Court OKs Family’s Suit on Police Slaying of Father

The family of a black man who was shot to death by Fontana Police investigating a domestic dispute can sue the city in federal court for deprivation of the victim’s civil rights, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday.

The three-judge panel, sitting in San Francisco, reinstated the civil rights case brought by the survivors of Rufus A. Smith, who was unarmed when he was shot in the back by an officer while a second policeman held him in a chokehold, according to court documents.

The suit by nine of Smith’s children contends that in the May 27, 1982, incident, Officers Robert Mejia and Larry Smith, responding to reports of a domestic complaint, confronted Rufus Smith in the parking lot of his apartment building and ordered him to place his hands on his head.

Rufus Smith attempted to comply, but, according to court documents, Officer Smith “without provocation clenched him from behind in a chokehold and began to drag him backward.”

Drew Revolver

“While Mr. Smith was thus being held, Officer Mejia without provocation began to knee him in the groin and strike him in the face. Though Mr. Smith was unarmed and offered only instinctive resistance against the blows to his groin and face, Officer Smith drew his duty revolver and shot Mr. Smith in the back,” according to the documents.

The case, brought in U.S. District Court in Pasadena in 1983, was thrown out by Judge William P. Gray on the grounds that the plaintiffs should have taken their arguments to state court.

However, the appeals panel ruled that the Smith children have “a substantive due process claim” that can be pressed in U.S. District Court.

Andrena G. Dancer, attorney for the Smith family, said Tuesday that lawyers for the defendants--Officers Mejia and Smith and various Fontana city officials--claimed that Rufus Smith’s body had “traces of PCP in the bloodstream.”

‘Macho Mentality’

“We question that,” Dancer said. “He did not show the usual profile of a PCP user of resisting arrest with superstrength. But, even allowing for the truth of the PCP charge, a domestic dispute is not a capital offense.

“We believe the shooting was an example of the macho mentality of the Police Department at that time . . . and that Rufus Smith was denied due process of law on the basis of his race.”

Dancer said an investigation by the San Bernardino County district attorney’s office found no reason to prosecute the two officers for the shooting death.

A spokesman for the Fontana Police Department confirmed that Mejia and Larry Smith remain on the force but declined further comment.