Mounted Police Action Protested : Suspect Led by Rope; Policy Review Under Way

San Diego police officials said Wednesday they probably will change arrest procedures after complaints from the black community that two mounted officers handcuffed a black suspect and led him through a Southeast San Diego neighborhood by a rope attached to the saddle of one of the horses.

The man had been arrested on suspicion of walking his dog without a leash and giving police a false name.

The arrest in Mountain View Park angered nearby black residents and onlookers, who described the police handling of the suspect as inhumane. The black suspect was “stumbling and nearly falling” as he tried to keep up with two patrolmen on horses, said Neal Petties, an area manager for the city Park and Recreation Department.

“It was ugly,” said Petties, who complained a day later to police. “I have never seen anything like that before. . . . I just relate it to my forefathers and what I’ve seen on TV and read about. It reminded me of a person getting off a slave ship and going to a slave market. I was very upset.”

Another witness, J.D. Reynolds, said: “They were just parading him. It was just like in slavery times. You know, people dragging them around on horses. They had a leash on him.”

A police spokesman, Cmdr. Keith Enerson, said: “We’re familiar with that matter. We’re just completing the investigation. I think it’s safe to say our procedures are probably going to be changed.”

He declined to elaborate on what changes might be made.

Enerson, who said he didn’t know the names of the suspect or the officers, gave the following account of the arrest, which took place in the early afternoon hours on a weekday on or about Nov. 5:

A black man was walking his dog without a leash in Mountain View Park when the animal began to chase schoolchildren. After the dog “evidently bit a little girl,” two animal control officers arrived at the park, followed shortly by two patrol officers on horseback, Enerson said.

The man was arrested for violating a city ordinance that prohibits walking a dog in a city park without a leash. The officers remained on horseback and took the suspect, who was neither handcuffed nor leashed, to a residence a short distance away, where they learned from neighbors that the man had given police a false name.

“The people said, ‘No, that’s not him. In fact, the guy is such and such. He is a troublemaker around here,’ ” Enerson said.

The officers returned with the man to the park’s recreation center, where they learned his identity and placed him under arrest on suspicion of providing false information to police. At that point, the man was handcuffed and a police unit was called to transport him to County Jail. The patrol car was delayed when it was dispatched to another call.

“The officers waited a while longer,” Enerson said. “For whatever reason, it was the end of their shift or whatever, they decided not to wait any longer. They put some kind of rope onto his cuffs and led him down to where the (police horse) trailer was, a block or so away.”

According to witnesses, however, the man was pulled across the middle of the park and four blocks down Ocean View Boulevard to the horse trailer, which was parked near the Educational Cultural Complex building at 43rd Street. They said the man was tied to the saddle on one of the horses with a leash and forced to walk between the two horses. The entire incident lasted 30 to 60 minutes, they estimated.

They said the man was not violent and did not appear to resist police.

Reynolds, a retired city sanitation truck driver, said he was sitting on his front porch across from the park when he saw the officers pulling the suspect along.

“I don’t think it’s right for them to parade around with him,” Reynolds said. “They’ve got plenty of patrol cars to pick him up from here.”

Reynolds said it bothered him that county animal control dispatched two vehicles to pick up the dog, but police could not send a car to transport the man.

Petties said the man stumbled while trying to keep up with the horses as he was being led across the grassy hills in the park. He said he thought the officers would take the man down a side street because “it doesn’t look good parading him down Ocean View Boulevard. It’s kind of embarrassing.”

But “sure enough,” Petties said, police took the man down the main street, in front of neighbors and schoolchildren attending Baker Elementary School. Petties said several people yelled and expressed outrage at the practice.

“I wouldn’t parade the man up and down the street for a whole hour,” Petties said. “If (they) really wanted to take him to jail, call a police unit.”

The arrest was discussed a couple of weeks later when Petties and other black leaders were invited to a community relations meeting set up by Kathy Rollins of the Black Federation at the police Southeastern substation. (Rollins did not attend that meeting.)

“I said it was a big concern,” Petties said. “I don’t want to see my child or anyone else’s child walking down the street like that.”

Jihmye Collins, a San Diego artist who attended the meeting, said that Deputy Chief Manuel Guaderrama indicated that the same procedure would have been used by officers on mounted patrol if the arrest had occurred in La Jolla or Point Loma.

“I felt it was implied that this was not anything unusual because of national policy, and the San Diego Police Department was following along with its policy and national policy,” Collins said.

“I didn’t think that would be the case and I said so.”

Guaderrama could not be reached for comment late Wednesday.

Collins added: “Everyone thought that it was a horrible way to treat an individual, no matter what the circumstances. . . . I was just shocked and amazed by it. It was inhumane and should not have been done.

“Here is an officer who parades an individual on a leash behind a horse through a neighborhood for no apparent reason. That officer needs to be reprimanded at the least.”

Ernie McCray, principal of Fletcher Elementary School and a black community activist, said he heard about the incident later and was disturbed by the image of a black man being towed by police. He said he has discussed his concerns with other black leaders.