Huntington Park Department Leads Southeast in Police Brutality Claims

Huntington Park police officers are accused of brutality more frequently than officers of any other municipal police department in the Southeast/Long Beach area.

In the last two calendar years, the 60-member Huntington Park department had 30 legal claims filed against it that allege brutality. That is a sufficiently high number, given the size of the department, to put the city on notice about possible problems within the department, say a top state criminal justice official and legal experts interviewed by The Times.

The claims list one person killed and 61 injured, including:

A fleeing suspect who was shot at 31 times by four police officers. He was hit six times and was critically injured. Police said the suspect--originally stopped for failing to have a license plate on his vehicle--shot at them first. No gun was ever found, and the man was later acquitted of assault and attempted murder of a police officer.

A legally blind man who suffered from a brain tumor at the time of an altercation with police. He said he was hit in the head with a police baton and knocked unconscious.

A businessman who said he was kicked and beaten by police outside his office after he set off his own burglar alarm.

A theft suspect who, while attempting to run away from a police officer, was allegedly rammed by a police car.

An 82-year-old grandfather who fired a revolver when police came to his door and was killed by a salvo of police bullets and a shotgun blast.

(Each of these incidents are detailed in an accompanying story.)

The 30 claims filed against the city in 1984 and 1985 seek about $35 million in damages. All have been routinely denied by the City Council.

Since 1981, the city has had more than $900,000 in pretrial settlements and jury verdicts entered against it in eight cases involving misconduct by about 15 officers. In the same period, the city spent more than $130,000 to defend police officers in claims and suits filed against the city.

A claim is the first required step in filing a lawsuit against the city, though often people who file a claim do not take the matter to court. Of the 30 claims filed against the city in 1984 and 1985, 14 have resulted in suits filed in state and federal courts, four claims have been closed because no lawsuits were filed within 12 months and the remaining 12 cases are considered open by city officials.

The number of brutality claims per officer in Huntington Park in 1984 and 1985 was 25% higher than brutality claims filed against the next highest department--Bell-Cudahy--during the same two-year period. No other department in the area approached Huntington Park’s totals for brutality claims per officer in the two most recent calendar years. (See chart.)

Such claims are a significant indicator of possible police misconduct because they take time to file and cost money if a lawyer is consulted, according to a prominent Los Angeles defense lawyer, a top state criminal justice official and a USC law professor, who were interviewed separately.

View of Defense Attorney

“It takes some real effort to file these claims. A citizen has to feel that he’s really been put upon,” said Los Angeles lawyer Johnnie L. Cochran Jr.

Cochran, a former prosecutor and top assistant to John K. Van de Kamp when Van de Kamp was Los Angeles County district attorney, is a defense lawyer who has handled many prominent police brutality cases in the past 20 years. Those cases included the 1981 homicide of Ron Settles, a college football player who was stopped for speeding and died in the Signal Hill Jail.

California Chief Assistant Atty. Gen. Steve White said the high number of claims filed against the Huntington Park Police Department is “a flag, a warning” of possible problems within the department.

“It’s not unlike a house with a lot of smoke coming out of it. You want to go in and see if there’s a fire,” White said. He is in charge of the attorney general’s criminal division which, among other duties, investigates complaints of police brutality. The department has not undertaken an investigation of the Huntington Park department, he said.

USC Associate Professor Irwin Chermerinsky, an expert on constitutional law, said that the large number of claims filed against the Huntington Park department is “something that should put the city on notice about a possible problem.” Inaction by the City Council and other officials who oversee the department may be seen as an “implicit sanction” of police misconduct that could leave the city liable for damages in federal civil rights lawsuits, the professor said.

Defense From City

Police Chief Geano Contessotto and other top city officials defended the department in interviews.

Contessotto said his officers have been cleared by internal police investigations and in “several” cases, investigations by the district attorney and FBI.

“I see no misconduct in my department,” the chief said. “We’re not on trial in the press.”

City Atty. Elwayne E. Smith said the brutality claims filed against the Police Department are complaints concocted by people facing criminal charges or looking for money from the city.

Asked if the department’s officers use excessive force, Mayor Herbert A. Hennes Jr. said, “They are no better or no worse than any other police department in the area.”

In separate interviews, all five City Council members defended the Police Department, saying that they did not believe officers use excessive force.

“A lot of times brutality is in the eyes of the beholder,” said Councilman Jim Roberts. Councilman Thomas E. Jackson added that he didn’t think city officers “overreact or over-brutalize.”

Various Explanations

Council members had various explanations for the large number of brutality claims against the department.

All five of them said many claims against city police officers arise out of large parties where people are drinking. Mayor Hennes said the city is densely populated and, because of extensive redevelopment in recent years, prone to confrontations between longtime and new residents.

And Councilman Jack W. Parks blamed the city’s Latino residents. “It’s because of the influx of the Latin people that creates the problem,” he said. They like to throw loud, late-night parties, something the city never experienced before Latinos moved to Huntington Park, he said.

Head Deputy Dist. Atty. Steven A. Sowders said in an interview that the Special Investigations Division of the district attorney’s office has investigated two Huntington Park cases in the past two years. In one case, in which Jose Alonso was allegedly beaten last October, officers were cleared of wrongdoing. A claim was filed in that case. The other case involves the shooting death of the 82-year-old grandfather, Joseph Aviles. It remains open, Sowders said.

FBI Won’t Comment

FBI spokesman Jim Nielson declined comment. A U.S. Justice Department spokesman, Amy Brown, said the Police Department is not the subject of any current investigation.

In a later interview, Chief Contessotto said he fired one officer, Richard Musquiz, for use of excessive force in punching and kicking a prisoner in 1983. (See accompanying story.)

Contessotto added that, in both 1984 and 1985, he disciplined “a couple” of officers for use of excessive force. He would not provide further details.

In addition to investigating allegations of brutality that are raised in claims against the department, the department also investigates the actions of officers whenever there are questions about an officer’s conduct, said Capt. Martin Siminoff. Siminoff said he took over the task of internal investigations in late 1984. Through 1985, he has conducted 17 investigations, sustaining one complaint. He would not provide further details.

City Council members periodically review police reports on some claims made against the department, Mayor Hennes said. Those reviews are done when the city’s insurance claims adjuster is asking the council whether or not the claims should be settled, Hennes said.

The two officers who are named most often in claims and lawsuits filed in 1984 and 1985 are Dale E. Shields and William J. Lustig Jr. The two are named a total of 17 times. Both officers are named together in four lawsuits and one claim. Shields is also named in a separate lawsuit and three other claims, while Lustig is named in two separate lawsuits and one other claim. The two joined the department in July, 1983.

Shields, 23, joined the department after graduating from a 17-week police academy at Golden West College. Before that, Shields worked as a sporting goods salesman at a J. C. Penney department store and was an attendant at Aladdin’s Castle, a chain of video game arcades, according to a deposition Shields gave this year in a lawsuit.

Lustig, 30, joined the department a month after graduating from Rio Hondo Police Academy. Before becoming a police officer he worked as a cashier at a Boys Market, Lustig said in a deposition for a lawsuit.

Chief Contessotto declined to give permission for his officers to comment. Both Shields and Lustig declined to respond to separate written requests for interviews. Contessotto also refused to release any biographical information about any of his officers.

In an interview, Contessotto said Shields and Lustig are “doing as good a job as can be expected and I don’t think they’re worse than any other member of this department.” He added that he resented “an attempt to crucify two individual officers just because they’re named in lawsuits.”

Attributed to Size

Mayor Hennes, a retired county marshal, said that Lustig’s size--6 foot 6 and 240 pounds--may make him a target for “machos.”

“It’s the old deal; everybody wants to take on John Wayne in a barroom fight,” Hennes said, adding that Lustig looks “like the Hulk, although he’s not painted green.”

The department was denounced as brutal and racist by Latino community leaders and lawyers for people who have filed claims against the city.

“They’re among the worst in California,” said Ralph D. Fertig, a Los Angeles lawyer for several plaintiffs who are suing the department.

“They (Huntington Park police officers) have consistently acted in a ruthless, insensitive and prejudiced manner, particularly towards minority group members. They use racial epithets and invectives while swinging flashlights and weapons against unarmed civilians.”

Jesse Duran, president of the League of United Latin American Citizens of Huntington Park, charged that the department is racist because many alleged brutality victims are Latino. He also said the department is responsible for “a lot of fear in the community.”

Latino Officers

Contessotto denied both charges. He said that half of his 60 officers are Latino, and that 21 officers are fluent in Spanish and receive an extra $15 a month for being bilingual. (That could not be confirmed because the city refused to supply a list of its officers.)

The city of 54,153 residents is 84% Latino. The brutality claims and lawsuits against the city list 62 victims with physical injuries, of whom 55, or 89%, have Latino surnames. Of the 28 officers named in claims and lawsuits against the department, seven have Latino surnames.

Last October, half a dozen local Latino business leaders met with the police chief and two council members to discuss brutality allegations against the department.

The meeting was organized by Guillermo Dominguez, owner of Dominguez Insurance Agency in Huntington Park, who claimed he and family members were brutalized by police during a family birthday party in October, 1984. (Seventeen people who attended that party are suing the department, although Dominguez is not a party in the lawsuit. See accompanying story.)

Councilman Roberts said of the meeting: “They (the businessmen) expressed their feelings about (alleged brutality) and we agreed with their feelings. We don’t want people beaten up either.”

Better Communication

Chief Contessotto said the meeting improved communication between the department and the Latino community. The department now publishes a quarterly newsletter in Spanish and English, the chief said.

Whether the allegations of brutality are true or not, from 1981 through 1985, the city paid lawyers $130,068 to defend police in 28 misconduct claims and lawsuits, according to figures released by city officials. In addition to brutality allegations, misconduct cases can include other alleged misdeeds such as false arrest or illegal conduct. The city did not release a separate dollar figure for brutality cases. The city has not yet received bills covering 35 additional misconduct cases during that same five-year period, Smith, the city attorney, said.

Also, from 1981 through 1985, the city has paid $141,500 to settle police misconduct cases before trial, according to figures released by the city. City officials did not provide information about how many cases were settled for that amount.

That total does not include a 1983 jury award of $200,000 to a Norwalk man who claimed that police officers from Bell and Huntington Park beat him so badly in a 1978 arrest that he could no longer work. The award--to Jesse Moreno, 39, a former truck driver--was against the cities of Huntington Park and Bell and was upheld in April on appeal. Huntington Park paid $100,000 of the award to Moreno.

Two Claims Settled

In addition, this year the city settled two civil damage claims for $680,000 involving a former officer who was accused of twice coercing people into oral sex while on duty.

The city agreed in May to a $600,000 settlement of a suit that claimed Officer James Henshaw forced a city youth into his police car and made the boy fondle the officer’s penis and orally copulate him. According to the suit, Henshaw then orally copulated the youth.

Henshaw was fired shortly after the March, 1982, incident, the police chief said. Henshaw was later convicted of two counts of oral copulation with a minor and, in 1983, was sentenced to three years’ probation, according to court records.

In January, the city settled another suit that claimed Henshaw forced a Huntington Park man to orally copulate him in his police car in January, 1981. The suit was settled for $80,000, said Smith, the city attorney, who described Henshaw as a “very bad apple who caused us to pay through the nose.”

POLICE BRUTALITY CLAIMS BY CITY--1984 and 1985

City/Department Population Sworn Officers Claims* % Per officer Bell/Cudahy 48,363 42 17 .40 Bell Gardens 38,092 42 08 .19 Compton 88,105 120 16 .13 Downey 83,752 85 5 .06 Huntington Park 52,183 60 30 .50 Long Beach 386,047 635 95 .15 Montebello 56,879 75 8 .11 Monterey Park 59,672 71 6 .08 Signal Hill 7,908 28 1 .03 South Gate 78,569 91 5 .05 Whittier 71,694 85 6 .07

*When several claims arose from the same incident, they were counted as one.