Lawsuit by Fired Register Reporter Accuses Sheriff of Harassment, Lies

A former investigative reporter for the Orange County Register filed an $11-million lawsuit Thursday that accuses Sheriff Brad Gates of conducting a campaign of spying, surveillance, monitoring, harassment and attempted criminal entrapment after the reporter wrote stories critical of the Sheriff’s Department.

Charles R. Cook alleged in the lawsuit, filed in federal court in Santa Ana: that he was followed and placed under surveillance; that an informant for Gates tried to entrap him during an illegally taped telephone call, and that Gates and other defendants discredited Cook and cost him his job by spreading false stories that he was under a criminal investigation.

News Sources Intimidated

Further, the defendants intimidated Cook’s news sources and tried to make Cook abandon his investigative reporting “through the use of death threats and overt surveillance” and by following him between home and work, the lawsuit alleged.

It asked the court to declare the alleged activities to be illegal violations of several constitutional rights, including free expression and freedom of the press.

In addition to Gates, others named as defendants are Randall Blair and Tim Simon, sheriff’s deputies; Richard Wilder, an agent for the Sheriff’s Department; Santa Ana Police Lt. Michael Foote; the Orange County, and the City of Santa Ana.

A spokesman for Gates referred calls to the county’s risk management officer, who was not available for comment.

Santa Ana City Atty. Ed Cooper said he had not seen the lawsuit, was not familiar with the allegations and could make no comment.

Cook earlier this year filed a claim against the county, making the same allegations. The claim was rejected.

Cook, now an investigative reporter for the Arizona Republic in Phoenix, said in a telephone interview Thursday that the lawsuit is in response to “constant, unwarranted and illegal surveillance” over 2 1/2 years, beginning in 1982.

The harassment, he said, was in response to articles about an investigation into deaths at the Orange County Jail and about problems in the sheriff-coroner’s office. There was further harassment after articles reporting that 12 Santa Ana police officers had had sex with a school crossing guard.

“Each time I would do an article they didn’t like, it seemed to prompt a new spurt in the investigation,” Cook said.

‘Warned’ by Deputy

He said he had been alerted to the surveillance and harassment by an unnamed sheriff’s deputy in December, 1982, who “warned me to be careful--I know that sounds bogus, but it really happened.”

The attempt to entrap him, Cook said, occurred in 1982 when Wilder, acting as an informant for the Sheriff’s Department, was given the mission to “go out and get me.” The Sheriff’s Department had opened a criminal investigation file on Cook, and, according to court documents, Wilder was told to telephone the reporter and try to determine whether Cook was attempting to persuade inmates to lie about conditions in the jail.

The court documents detailing the Wilder order were filed in connection with a separate lawsuit against Gates, since settled, by former Orange County Municipal Judge Bobby D. Youngblood. Youngblood, now an attorney, had alleged harassment and improper surveillance tactics.

Cook said that during that conversation, Wilder illegally taped the call and “tried to plant phony information on me.”

Cook said his lawsuit seeks to prevent Gates and others from destroying any files on him, so that Cook can learn what is in them.

He said that, in another effort to discredit him, Santa Ana’s Lt. Foote told a meeting of Orange County police intelligence officers that the reporter was “unethical, unscrupulous and that they shouldn’t deal with me because I was under investigation.”

Death Threat Alleged

Cook received a death threat while working at the Register, said his attorney, Kevin Barry McDermott of Santa Ana.

“It was something he received at the office,” McDermott said, adding that he hopes to learn more about who made the threat in the discovery phase of the lawsuit.

Cook said: “You expect something like this to happen in the backwoods part of the country, not in cosmopolitan Orange County.”

The campaign to discredit Cook, according to the lawsuit, “sought to induce and succeeded in inducing the termination of (Cook’s) employment with the Orange County Register by virtue of casting plaintiff in a false and negative light. Said allegations were completely false and without basis in fact.”

Register Managing Editor Timothy M. Kelly said he would not discuss the circumstances of Cook’s termination.

“Since it’s a private personnel matter, it’s therefore not open to public discussion,” he said.

McDermott said that Cook is seeking $11 million because Gates and the others violated the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of the press, and “largely because of what Chuck and his family went through.”

After the Register sought and received Cook’s resignation, McDermott said, the reporter and his family “lived out of a suitcase for a couple of years.”

Cook took several lower-level reporting positions because of his damaged reputation before he “worked his way back up” to his current job, McDermott said.