands.

Three days later, Guido’s kidney was removed during a 3 1/2-hour operation. The family’s doctor, who performed the surgery, said that the organ had hemorrhaged as a result of “recent trauma,” and that according to his patient’s medical history, the trauma to Guido’s kidney was caused by the interaction with the police.

One day after the surgery, the young man’s parents, Fara and Guido Rodriguez Sr., filed a $10-million damage claim naming the City of Irvine, the Police Department, Lowder, Officer Shari Lohman and crime scene investigator David Stoermer.

The claim charged that officers pursued and frightened the young man without sufficient cause, and that they “arrogantly ignored” the information about his mental state provided to them by neighbors and his mother. In addition to citing damage that required removal of the kidney, the claim alleges that Rodriguez “sustained further injuries to his body, including but not limited to bruises, abrasions, scrapes and cuts.”

Rodriguez was released from the hospital two weeks ago. His physical recuperation has been splendid, said Richard Peterson, the family’s attorney. “But we are concerned that he will become even more withdrawn and more reluctant to come out of his own little world . . . from the emotional scars.”

Rejected Claim

As is routine with most cities, the Irvine City Council denied the claim at its meeting last Tuesday. This means the Rodriguez family attorneys are free to seek damages in civil court. Peterson expects to file suit on Monday.

An investigation by the county district attorney’s office into possible criminal wrongdoing is expected to be completed in several weeks. Meanwhile, Irvine city and police officials refuse to discuss details of the case, the conduct and judgment of the officers, or their personal views on the matter. They will not provide basic information on the officers’ law-enforcement training, citing the “trauma” that the three have already suffered. Peart says that disclosure “is not appropriate at this time” and might jeopardize the continuing investigations.

Lohman, 21, has been an Irvine officer for six months. Stoermer, 36, worked as a Costa Mesa police officer for 14 years before coming to Irvine a decade ago. Lowder has been with the department 3 1/2 years and previously worked for the Los Angeles County marshal’s office, Peart said.

“We are very proud of their backgrounds,” Peart said of the officers. “These three have just very strong backgrounds. Their family backgrounds are very strong. (But) we have a civil suit and a criminal investigation going, possibly an internal investigation . . . When you have a very sensitive situation like this, it says: Time out; some questions need to be asked.”

Before returning to work, officers involved in shootings and other violent confrontations are routinely sent to police psychiatrists or counselors. Lowder, Lohman and Stoermer were each counseled after the Rodriguez incident and “given an opportunity to switch assignments,” said Assistant City Manager Paul Brady Jr. “They did not feel the need, so we did not feel the need.” The officers, who supervisors said were shaken by the Rodriguez episode, continue to work their assigned beats.

The officers are declining all interview requests, Peart said.

Negative Reaction

Shortly after Rodriguez incident, the city received about 60 phone calls about it, 95% of them negative, according to Brady. Initially, he said, the callers were upset, accusatory and, at best, asking what the Police Department was doing about the situation. More recently, he said, the calls have been more tempered.

Still, said Irvine Councilman Larry Agran, “Sixty phone calls in the day or two (after the incident was made public by the media) is an awful lot of phone calls . . .. When jet aircraft are flying all over the place and making life miserable, we get maybe 25 (calls), and that’s (considered) a big deal.”

Even the Irvine World News, which, Agran says, “typically is a celebration of life in paradise every week,” published an uncharacteristically harsh editorial in its May 2 edition. “It was rather characteristic (of how) the community is really getting involved in this,” Agran said.

At last Tuesday’s council meeting, Irvine resident John Griffin, whose daughter, 21, has Downs Syndrome, questioned the conduct of the three officers, specifically Lowder’s.

“This is not Detroit, Harlem or Watts,” Griffin said. His speech was applauded by about half the people in the council chambers.

Area newspapers have received letters calling the Rodriguez incident a “tragedy” and “a suburban nightmare” for Rodriguez, his parents and the officers involved.

The strongest letters blamed officers for ignorance in dealing with the handicapped and empathized with Rodriguez and his family. Parents of similarly handicapped children wrote about their own encounters with police.

However, many letters also expressed sympathy and support for the officers, charging that the family had no business allowing an autistic man with a mental age of 3 or 4 to ride his bicycle outside his own neighborhood. “What in the world was he doing so far from home?” said one letter to the Irvine World News. “I have a 4-year-old and I would never let her to be that far from home!”

Another letter writer asked hypothetically: What if the situation were reversed? What if the officer “assumed” erroneously that the young man was autistic and ended up getting hurt?

Educational Efforts

The Police Department and the city say they are exploring programs to better educate officers about the problems of people who are mentally and physically handicapped. The efforts include three weeks of videotape programs about those problems and visits by groups that work with handicapped people. Peart said the programs will be launched in mid-June.

Peart said that Irvine officers receive training on how to recognize and deal with the developmentally disabled before graduating from a police academy. But academy graduates have only received that training since Jan. 1, 1984. At that time, the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST), which prepares texts for the 33 accredited law-enforcement training academies in California, added a new instructional unit that deals specifically with recognizing people who are developmentally disabled.

Peart said officers also receive “existing in-house training” that includes “a couple of booklets distributed to the personnel and a videotape.”

Sgt. Phil Povey, in charge of the department’s training, said that most officers have viewed the film during daily briefings, depending on whether the officer was at work on the day it was shown. Povey said the “educational type” videotape, in which actors portray the developmentally disabled, was supplied by the Los Angeles Police Department in 1981.

“Unfortunately, this training comes too late for young Guido,” wrote Peterson, the Rodriguez family’s attorney, in a letter presented to the City Council the night they rejected the damage claim. “Additionally, there are some aspects of this incident which go far beyond inadequate training, sound clearly in abuse of police authority and violate the civil rights of one who had committed no crime. Certain actions of Sgt. Lowder are outrageous, and cannot be excused as an incident of mistake or inadvertence because of Guido’s mental incapacity.”

From its beginning in 1975, the Irvine Police Department was supposed to be different. It was tailored to fit its budding community of predominantly white, upwardly mobile baby boomers.

Affordable housing and a burgeoning business community that brings more “international” people into the area have changed Irvine’s ethnic, economic and social mosaic in recent years, city officials say.

It is a master-planned community, and so is its Police Department. There are no billboards, Peart says, and no power poles visible in developed parts of the city; all utility lines are underground. .

“Most cities you have to go back and redevelop and fix past mistakes,” said Peart, who came to Irvine in 1975 from his position as chief of police in Los Banos, a “medium-sized community” near Fresno.

“Here,” he said, “we were starting (fresh).”

Before officers were hired, the new department screened applicants with a psychological test to weed out potentially violence-prone types, an innovative policy at that time. Officers were forbidden to wear mirrored sunglasses, and their leather weapon holsters were painted an inconspicuous flat black as opposed to the brown typical at most police agencies.

Irvine police are the highest-paid officers in Orange County. A two-year contract effective last January raised salaries by 18.9% to 30%, according to the Irvine Police Officers Assn. In 1985, a newly hired patrolman will start at $2,252 to $3,049 a month; sergeants and lieutenants can earn as much as $4,022 and $4,856, respectively--sometimes more--depending on their duties and seniority.

Popular Phrases

“Firm but fair” and “spirit of the law vs. letter of the law” are popular phrases among Irvine officers in describing their brand of law enforcement. Less than a dozen civil suits have been filed in court since 1975 against the city regarding police activity--none alleging serious injury or death--and most were decided in favor of officers or the department. The number is much lower than in other Orange County cities of the same size or smaller, and Irvine police point to that as proof that their progressive approach has been successful.

Of 26 Orange County police jurisdictions, Irvine ranks 20th in the number of crimes committed per 1,000 residents. In Irvine last year, according to police statistics, there was one murder. There was also one rape every 15.2 days; one assault every 7.6 days; one robbery every 11.4 days; one burglary every 5 hours, 15 minutes; one larceny or theft every 5 hours, 25 minutes; one theft every 47 hours, 36 minutes, and one arson every 18.2 days.

(An officer in Buena Park, a city of roughly the same population as Irvine, laughed when told of those figures. “Is this Disneyland or a city we’re talking about?” he asked.)

Some Irvine officers say they never have had to draw their service revolvers; others have yet to encounter a violent situation.

The biggest commotion of recent years erupted after the Police Department launched a campaign to reduce traffic deaths and injuries by citing youths for bicycle safety violations. Irvine’s extensive bike-path system and the popularity of bicycling and jogging have resulted in a sizable number of injuries and accidents, according to Peart, and the police tried to respond to the problem.

“Six months ago,” he said, “I got tired of hearing from parents (who said), ‘Why don’t you go out and catch crooks and quit bugging my kids about their bike?’ ”

So officers were instructed not to issue the youths citations but instead to take the bike offender’s name and address. This was followed up by a letter to the parents from the chief himself.

But that, too, was stopped, Peart said. “It just wasn’t worth the flak.

“We offered a bicycle safety course on Saturdays (for the children and their parents). They didn’t want to miss their tennis game, so we dropped that.”

Sees Case as Exceptional

Peart and others say the absence of a major crime problem and the Police Department’s willingness to accommodate public sentiment illustrate how well law enforcement and community have coexisted in Irvine, and why the Rodriguez case stands out as exceptional.

Still, not everyone agrees on what constitutes a proper approach.

“I very strongly, for years, have felt the Irvine Police Department has been much too soft, “ said Jeanne O’Loughlin, president of the Culverdale Community Assn., which represents about 700 Irvine residents. “I frankly think they use a velvet glove far more than they should.”

“Bicycle theft seems to be the big thing going, since all the kids and their parents seem to be keeping up with the Joneses with $600 bikes,” O’Loughlin said. “People (in Irvine) put demands and pressure on the police . . . (but) you go after the guy who’s dealing the dope, the guy who’s holding up the stores, not (those stealing) the bikes.”

“I definitely would have to support the Police Department in this one,” O’Loughlin said of the Rodriguez incident. “Knowing most of (the officers involved) as I do. . . I feel very sad for the Rodriguez people, I really hurt for them. But it reminds me of a traffic accident my son was involved in. My son was traveling too fast, the other guy turned in front of him. It was comparative responsibility.”