Police Actions Also on Trial in San Diego Officer’s Death

Five police units recently responded to a report of two “suspicious black males” loitering outside a liquor store in the Hillcrest area. As the officers grabbed their batons and approached the sidewalk where they were standing, one of the men shouted:

“Look at this! Five cops coming after two black guys walking down the street. Don’t you have anything better to do. . . . Go ahead. Beat us up. Just like Sagon Penn.”

A day rarely passes in San Diego without patrol officers hearing some reference to the case of Sagon Penn, a 24-year-old black man who is charged with fatally shooting one police officer and seriously wounding another last March 31.

To embattled police officers in San Diego, where nine police officers have been killed in the line of duty during the last decade, Penn is a “cop killer” who should be sent to the gas chamber. Many officers, including Police Chief Bill Kolender, were furious when the San Diego County district attorney’s office elected not to seek the death penalty when Penn goes on trial Wednesday.

For many black community leaders, the trial presents a rare opportunity to focus public attention on their belief that San Diego police officers are verbally and physically abusive toward minorities.

“We know that this harassment does not occur every day, but it happens often enough,” said Ernest McKinney, administrator of St. Stephen’s Church of God in Christ in Southeast San Diego. “Many black and minority people in the community believe that the Police Department is not really their protector.”

The murder trial, which could last four months, has strained once-promising relations between San Diego police and the black community. Many black leaders, who claim that officers provoked Penn by beating him with batons and taunting him with racial slurs, are openly criticizing Kolender for the first time during his 10 years as the city’s popular police chief.

They say Kolender has alienated the black community by calling Penn a “cop killer” before the case goes to trial, by refusing to acknowledge witnesses’ accounts that his officers may have acted improperly, and by criticizing celebrities’ appearances in San Diego to help raise money for Penn’s defense.

Kolender insists that neither his popularity nor his rapport with the black community has faded. He said he encountered no animosity during the recent Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade and said officers who patrol predominantly black areas report no overt antagonism.

Penn, a graduate of Hoover High School, had never been charged with a crime until he was accused of murdering Agent Thomas Riggs, 27, and shooting Officer Donovan Jacobs, 29, and Sarah Pena-Ruiz, 33, a civilian who accompanied Riggs on a police ride-along program.

The events that led to the early evening shootings were described in detail by two dozen prosecution witnesses at a preliminary hearing last May. At the trial, at least 39 people are expected to provide eyewitness accounts. A transcript of the preliminary hearing provides the following scenario:

Penn was driving a white pickup truck with seven passengers on Brooklyn Avenue in the southeast San Diego community of Encanto when he was pulled over by Jacobs, a seven-year member of the Police Department who said he was looking for an armed gang member.

No Gang Ties Claimed

“What do you claim--’Cuz’ or ‘Blood’?” Jacobs asked Penn, referring to the nicknames of two black youth gangs. Neither Penn nor his passengers claim any affiliation with an organized gang.

Jacobs asked Penn for identification without explaining why he had stopped the truck. When Penn refused to take his driver’s license out of his wallet and began to walk away, Jacobs grabbed Penn’s arm. The two exchanged words, and Jacobs began striking Penn, an expert in martial arts, in the back and shoulder area with his baton.

Riggs, who had followed Jacobs to the scene, tried to restrain the crowd that was gathering around Jacobs and Penn. The two officers used their batons as well as their fists and feet in trying to subdue Penn, witnesses said.

At one point, Jacobs stood above Penn, who was sprawled on the ground, and reportedly said, “You think you’re bad, nigger? I’m gonna beat your black ass.”

In addition, several defense witnesses will testify that Jacobs repeatedly called Penn “a black bastard” and “nigger,” according to defense attorney Milton Silverman.

During the struggle, Angela McKibben was kneeling on her living room floor and watching through an open front door when she decided to call police. “I’d like to report some police brutality right in front of my house,” McKibben told a police dispatcher, according to court papers.

Hospital Bed Testimony

Jacobs, in testimony from his hospital bed last May, recalled the moments before he was shot: “I was telling him to roll over . . . to give up . . . and I recalled that he began . . . making a movement to turn to the left. . . . He was turning over, so I reached back with my left hand and brought out my handcuffs and then . . . the next thing I know . . . I heard a gunshot. . . .”

According to witnesses, Penn grabbed Jacobs’ .38-caliber revolver and shot the officer once in the neck. He turned and shot Riggs three times, then stood up and fired two more shots through a police car window, striking Pena-Ruiz.

Penn picked up Riggs’ weapon and jumped into Jacobs’ patrol car. Backing out, he ran over Jacobs. Penn drove the police car to his grandfather’s house and turned himself in at police headquarters within the hour. He is being held in San Diego County Jail without bail.

Riggs, who died at the scene, is survived by a wife and two young children.

Jacobs remains disabled from a single gunshot wound to the neck, and Pena-Ruiz has recovered from her injuries. Both will be called as witnesses at the trial.

Black leaders in San Diego are hoping to capitalize on the Penn trial as an important first step in getting police administrators to acknowledge their concerns that patrol officers routinely mistreat black youths. They have staged rallies, organized fund-raisers and brought celebrities such as Muhammad Ali to call attention to Penn’s case--a tactic Kolender has criticized as “showmanship.”

Police Felt to Be on Trial

Kathy Rollins, executive director of the San Diego Black Federation, said she feels that the Police Department and some of its practices will be on trial in the Penn case.

“People are fearful but looking forward to some kind of resolution as to why all of this happened and how it can be prevented from happening again,” Rollins said. “Many people in the community feel the police will come out and approach us in a different way, because the Penn case has already heightened some of the problems.”

Black leaders said that, since the Penn case, they have received an increasing number of reports of police mistreating black youths during routine street stops. They said the youths do not report the cases to police because they believe that police internal affairs investigators are not sympathetic to their concerns.

Last year, citizens filed 73 complaints of abuse against San Diego police officers, compared to 116 in 1984. The Police Department could not provide the number of complaints from residents in the city’s southeastern area.

Both the prosecutor and Penn’s defense attorney emphasized that the outcome of the trial will rest on the individual actions by Penn and the two officers on March 31, not the Police Department or its policies.

Kolender, whose 10 years at the helm of San Diego’s 1,400-member Police Department surpasses that of any current big-city chief in the nation, has enjoyed remarkably good relations with the city’s black community. He regularly attends meetings in the minority neighborhoods of southeast San Diego, just as he does society functions in La Jolla.

City Council Backing

At City Hall, Kolender receives strong backing from his new boss, City Manager Sylvester Murray, and from City Council members. City Council members were pleased that Kolender supported the recent formation of the Citizens Advisory Board on Police-Community Relations, a group of appointed citizens that has met several times to discuss police issues.

Others, however, contend that Kolender has not responded to concerns within the minority community.

“It’s not enough for the chief of police to say, ‘No, everything is fine. We don’t have these problems,’ ” said the Rev. Robert Ard, for years one of the Police Department’s staunchest allies in the black community and currently a candidate for the state Assembly. “They have this mentality of circling the wagons every time you bring up something. I want to work in harmony with the police. It shouldn’t be them and us. It becomes very discouraging.”