Attorney Seeks Data on Penn : Court Papers Say Officer Involved in Racist Group

A defense attorney has alleged in court documents that San Diego Police Officer Donovan Jacobs--one of three people shot in March by Sagon Penn--was involved with an extremist paramilitary organization that trained in the desert and included members of white supremacist groups.

Attorney Milton J. Silverman made the allegations in a 69-page discovery motion that he filed last week in Superior Court in an attempt to obtain information he said was withheld from the defense team. A hearing is scheduled for Dec. 20, at which Silverman is expected to question police officials about the accusations.

According to documents Silverman filed with Superior Court Judge Barbara Gamer last Thursday, the San Diego Police Department and the city attorney’s office reviewed Jacobs’ participation in the group, which included members of the Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Brotherhood and a Palestinian group called Black September.

Ted Bromfield, chief deputy city attorney, would neither confirm nor deny the report. However, Bromfield said that his office and the department are preparing a response to the allegations raised by Silverman. Police officials could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

Silverman is representing Penn, 23, a black man charged with wounding Jacobs, fatally shooting Officer Thomas E. Riggs and wounding Sarah Pina-Ruiz, a civilian who was riding in Riggs’ patrol car on March 31 in Encanto.

Penn’s truck was stopped by Jacobs, who told police investigators he was searching for an armed gang member. A scuffle ensued after a dispute broke out over Penn handing over his driver’s license. Penn managed to take Jacobs’ .38-caliber revolver from its holster and wounded Jacobs in the neck, witnesses told police. Penn is also accused of fatally shooting Riggs and firing two shots through a car window at the unarmed Pina-Ruiz.

Penn is scheduled to go to trial on murder charges next month.

The court documents do not mention the dates of Jacobs’ alleged involvement with the group, which was identified only as a “soldier of fortune paramilitary organization.” Silverman did not identify the sources who he said brought the information to his attention. But in the documents Silverman says he is willing to divulge his sources’ identities to the judge in chambers.

In the wide-ranging discovery motion, Silverman has asked the Police Department to make available to him records of all field interrogation reports filed by Jacobs for the three years prior to March 31, 1985, the date of the incident involving Penn. Without listing a source, Silverman said he has acquired information that Jacobs has stopped, detained and photographed as many as 500 young black men whom he suspected of being gang members.

Silverman charged that Jacobs kept illegal dossiers on those he photographed. Quoting “reliable sources,” Silverman said that “Jacobs has in the past demonstrated a racial bias and prejudice of a high degree, and that complaints concerning the same were submitted to police authorities, who later ‘counseled’ Jacobs with respect to this problem.”

The Times has learned from an independent source that Jacobs’ file, which was purged by Superior Court Judge Raul Rosado before it was handed over to the defense, contains three complaints against Jacobs--two in 1982 and one in 1983--from people who accused the officer of racial bias. But according to Silverman’s motion, none of the complaints were found to be true when investigated by the department’s internal affairs office. Rosado reviewed the file and decided which entries were pertinent to Penn’s defense and should be turned over to his attorney.

Silverman also referred to an unidentified police sergeant who contacted one of the three complainants and told him that Jacobs “had been suspended before for doing the same thing (using excessive force).” Silverman charged that information about the suspension has not been released to the defense.

In the documents filed last week, Silverman also quotes from a taped interview that Jacobs had with a police investigator after the shooting. An independent source has told The Times that Jacobs declined to talk with the investigator without his attorney, James Gattey, present, and would not talk unless he was granted immunity. According to the interview quoted by Silverman, the investigator challenged one portion of Jacobs’ account of the shooting incident.

Jacobs has told investigators that he stopped the truck that was driven by Penn after he saw the vehicle make a U-turn in front of him. According to the court documents filed by Silverman, the investigator said that five occupants, all of whom were black, gave police consistent accounts of the incident and never mentioned “any U-turn.”

In the documents, the investigator told Jacobs that the “truck could not have made a U-turn in that street without running up on the curb or without backing up. Stopping and backing up.” Jacobs responded, “I don’t have any reasons to lie about that, you know,” according to the documents.

Jacobs failed to return two messages left on a telephone answering machine at his home by a reporter.