Session Deemed Key to Penn’s Trial : Jacobs Says Police Academy Counseling Was Common

Police Agent Donovan Jacobs, in his sixth day of testimony in the retrial of Sagon Penn, said Thursday that counseling sessions like the one he underwent in August, 1978, with three supervisors at the Police Academy were common for recruits in the six-month officer training program.

When Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Carpenter asked Jacobs whether “just about everybody” undergoes counseling at some point during their academy training, Jacobs said, “Yes, I recall people being asked into the office to talk with (academy instructors) numerous times.”

The counseling session is considered key to the case because a transcript of the meeting shows Jacobs was reprimanded for his apparent willingness to use racial slurs and profanity in some police situations if “it gets the job done.”

Defense attorney Milton Silverman believes that session represented a “chilling prophecy” of Jacobs’ encounter March 31, 1985, with Penn that left Jacobs and civilian Sarah Pina-Ruiz wounded and Police Agent Thomas Riggs dead.

Silverman argues that a “racist” and “enraged” Jacobs attacked Penn “like a Doberman pinscher,” prompting Penn to seize the officer’s revolver and fire in self-defense. Prosecutors, meanwhile, say Penn triggered the fatal altercation by disobeying Jacobs’ order to remove his driver’s license from his wallet during a traffic stop in Encanto.

Penn, 25, was found innocent last June of murder and several other major charges. He is being retried before Superior Court Judge J. Morgan Lester on five charges on which the first jury deadlocked.

Also testifying Thursday was Penn’s grandfather, Yusuf Abdullah, with whom Penn lives. Under questioning from Carpenter and cross-examination by Silverman, Abdullah, 69, recalled how Penn returned home, bruised, bleeding and “in shock,” after the shootings.

The prosecutor played a tape of an interview between Abdullah and two police detectives at the downtown central station several hours after Penn turned himself in.

“(Penn) rushed into the house . . . and says he shot a policeman and, ‘They gonna kill me, they gonna kill me, they gonna kill me,’ ” Abdullah says on the tape. “He said, ‘Daddy, (Penn’s name for his grandfather) I want you to save me. Can’t you save me? Can’t you save me? What can you do for me? What can I do?’ ”

Then, Abdullah testified, he asked his grandson whether he wanted to turn himself in. Penn agreed and the two drove to the police station.

Abdullah also noted that his grandson had bruises on his head, “scars” on the neck and blood running from his nose and the side of his face when he returned home. In addition, Penn had grass and dust on the back of his head, Abdullah testified, leading the elder man to believe “there had been a scuffle.”

Penn’s grandfather also testified that Penn told him he had cocked the revolver and told Jacobs to “get off” of him but that it discharged accidentally, wounding Jacobs, after Riggs kicked the weapon. Penn said he shot Riggs and Pina-Ruiz in self-defense after that, Abdullah testified.

Near the end of Thursday’s proceedings, prosecutors called Pina-Ruiz to the stand. Pina-Ruiz, who was riding in Riggs’ car as an observer when the deadly encounter occurred, had time only to testify that she became a ride-along in March, 1985, because she was contemplating a career as a California Highway Patrol officer.

Pina-Ruiz’s testimony, which was controversial in the first trial because of conflicting statements she made outside the courtroom, will continue today.